Fabiano’s Fantasy Focus: Post-NFL Draft, Volume II

Arizona Sports News online

There’s no fantasy football offseason on NFL.com! Be sure to check out NFL.com/Fantasy for in-depth analysis on all the news that will affect your fantasy team in 2014!

Each week during the season NFL Network and NFL.com Fantasy Football Editor Michael Fabiano joins Sports360AZ.com’s Brad Cesmat to share his insight on building and developing your fantasy team for success.

Here are some hi-lights from our most recent conversation (May 12th) with the Fantasy Sports Writer’s Association Hall of Famer.

Looking ahead to upcoming fantasy drafts, what does your top five look like right now? “The NFL rosters around the National Football League are certainly becoming more clear so it’s a lot easier for us in the fantasy industry to start ranking players with a little more accuracy…you know me, I’m always going with running backs so you’re going to have Adrian Peterson number one and honestly, these guys at the top are interchangeable…Jamaal Charles two, LeSean McCoy three, Marshawn Lynch four and Matt Forte five. That’s in a standard league.”

First quarterback taken off the board in your draft would be who? “Peyton Manning. I don’t know how you go against him. He’s not going to throw for over 5,500 yards again, he’s not gonna have 55 touchdowns again. It’s just not logical for that to happen two season in a row. So, I could see Drew Brees being the number one quarterback at the end of the season. I could  see Aaron Rodgers being the number one quarterback at the end of the season but after what Peyton Manning did last year, it’s really hard to not rank him number one and he is a lock to be drafted in the first round of pretty much every single league coming up in 2014. Not my strategy but it will certainly happen.”

We saw running backs slide in the NFL draft a couple of weeks ago. What fantasy value do you put on most of these guys? “Is Ka’Deem Carey going to be worth a late-round pick in most fantasy drafts? Absolutely. A lot of these rookie running backs will be but you can’t draft them with the thought that they’re going to make an immediate impact with your fantasy team. They are guys that you’re going to sit on or to handcuff for insurance purposes.”

To hear the rest of the interview, click here.