I'll be honest with you guys, I'm not a fantasy football junkie, but I still enjoy playing the game.
My tactics might not be top of the line, but what do I know? I'm only coming off my second career championship -- first one came in 2007 -- and a fantastic season brought on by some very, very smart draft picks that paid off.
As I mentioned, I'm coming off an 11-2 championship season, so I thought I'd took a little look back to the year that was, while also dishing out some of my secrets of how I do business.First, the draft:
For many, draft day is huge. Many put in days of planning, mock drafts and pre-draft rankings. My routine, I usually join a league hours before a draft, then join the draft about five minutes prior to start time. From there, I make my picks.
The 2012 draft brought along a lot of tough choices, but I didn't regret a single pick.
To my disappointment, I found myself sitting with the 10th pick -- the last pick in the first round, the pick you'd rather not want to have. My first pick turned out to be my only dud, taking Maurice Jones-Drew, who would later be deemed out for the season after only just a couple of weeks.
Rob Gronkowski was my second pick, coming up big for me all throughout the season, up until he injured his forearm late in the season.
Arguably the biggest steal in the draft came to me in the 3rd round, when I was able to bring in Adrian Peterson to create, at the time, a nice one-two running back punch of AP and MJD. Obviously Peterson fell to the 30th pick because of speculation of how his ACL would fair, but I must say I was lucky to get him.
As you guys know, Peterson would come within just a handful of yards away from breaking the all-time rushing record for a season, and he ended up as the unanimous MVP for my team.
Peterson may have come up as a steal in the draft, but one of the toughest decision I was forced to make came in the 6th round.
Up until the 5th round, I had forgotten to draft a quarterback. As you could imagine, all the top QBs were off the board, so I had to make the quick move to draft the eventual Super Bowl MVP, Joe Flacco.
But in the 6th round, I knew I had to act fast to grab a backup QB before there weren't any options left, bringing me to choose between a pair of rookies: Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III.
This was a pick that I didn't decide on until the clock nearly struck zero. It was a difficult pick that took a lot of tough, but in the end, I will always know I made the right choice drafting RGIII over Luck.
Originally, I named Flacco as my starter, but after a slow start to the season, not to mention RGIII was tearing it up on the field, I made the change to start RGII a couple weeks in.
I was able to get a couple more nice players in the draft -- which by the way, my draft plan I usually to just pick the best players available at the position I'm looking for -- but in the end I was pretty satisfied with what I got, hoping for the best as the season came around.
I stumbled out of the gates with a loss in week one. Flacco gave me a nice 19 point opening week to couple with AP's 20 effort. Jones-Drew was the biggest let down in the 108-84 loss, giving me only 8 points.
Weeks two through four fared much better for The ELItes, pounding out three straight victories to help get the ball rolling on my 2012 season.
The lowest point in my championship campaign came in week five, when I played out my worst scoring week of the season, putting up only 55 points in a 94-55 loss, my second and last loss of the season. The weak performances came from everywhere: RGIII, AP, MJD and Gronk all gave me less then 10 points.
But it was all OK, because from there on out, the words "I lost" never left my lips again, as I rattled off eight-game winning streak to help set myself up at the top seed in the playoffs, paving the way to my fantasy football championship.
My run through the playoffs went off without a hitch. A late-season uprise from Russell Wilson, to go with some injury concerns with RGIII, cause me to make the switch to Wilson as my QB, racking up a whopping 39 points in week one of the playoffs.Wilson's heroic playoff effort helped lead the way to a 67-point blowout, putting me into the championship game against an 8-5 team I was not at all worried about.
For those of you that know, the playoff rounds, at least in my league, lasted two weeks -- weeks 16 and 17. After a 40-point win in the first week, I all needed to do was not lose by 40-points. For some time, I feared it would happen.
Trailing with some time left to go in the final week, I was trailing behind, possibly watching my championship fade away.
But, in the biggest moment of my year, Alfred Morris, a mid-season pick-up on the waiver wire that I saw putting up good numbers with the Washington Redskins as a rookie running back, single-handedly pulled off the comeback, posting a championship performance of 39 point, capturing me the elusive title I was craving.
As I celebrated throughout the off-season, I still couldn't wait the next season to come back around. And now, that season is just about here. Training camps are underway, the Hall of Fame game is this Sunday, and most of all football is back.
In a couple weeks, I'll join another league with random strangers. The only difference is that I'm coming into the season having to defend my crown. Yet, why change anything?
My game plan for the season is already mapped out: Join a league, draft a couple hours later, make the right picks, claim the right waivers, and most importantly, just sit back and let the players do the work.
It worked once. So why won't it work again? I see no reason why it won't.
Follow @GavinEwbank2013 on Twitter to let me know if you'd like to join my league.
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