When I sought out to do a top ten fantasy teams list I thought it'd be interesting to see what season the teams came from and what were the circumstances that led to these teams being so great. What I learned quickly after compiling this list and then going back over the data, it seems like we may be headed for a bit of a lull in skill level around the league. Now I'm not saying the skill level will be bad as without looking purely at the numbers people are putting up, but based off of fantasy points I'm guessing that the skill gap tightened. To go with that, I'm not saying there won't be top end players as guys like Owen Taylor will continue to exist, but the widespread success that allows for high scoring fantasy teams will drop. The first four seasons for fantasy points was a steady gradual climb. In season one it was rare to see a team even break the one-thousand point mark. In season two 1250 was the general high mark. In season three, scores in the 1300's weren't uncommon. Then in season four we saw our first 1500+ score. From there things exploded and we saw a 3-year mark of scores reaching well into the 1700s. But as if the clock struck midnight those scores went away and now we’re back down into the 1500s as being highs. Of course rule changes along the way have both helped and hurt fantasy scores, but nevertheless here are the top 10 NSFL fantasy teams of all time:
#10 - @manicmav36 - Season 6 - 1633.90
This is probably the most impressive team on the list to me. They come in with the 10th highest scoring mark of all time and yet the team itself came in second place, which means that the first place team in that group is somewhere else on this list. So how does something like this happen? Well as you'll end up seeing, a lot of the teams with such a high ranking get that way because one or more teams in their group failed to show up and draft. In this case one team didn't draft a single player and another only took four out of nine players. This left a great deal of talent on the board. manicmav36 didn't have too much help from his quarterback for this team, but really if you're not taking one of the top two quarterbacks it's not too great of value. Instead he had Chris Orosz who was the #5 fantasy quarterback that year, and also relied heavily on the ground game. For his running back he chose Owen Taylor, who only had 174 fantasy points the year before and hadn't really broken out yet, so great value there. Then he got a lot of help as one player got skipped twice and the other took the 2nd best quarterback (Blocksdale) and best wide receiver (Westfield). This setup manicmav36 for the steal of the draft in my opinion as he chose Jordan Yates. So how did Yates make it to the 2nd round? No clue actually, all he did in S5 was put up more points than every player besides 2 quarterbacks......so that means more points than 6 other quarterbacks! To top it all off he was able to get the top kicker (Harris) and defense (Otters).
Team:
QB - Chris Orosz - #5 QB
RB - Owen Taylor - #3 RB
WR - Mayron Jackson - #8 WR
WR - Dustin Evans - #9 WR
TE - Steven O'Sullivan - #2 TE
FLEX - Jordan Yates - #1 RB, #2 OVR
K - Stephen Harris - #1 K
DEF - Orange County Otters - #1 DEF
#9 - @PigSnout - Season 7 - 1667.62
PigSnout actually comes in with this team from Season 7 as one of the few teams from a league that had every team fully drafted, which either means some big whiffs or some newer players who didn't really know who to pick. Nevertheless, having the number two pick in the draft made things quite easy for PigSnout, at least in the beginning as he now had his choice of player. At this point the mindset has to be either to choose a top quarterback or hope a player has a breakout type year like Yates has the past two seasons. With Mike Boss being chosen with the first overall pick, it was really down to either Blocksdale or Akselsen. PigSnout chose Akselsen. This would be an amazing choice when it was said and done because despite Akselsen only throwing 21 touchdowns and being docked for each of his 16 interceptions and all four of his fumbles, he ran for almost 1k yards and a crazy 16 touchdowns. When you think about it though, it makes all the sense in the world to draft a running quarterback like Akselsen as they get double the amount of fantasy points per touchdown (6 for rushing/receiving) as when he throws one (3 per touchdown). Then if that wasn't enough, PigSnout was grabbed Paul DiMirio who is almost always the top fantasy TE sometimes earning as much as mid to lower tier WRs and running backs. Those two picks alone got him off to such a great start how could it get any better? How about coming back with Reg Mackworthy who ended up with 1900 all-purpose yards, 10 touchdowns, and was the top running back!
Team:
QB - Mat Akselsen - #1 QB, #1 OVR
RB - Reg Mackworthy - #1 RB, #6 OVR
WR - Josh Garden - #8 WR
WR - Fox North - #7 WR
TE - Paul DiMirio - #1 TE
FLEX - Damien Kroetch - #19 FLEX
K - Nate Forfeit - #2 K
DEF - Philadelphia Liberty - #3 DEF
#8 - @TheWoZy - Season 5 - 1686.90
This team is the first on the list from the first wave of huge offensive output in terms of fantasy points. At this point the talent started to be so good offensively that it was no longer out of the question to have every one of your picks get over 100 fantasy points in a season. The thing that makes TheWozy's spot on this list a bit amazing is the fact that with his first round pick he chose Josh Garden. Yes, Garden was the #3 fantasy player overall in S4, but that required him to put up 1500 yards and 16 touchdowns. To expect that production in 2 straight years (something you'd have to do in order to warrant a 1st round pick in my opinion) and not drop down to 10 or less touchdowns which he did the previous 3 seasons is a bit risky......but the risk paid off as Garden in fact did hit 1500+ yards yet again and matched his touchdown total from last season with 16. In the end that was definitely a risk worth taking, especially as with his next pick on the comeback in the serpentine he was able to grab Jordan Yates. Basically those first two picks were used on the #3 fantasy point player from last season and the player that would end up the #3 fantasy player in S5. Amazing. To round out his team Wozy then went with a quarterback and with that 3rd round pick was able to grab the #3 QB in King Bronko who went nuts putting up 5k yards and 44 touchdowns.
Team:
QB - King Bronko - #2 QB
RB - Jordan Yates - #1 RB, #3 OVR
WR - Josh Garden - #2 WR
WR - Budda Browning - #6 WR
TE - Connor Tanner - #2 TE
FLEX - Darren Smallwood - #7 FLEX
K - Turk Turkleton - #4 K
DEF - Arizona Outlaws - #4 DEF
#7 - @124715 - Season 6 - 1690.64
Numbers ranks in on this list with his performance in season 6. He had that sweet sweet draft spot of #3, one of my favorite positions to draft in as you're kind of in the middle and you're on the closer end of round one. The two people in front of him decided to go running back early, which isn't too bad of a strategy if you get the right ones, and so that left numbers over there with his hands in a shrugging motion as if to say "Well......if you're just going to give me Mike Boss I'm going to take Mike Boss." which is exactly what happened and he did not disappoint as Boss continued putting up video game numbers and led all of fantasy land in points. Numbers would then go on to pick up familiar fantasy names such as Owen Taylor and Buddha Browning, but I think the thing that helped set him apart from the other teams around him was that he was able to scoop up Paul DiMirio, who we all know puts up numbers other tight ends can only dream about, Stephen Harris, who put up 23 more points than any other kicker, and then got San Jose's defense who put up more points than some team's flex players. Overall I'm a bit surprised that Numbers actually ranks this high on the list considering only Boss put up top tier numbers while the rest of his team put up pretty average to good numbers. I guess it shows that you can put a great team together without hitting multiple top of their position players as long as you don't really miss on any of the picks.
Team:
QB - Mike Boss - #1 QB, #1 OVR
RB - Owen Taylor - #3 RB
WR - Budda Browning - #6 WR
WR - Fox North - #11 WR
TE - Paul DiMirio - #1 TE
FLEX - Damien Kroetch - #9 FLEX
K - Stephen Harris - #1 K
DEF - San Jose Sabercats - #4 DEF
#6 - @Battleborn - Season 6 - 1700.30
Battleborn joins the list with his season 6 team and the first team on this list to come from the last drafting position from his group. I myself hate drafting from the last position as you have to sit there and watch as player after player gets taken, but I do get why some people like it getting to immediately load up on that second player. With those two picks, Battleborn opted to not choose a quarterback, but rather went with Josh Garden and then Darren Smallwood. This kind of seems like a weird combo to load up on early as they were the 9th and 13th overall players from last season. Either he anticipated one of them busting out even bigger, but probably not the approach I'd take (but what do I know I don't even come close to ranking on this list). In fact, looking back at his draft it looks like after this teams started making a huge run on quarterbacks and he started flipping tables and didn't know what was going on. By the time his next pick came up he said screw QBs entirely and just ignored them, didn't even have the QB tab open on the draft page. Battleborn would go the entire draft without taking a quarterback until finally his last pick came in and he was forced to since he wouldn't get that $1M bonus for completing the draft otherwise. So who did he end up going with instead? Well he'd basically continue just making those quality mid-tier picks points wise as he picked up Mayran Jackson and the TE GOAT Paul DiMirio. Oh right the quarterback. Battleborn ended up picking Chris Orosz who threw a mere 25 touchdowns.
Team:
QB - Chris Orosz - #5 QB
RB - Darren Smallwood - #2 RB, #5 OVR
WR - Josh Garden - #2 WR
WR - Mayran Jackson - #7 WR
TE - Paul DiMirio - #1 TE
FLEX - Reg Mackworthy - #8 FLEX
K - Brad Madlad - #2 K
DE - Yellowknife Wraiths - #2 DEF
#5 - @Bwestfield - Season 6 - 1700.74
Some of you may not know this (although might find out in a later article), but Bwestfield is actually an NSFL Fantasy Football GOAT, so it really doesn't surprise me that one of his teams would find its way to this list, this one coming from S6, which may have been the best year in terms of fantasy football that the league has seen. This also completes the circle on something I mentioned earlier in this piece and that Bwestfield's team here is the one that beat manicmav36's team that ranked #10 on this list. It's definitely awesome to see 2 teams from the same league on this list, except that you then wonder how that even happened and realize that basically two teams didn't draft and that left even more players to choose from. Bwestfeild though was in the least envious position of getting to draft first overall, that means that the other 3 teams ahead of him got dibs and the even deeper draft pool. Honestly that probably didn't even phase him though as 1 second into his draft clock he punched the ticket on the Mike Boss express and leaned back to relax while everyone else tried to figure out what they were doing. This group was going to come down to who picked the least amount less good picks and while some teams struggled to get one or two players who would end up putting 200+ points on the board, Bwestfield managed to hit on 6 players that would, meaning every skill position did that and only his kicker and defense didn't. manicmav36 tried to go toe for toe with Bwestfield and in the end it was a 66.84 difference. Want to know where the big separator came in? If you guessed Paul DiMirio you'd be correct!
Team:
QB - Mike Boss - #1 QB, #1 OVR
RB - Ardie Savea - #6 RB
WR - Trey Willie - #3 WR
WR - Shane Weston - #4 WR
TE - Paul DiMirio - #1 TE
FLEX - Reg Mackworthy - #8 FLEX
K - I. Blewitt - #3 K
DEF - San Jose Sabercats - #4 DEF
#4 - @Jiggly_333 - Season 5 - 1721.60
This is kind of the part in the list where the teams on the list definitely got helped out by at least one team drafting almost no players at all, but Jiggly was also helped out by some monumental whiffs by some of the other teams in the group. Just like BWestfield in the previous ranking, Jiggly too had the first overall pick and went with the draft Boss and ride method. Although Boss wasn't the best overall quarterback in fantasy this season, he still managed over 300 points, which is a fantastic way to start for any team. With Jiggly's second pick in the draft the Otters were selected. Now why in the world would you ever dare drafting a defense with your 2nd pick? Simply put the Otters were a monster defense who had 30 more sacks than the next team. Heck, some teams barely got 30 sacks. Overall the Otters would put up enough points that only 12 players in all of fantasy scored more points than them. This made even more sense since it was the start/stop end of the serpentine and that allowed Jiggly to immediately select Jordan Yates. So now you've got a defense that scores way more points than any other defense, and two players that would be the number two and number three overall fantasy players in this season. Game. Set. Match. If you think Jiggly would take a breath and stop beating up the opposition though, no that wasn't about to happen. Somehow Erik Kennedy would end up slipping and slipping and slipping right into the hands of Jiggly who put him in the flex position and end up being the #6 overall fantasy player. Wew lawd Jiggly has no chill!
Team:
QB - Mike Boss - #2 QB, #2 OVR
RB - Jordan Yates - #1 RB, #3 OVR
WR - Robert Phelps - #11 WR
WR - Mayran Jackson - #5 WR
TE - Frank Harris Jr. - #4 TE
FLEX - Erik Kennedy - #2 FLEX, #2 RB, #6 OVR
K - Falco Lombardi - #1 K
DEF - Orange County Otters - #1 DEF
#3 - @nunccoepi - Season 7 - 1726.72
As the only other season 7 team on this list, nunccoepi's squad comes in at number three. Season 7 is kind of where the walls came crashing down a little bit in fantasy because almost everyone dropped in total points. Jordan Yates dropped almost 100 points overall. This was definitely the year to go QB early, however two of the first three players chosen were instead Jordan Yates and Darren Smallwood who finished number two and number five in overall points in season 6, but would end up placing 9th and 14th overall in season 7. Mike Boss would end up being drafted 4th overall, which left a few options for nunccoepi. With his fist pick he would actually also end up going running back as he chose Owen Taylor. The Taylor pick is interesting because there wasn't really indication that he'd be a top tier fantasy player, however, it's possible nuncoepi was scared that if he didn't take a RB now with the early runs and possibly another run on the way back he wouldn’t be able to choose any. Gutsy call since there had also only been one quarterback chosen at this point. Taylor would be followed up with a pick of fantasy football great Bradley Westfield. Westfield was a much better pick in my opinion as he's always a great earner in fantasy. Finally getting to his third pick it appears that nunccoepi got luckier than anything, and sometimes it pays to be lucky. All of the teams ahead of him ended up chooosing a quarterback before they could and they chose Oles, Orosz, Boss, and Blocksdale. You know who that left nuncceopi choosing? You guessed it, Mat Akselsen, who as mentioned on PigSnout's team, would go nuts reaching the endzone 16 times on the ground alone. In fact, with Akselsen and Westfield those two picks alone would account for over 630 of nunccoepi's fantasy points. Those guys along with the Wraiths defense and a rookie tight end named Verso L'Alto, his team would go on to coast to victory.
Team:
QB - Mat Akselsen - #1 QB, #1 OVR
RB - Owen Taylor - #2 RB
WR - Bradley Westfield - #1 WR, #5 OVR
WR - Erik Kennedy - #4 WR
TE - Verso L'Alto - #2 TE
FLEX - Budda Browning - #10 Flex
K - Brad Madlad - #4 K
DEF - Yellowknife Wraiths - #2 DEF
#2 - @speculadora - Season 6 - 1737.60
With an offense as explosive as this you'd have to expect that speculador hit every pick perfectly and knocked it out of the park from top to bottom, but that really isn't the case. speculadora would make a decent pick with his first pick as he chose Owen Taylor and it almost never hurts to take Taylor in fantasy, but being the third runningback you'd want a little more. Anyways that's not even the part I was referring to earlier, but instead it was his 2nd pick I was referring to. With that pick, he ended up choosing Alexander LeClair, who is often an afterthought in fantasy and a player teams generally try and wait off on and hope to snag in the second or third round of the draft. In fact, looking at his team, LeClair would end up being the second lowest in points value as he barely beat out the kicker on the team by 10.3 points. Somehow though, through all the skipped picks and confusion swirling his league, speculadora was still able to swipe Jordan Yates with his third pick and Yates would be the number two fantasy player with over 2k all-purpose yards and 17 total touchdowns. As with a couple others on this list, speculadora didn't neglect his special teams either as he was able to pick the best kicker in Stephen Harris, as well as the number one defense with the Otters. When you end up choosing top tier special teams units and a good tight end, which he did with Charlie Law, you end up being a team that is built strong enough to take down most other fantasy teams and that's exactly what speculadora did.
Team:
QB - Chris Orosz - #5 QB
RB - Owen Taylor - #3 RB
WR - Alexander LeClair - #5 WR
WR - Trey Willie - #3 WR
TE - Charlie Law - #2 TE
FLEX - Jordan Yates - #1 FLEX, #1 RB, #2 OVR
K - Stephen Harris - #1 K
DEF - Orange County Otters - #1 DEF
#1 - @PaytonM34 - Season 5 - 1766.12
Now if you had thought that any of these previous teams have looked good, well quite frankly you're wrong! Ok not really, but PaytonM34 put together a team that the likes of will probably never be seen in NSFL Fantasy Football ever again. Yes Payton's group did have a person who didn't draft at all, but so did a lot of these other groups. Payton ended up drafting at fourth overall in the group, 3rd really with the non-drafter, and with his first pick, he started off his team by drafting Josh Garden. This is a great pick as at this point in time he was the best fantasy wide receiver in the game. Being third allowed him to skip a quarterback and since running backs really weren't a top priority in fantasy at this point in time the real value was in receivers. He was then lucky enough to have the 5th team in his league to let 24 hours pass and let him pick again, which he wasted no time and chose Bradley Westfield, essentially giving him the two best receivers you could possibly want. Payton would then choose his quarterback on the next run through, nabbing Akselsen, who would actually end up being the top quarterback. As if the rich couldn't get rich enough, somehow the 5th team would somehow let 24 hours pass by again, essentially gifting Payton 4 drat slots. With that second gifting, Payton would choose Erik Kennedy. So at this point you kind of get just how this team would be the best the NSFL has ever seen, but it only keeps getting better. Payton would end up getting Browning to be his slot man, yet another top 15 fantasy player, and then just add in the Yellowknife defense for kicks and giggles.
Team:
QB - Mat Akselsen - #1 QB, #1 OVR
RB - Erik Kennedy - #2 RB, #6 OVR
WR - Josh Garden - #2 WR
WR - Bradley Westfield - #1 WR
TE - Frank Harris Jr. - #4 TE
FLEX - Budda Browning - #8 FLEX
K - Turk Turkleton - #4 K
DEF - Yellowknife Wraiths - #2 DEF
Overall you can kind of draw your own conclusions from looking at each of the teams as to how drafting top players at which positions can make or break your team. From what we see though is that ultimately no real position is more valuable than any other in fantasy football in general. Of course that isn't totally accurate as some years some positions are more valuable, but overall you can draft the top quarterback or the worst quarterback and as long as you make good enough picks at the other positions it really doesn't matter. Also in this list we have every single draft slot represented so if you have some kind of perception that any draft slot will determine your fate in fantasy football, then maybe this will help change that. It was definitely interesting, at least to me, to take a look through all these great teams and how they came about and it will probably be a good while before we see teams as dominate as these.
#10 - @manicmav36 - Season 6 - 1633.90
This is probably the most impressive team on the list to me. They come in with the 10th highest scoring mark of all time and yet the team itself came in second place, which means that the first place team in that group is somewhere else on this list. So how does something like this happen? Well as you'll end up seeing, a lot of the teams with such a high ranking get that way because one or more teams in their group failed to show up and draft. In this case one team didn't draft a single player and another only took four out of nine players. This left a great deal of talent on the board. manicmav36 didn't have too much help from his quarterback for this team, but really if you're not taking one of the top two quarterbacks it's not too great of value. Instead he had Chris Orosz who was the #5 fantasy quarterback that year, and also relied heavily on the ground game. For his running back he chose Owen Taylor, who only had 174 fantasy points the year before and hadn't really broken out yet, so great value there. Then he got a lot of help as one player got skipped twice and the other took the 2nd best quarterback (Blocksdale) and best wide receiver (Westfield). This setup manicmav36 for the steal of the draft in my opinion as he chose Jordan Yates. So how did Yates make it to the 2nd round? No clue actually, all he did in S5 was put up more points than every player besides 2 quarterbacks......so that means more points than 6 other quarterbacks! To top it all off he was able to get the top kicker (Harris) and defense (Otters).
Team:
QB - Chris Orosz - #5 QB
RB - Owen Taylor - #3 RB
WR - Mayron Jackson - #8 WR
WR - Dustin Evans - #9 WR
TE - Steven O'Sullivan - #2 TE
FLEX - Jordan Yates - #1 RB, #2 OVR
K - Stephen Harris - #1 K
DEF - Orange County Otters - #1 DEF
#9 - @PigSnout - Season 7 - 1667.62
PigSnout actually comes in with this team from Season 7 as one of the few teams from a league that had every team fully drafted, which either means some big whiffs or some newer players who didn't really know who to pick. Nevertheless, having the number two pick in the draft made things quite easy for PigSnout, at least in the beginning as he now had his choice of player. At this point the mindset has to be either to choose a top quarterback or hope a player has a breakout type year like Yates has the past two seasons. With Mike Boss being chosen with the first overall pick, it was really down to either Blocksdale or Akselsen. PigSnout chose Akselsen. This would be an amazing choice when it was said and done because despite Akselsen only throwing 21 touchdowns and being docked for each of his 16 interceptions and all four of his fumbles, he ran for almost 1k yards and a crazy 16 touchdowns. When you think about it though, it makes all the sense in the world to draft a running quarterback like Akselsen as they get double the amount of fantasy points per touchdown (6 for rushing/receiving) as when he throws one (3 per touchdown). Then if that wasn't enough, PigSnout was grabbed Paul DiMirio who is almost always the top fantasy TE sometimes earning as much as mid to lower tier WRs and running backs. Those two picks alone got him off to such a great start how could it get any better? How about coming back with Reg Mackworthy who ended up with 1900 all-purpose yards, 10 touchdowns, and was the top running back!
Team:
QB - Mat Akselsen - #1 QB, #1 OVR
RB - Reg Mackworthy - #1 RB, #6 OVR
WR - Josh Garden - #8 WR
WR - Fox North - #7 WR
TE - Paul DiMirio - #1 TE
FLEX - Damien Kroetch - #19 FLEX
K - Nate Forfeit - #2 K
DEF - Philadelphia Liberty - #3 DEF
#8 - @TheWoZy - Season 5 - 1686.90
This team is the first on the list from the first wave of huge offensive output in terms of fantasy points. At this point the talent started to be so good offensively that it was no longer out of the question to have every one of your picks get over 100 fantasy points in a season. The thing that makes TheWozy's spot on this list a bit amazing is the fact that with his first round pick he chose Josh Garden. Yes, Garden was the #3 fantasy player overall in S4, but that required him to put up 1500 yards and 16 touchdowns. To expect that production in 2 straight years (something you'd have to do in order to warrant a 1st round pick in my opinion) and not drop down to 10 or less touchdowns which he did the previous 3 seasons is a bit risky......but the risk paid off as Garden in fact did hit 1500+ yards yet again and matched his touchdown total from last season with 16. In the end that was definitely a risk worth taking, especially as with his next pick on the comeback in the serpentine he was able to grab Jordan Yates. Basically those first two picks were used on the #3 fantasy point player from last season and the player that would end up the #3 fantasy player in S5. Amazing. To round out his team Wozy then went with a quarterback and with that 3rd round pick was able to grab the #3 QB in King Bronko who went nuts putting up 5k yards and 44 touchdowns.
Team:
QB - King Bronko - #2 QB
RB - Jordan Yates - #1 RB, #3 OVR
WR - Josh Garden - #2 WR
WR - Budda Browning - #6 WR
TE - Connor Tanner - #2 TE
FLEX - Darren Smallwood - #7 FLEX
K - Turk Turkleton - #4 K
DEF - Arizona Outlaws - #4 DEF
#7 - @124715 - Season 6 - 1690.64
Numbers ranks in on this list with his performance in season 6. He had that sweet sweet draft spot of #3, one of my favorite positions to draft in as you're kind of in the middle and you're on the closer end of round one. The two people in front of him decided to go running back early, which isn't too bad of a strategy if you get the right ones, and so that left numbers over there with his hands in a shrugging motion as if to say "Well......if you're just going to give me Mike Boss I'm going to take Mike Boss." which is exactly what happened and he did not disappoint as Boss continued putting up video game numbers and led all of fantasy land in points. Numbers would then go on to pick up familiar fantasy names such as Owen Taylor and Buddha Browning, but I think the thing that helped set him apart from the other teams around him was that he was able to scoop up Paul DiMirio, who we all know puts up numbers other tight ends can only dream about, Stephen Harris, who put up 23 more points than any other kicker, and then got San Jose's defense who put up more points than some team's flex players. Overall I'm a bit surprised that Numbers actually ranks this high on the list considering only Boss put up top tier numbers while the rest of his team put up pretty average to good numbers. I guess it shows that you can put a great team together without hitting multiple top of their position players as long as you don't really miss on any of the picks.
Team:
QB - Mike Boss - #1 QB, #1 OVR
RB - Owen Taylor - #3 RB
WR - Budda Browning - #6 WR
WR - Fox North - #11 WR
TE - Paul DiMirio - #1 TE
FLEX - Damien Kroetch - #9 FLEX
K - Stephen Harris - #1 K
DEF - San Jose Sabercats - #4 DEF
#6 - @Battleborn - Season 6 - 1700.30
Battleborn joins the list with his season 6 team and the first team on this list to come from the last drafting position from his group. I myself hate drafting from the last position as you have to sit there and watch as player after player gets taken, but I do get why some people like it getting to immediately load up on that second player. With those two picks, Battleborn opted to not choose a quarterback, but rather went with Josh Garden and then Darren Smallwood. This kind of seems like a weird combo to load up on early as they were the 9th and 13th overall players from last season. Either he anticipated one of them busting out even bigger, but probably not the approach I'd take (but what do I know I don't even come close to ranking on this list). In fact, looking back at his draft it looks like after this teams started making a huge run on quarterbacks and he started flipping tables and didn't know what was going on. By the time his next pick came up he said screw QBs entirely and just ignored them, didn't even have the QB tab open on the draft page. Battleborn would go the entire draft without taking a quarterback until finally his last pick came in and he was forced to since he wouldn't get that $1M bonus for completing the draft otherwise. So who did he end up going with instead? Well he'd basically continue just making those quality mid-tier picks points wise as he picked up Mayran Jackson and the TE GOAT Paul DiMirio. Oh right the quarterback. Battleborn ended up picking Chris Orosz who threw a mere 25 touchdowns.
Team:
QB - Chris Orosz - #5 QB
RB - Darren Smallwood - #2 RB, #5 OVR
WR - Josh Garden - #2 WR
WR - Mayran Jackson - #7 WR
TE - Paul DiMirio - #1 TE
FLEX - Reg Mackworthy - #8 FLEX
K - Brad Madlad - #2 K
DE - Yellowknife Wraiths - #2 DEF
#5 - @Bwestfield - Season 6 - 1700.74
Some of you may not know this (although might find out in a later article), but Bwestfield is actually an NSFL Fantasy Football GOAT, so it really doesn't surprise me that one of his teams would find its way to this list, this one coming from S6, which may have been the best year in terms of fantasy football that the league has seen. This also completes the circle on something I mentioned earlier in this piece and that Bwestfield's team here is the one that beat manicmav36's team that ranked #10 on this list. It's definitely awesome to see 2 teams from the same league on this list, except that you then wonder how that even happened and realize that basically two teams didn't draft and that left even more players to choose from. Bwestfeild though was in the least envious position of getting to draft first overall, that means that the other 3 teams ahead of him got dibs and the even deeper draft pool. Honestly that probably didn't even phase him though as 1 second into his draft clock he punched the ticket on the Mike Boss express and leaned back to relax while everyone else tried to figure out what they were doing. This group was going to come down to who picked the least amount less good picks and while some teams struggled to get one or two players who would end up putting 200+ points on the board, Bwestfield managed to hit on 6 players that would, meaning every skill position did that and only his kicker and defense didn't. manicmav36 tried to go toe for toe with Bwestfield and in the end it was a 66.84 difference. Want to know where the big separator came in? If you guessed Paul DiMirio you'd be correct!
Team:
QB - Mike Boss - #1 QB, #1 OVR
RB - Ardie Savea - #6 RB
WR - Trey Willie - #3 WR
WR - Shane Weston - #4 WR
TE - Paul DiMirio - #1 TE
FLEX - Reg Mackworthy - #8 FLEX
K - I. Blewitt - #3 K
DEF - San Jose Sabercats - #4 DEF
#4 - @Jiggly_333 - Season 5 - 1721.60
This is kind of the part in the list where the teams on the list definitely got helped out by at least one team drafting almost no players at all, but Jiggly was also helped out by some monumental whiffs by some of the other teams in the group. Just like BWestfield in the previous ranking, Jiggly too had the first overall pick and went with the draft Boss and ride method. Although Boss wasn't the best overall quarterback in fantasy this season, he still managed over 300 points, which is a fantastic way to start for any team. With Jiggly's second pick in the draft the Otters were selected. Now why in the world would you ever dare drafting a defense with your 2nd pick? Simply put the Otters were a monster defense who had 30 more sacks than the next team. Heck, some teams barely got 30 sacks. Overall the Otters would put up enough points that only 12 players in all of fantasy scored more points than them. This made even more sense since it was the start/stop end of the serpentine and that allowed Jiggly to immediately select Jordan Yates. So now you've got a defense that scores way more points than any other defense, and two players that would be the number two and number three overall fantasy players in this season. Game. Set. Match. If you think Jiggly would take a breath and stop beating up the opposition though, no that wasn't about to happen. Somehow Erik Kennedy would end up slipping and slipping and slipping right into the hands of Jiggly who put him in the flex position and end up being the #6 overall fantasy player. Wew lawd Jiggly has no chill!
Team:
QB - Mike Boss - #2 QB, #2 OVR
RB - Jordan Yates - #1 RB, #3 OVR
WR - Robert Phelps - #11 WR
WR - Mayran Jackson - #5 WR
TE - Frank Harris Jr. - #4 TE
FLEX - Erik Kennedy - #2 FLEX, #2 RB, #6 OVR
K - Falco Lombardi - #1 K
DEF - Orange County Otters - #1 DEF
#3 - @nunccoepi - Season 7 - 1726.72
As the only other season 7 team on this list, nunccoepi's squad comes in at number three. Season 7 is kind of where the walls came crashing down a little bit in fantasy because almost everyone dropped in total points. Jordan Yates dropped almost 100 points overall. This was definitely the year to go QB early, however two of the first three players chosen were instead Jordan Yates and Darren Smallwood who finished number two and number five in overall points in season 6, but would end up placing 9th and 14th overall in season 7. Mike Boss would end up being drafted 4th overall, which left a few options for nunccoepi. With his fist pick he would actually also end up going running back as he chose Owen Taylor. The Taylor pick is interesting because there wasn't really indication that he'd be a top tier fantasy player, however, it's possible nuncoepi was scared that if he didn't take a RB now with the early runs and possibly another run on the way back he wouldn’t be able to choose any. Gutsy call since there had also only been one quarterback chosen at this point. Taylor would be followed up with a pick of fantasy football great Bradley Westfield. Westfield was a much better pick in my opinion as he's always a great earner in fantasy. Finally getting to his third pick it appears that nunccoepi got luckier than anything, and sometimes it pays to be lucky. All of the teams ahead of him ended up chooosing a quarterback before they could and they chose Oles, Orosz, Boss, and Blocksdale. You know who that left nuncceopi choosing? You guessed it, Mat Akselsen, who as mentioned on PigSnout's team, would go nuts reaching the endzone 16 times on the ground alone. In fact, with Akselsen and Westfield those two picks alone would account for over 630 of nunccoepi's fantasy points. Those guys along with the Wraiths defense and a rookie tight end named Verso L'Alto, his team would go on to coast to victory.
Team:
QB - Mat Akselsen - #1 QB, #1 OVR
RB - Owen Taylor - #2 RB
WR - Bradley Westfield - #1 WR, #5 OVR
WR - Erik Kennedy - #4 WR
TE - Verso L'Alto - #2 TE
FLEX - Budda Browning - #10 Flex
K - Brad Madlad - #4 K
DEF - Yellowknife Wraiths - #2 DEF
#2 - @speculadora - Season 6 - 1737.60
With an offense as explosive as this you'd have to expect that speculador hit every pick perfectly and knocked it out of the park from top to bottom, but that really isn't the case. speculadora would make a decent pick with his first pick as he chose Owen Taylor and it almost never hurts to take Taylor in fantasy, but being the third runningback you'd want a little more. Anyways that's not even the part I was referring to earlier, but instead it was his 2nd pick I was referring to. With that pick, he ended up choosing Alexander LeClair, who is often an afterthought in fantasy and a player teams generally try and wait off on and hope to snag in the second or third round of the draft. In fact, looking at his team, LeClair would end up being the second lowest in points value as he barely beat out the kicker on the team by 10.3 points. Somehow though, through all the skipped picks and confusion swirling his league, speculadora was still able to swipe Jordan Yates with his third pick and Yates would be the number two fantasy player with over 2k all-purpose yards and 17 total touchdowns. As with a couple others on this list, speculadora didn't neglect his special teams either as he was able to pick the best kicker in Stephen Harris, as well as the number one defense with the Otters. When you end up choosing top tier special teams units and a good tight end, which he did with Charlie Law, you end up being a team that is built strong enough to take down most other fantasy teams and that's exactly what speculadora did.
Team:
QB - Chris Orosz - #5 QB
RB - Owen Taylor - #3 RB
WR - Alexander LeClair - #5 WR
WR - Trey Willie - #3 WR
TE - Charlie Law - #2 TE
FLEX - Jordan Yates - #1 FLEX, #1 RB, #2 OVR
K - Stephen Harris - #1 K
DEF - Orange County Otters - #1 DEF
#1 - @PaytonM34 - Season 5 - 1766.12
Now if you had thought that any of these previous teams have looked good, well quite frankly you're wrong! Ok not really, but PaytonM34 put together a team that the likes of will probably never be seen in NSFL Fantasy Football ever again. Yes Payton's group did have a person who didn't draft at all, but so did a lot of these other groups. Payton ended up drafting at fourth overall in the group, 3rd really with the non-drafter, and with his first pick, he started off his team by drafting Josh Garden. This is a great pick as at this point in time he was the best fantasy wide receiver in the game. Being third allowed him to skip a quarterback and since running backs really weren't a top priority in fantasy at this point in time the real value was in receivers. He was then lucky enough to have the 5th team in his league to let 24 hours pass and let him pick again, which he wasted no time and chose Bradley Westfield, essentially giving him the two best receivers you could possibly want. Payton would then choose his quarterback on the next run through, nabbing Akselsen, who would actually end up being the top quarterback. As if the rich couldn't get rich enough, somehow the 5th team would somehow let 24 hours pass by again, essentially gifting Payton 4 drat slots. With that second gifting, Payton would choose Erik Kennedy. So at this point you kind of get just how this team would be the best the NSFL has ever seen, but it only keeps getting better. Payton would end up getting Browning to be his slot man, yet another top 15 fantasy player, and then just add in the Yellowknife defense for kicks and giggles.
Team:
QB - Mat Akselsen - #1 QB, #1 OVR
RB - Erik Kennedy - #2 RB, #6 OVR
WR - Josh Garden - #2 WR
WR - Bradley Westfield - #1 WR
TE - Frank Harris Jr. - #4 TE
FLEX - Budda Browning - #8 FLEX
K - Turk Turkleton - #4 K
DEF - Yellowknife Wraiths - #2 DEF
Overall you can kind of draw your own conclusions from looking at each of the teams as to how drafting top players at which positions can make or break your team. From what we see though is that ultimately no real position is more valuable than any other in fantasy football in general. Of course that isn't totally accurate as some years some positions are more valuable, but overall you can draft the top quarterback or the worst quarterback and as long as you make good enough picks at the other positions it really doesn't matter. Also in this list we have every single draft slot represented so if you have some kind of perception that any draft slot will determine your fate in fantasy football, then maybe this will help change that. It was definitely interesting, at least to me, to take a look through all these great teams and how they came about and it will probably be a good while before we see teams as dominate as these.
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