I've told you guys that I've spent hours upon hours working on developing some kind of statistical breakdown of players and their potential for this season.  What can I say, I want to win.  And I want to win by any (legal) means necessary.  If that means using my limited free time - and yes, it is limited - to work on a spreadsheet over the course of three months that helps me discover things about our league, then so be it.

But at the same time, I'm not good at hiding information for myself, so in the spirit of giving (and the lull of the off-season), I'm here to share some of what I discovered with you.  I'm not going to share the really juicy stuff I learned because I actually do want to have some information you don't, but I will share one thing I learned about every position I analyzed:  RB, WR, QB, and TE.

You know, because I care.

There's a pretty large caveat to all this info, and it's enough of a reason for you to disregard everything I'm telling you:  this info only uses the last two years of league stats.  I specifically chose the last two years because they've been our only auction years.  And what happened during those two years is actually quite different.  In 2012 players remained generally healthy, and 2013 had injuries everywhere.  It defnitely affected some things, but not enough to be able to deduce the following

1. RB Still Matters

Let me tell you the biggest shocker you'll hear all off-season:  Having an elite RB is good.

"Woop-de-freaking-do John.  Tell me something I don't know."

Um...I can't.  You know this already.

Here's the thing - what I learned was that, specifically, having a Top 6 RB mattered.  On average, the top 6 RBs outscored or matched the #1 WR in fantasy football.  What's more, the gap between the Top 2 (not 3) RBs, is even more pronounced.

Now, you may be asking yourself, if that's the case, what is it you need to do?  Get ready to be bludgeoned over the head by the truth here:

You need to pay for a top RB.

I'm always willing to help point it out for you.  24/7.

What my data found was that, of the Top 5 RBs drafted (in terms of money spent), 3 of them will finish in the Top 5.  And the fourth is usually drafted in the Top 10.

This makes sense because the top guys are getting drafted because they're, you know, good, and they have offenses that feature them because they're, you know, good.

So to put the odds in your favor, you want to pay for an AP, McCoy, or Charles.  Duh.

2. We're Really Good at Drafting WRs

A lot of what we do over the course of the season is trying to find that diamond in the rough pickup to help our team really jump past others.  Last year there was Zac Stacy and Julius Thomas.  The year before there was Alfred Morris.

But good luck trying to pickup a WR that will consistently help your team.  I mean, you'll be able to find a Marlon Brown or Laurent Robinson off the waiver wire after he blows up for a week, but to find a guy who's a threat every week is rare.  Oh, Keenan Allen last year you say?  Funny story, Baron actually drafted him.

"You know, drop him.  Because my team sucked last year." - Erin Seems

And that's kind of the point.  If every real life team has two legitimate WRs (and some 3), we should have something like 60-65 WRs who consistently can get some play.  What we've gotten to be really good at, essentially, is drafting all the WRs to finish in the Top 30.  That's three WRs per person, or enough to fill a flex spot for everyone.

Of the 30 most expensive WRs we've drafted, 65% of them have finished as Top 30 WRs.  That is the highest percentage of Top 30 picks of any position we draft from.  And once you factor in the the 31-60 WRs we draft, we're even more accurate (that is to say, if we draft 60 WRs, then how many of them finish in the Top 60).  So yea, we kind of pull all the meat off the bone with this position.

3. TEs Are a Crapshoot...Unless You have Jimmy Graham or a Healthy Gronk

Here's more super obvious stuff:  Jimmy Graham is a monster.  And so is the Gronk, when he's healthy.  And to a lesser degree, Julius Thomas.  But after that, good luck.  The deviation from TE4 through TE10 is the smallest deviation of any position that I researched.  That doesn't mean you can't have good weeks.  Just go ahead and ask Bryan about last year's TE4: Jason Witten.  That dude blew up some weeks.  But otherwise, everything kind of smooths itself out.

What's more, for as good as we are at drafting WRs, we're just as bad drafting TEs.  On average, we'll draft somewhere between 13-16 TEs in the draft.  Of those TEs drafted in the Top 10, only 45% will actually finish in the Top 10.  And once you take out Graham, that number only jumps up to 47.5%.

So why are we only able to hit on half our guesses in the Top 10?  Well, for one, because there seem to be more breakout TEs now than ever.  As these new uber athletic, basketball playing TEs enter the league, teams will try to use their athleticism to beat up on defenses.  It's just the trend of the league.

Which, of course, leads me to pure speculation.  I honestly think we'll get better at drafting TEs because more people will be talking about the Julius Thomas' of the world earlier and earlier.  And we'll identify and draft that kind of player going forward.

But as of right now, the kings of the gridiron are a Ginger and a Human Fiesta.  Yes, those titles are treated as proper nouns.


4. Forget What They Say, QBs Matter

There's been all this talk about how this is a passing league, and how there are so many QBs capable of putting up huge numbers, that all you need to do is wait on a QB and spend on other positions.  Let me counter with the following:

2012:  Dan wins the league with Aaron Rodgers, fantasy's #2 QB that year.  He defeats Danny, who has fantasy's #4 QB in Cam Newton

2013: Bryan wins the league with Andy Dalton and Matt Stafford (#5 and #7).  And Dan rides Josh McCown and his 22 point average into the playoffs.

Fact is, you could make an argument that having a Top QB is incredibly important.  After all, the elite QBs score more points than any other position.  We can talk all we want about finding "value" with QBs, but due to the high level of consistency in drafting the Top QBs (only 14.5% of QBs drafted in the Top 5 finished outside of the Top 5 (thank you Brees, Manning, and Rodgers)), this is a classic example of you "you know what you're getting".  And you know that, with the elite players, you're getting more points than any other position.  I mean, if Drew Brees scores 30 points, that could be enough to outscore an entire WR corp.  I'm not even looking at what the other guy's QB did.

So while this bulletpoint has less to do with the actual data I discovered, it's still relevant to our league.  Our top players (and this can continue to Baron when he picked up Kaepernick before the playoffs three years ago) usually wind up with some of the top QBs.

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Those are just four fun little nuggets I "discovered" while doing this exercise.  Doing this is kind of like an exercise in psychology:  It becomes a painful elaboration of the obvious.  And that's why I'm willing to share.  Because none of this should be all that new to you.  So it shouldn't affect your strategy.  But if it does, stop right now.  Remember who's giving you this informaton.  After all, there's a reason I've never made the playoffs.

Doing this exercise might help explain why.