Ultimate Team By Committee - UTBC

  Posted 8/19 by Jeff Pasquino - Exclusive to Footballguys.com

WHEN THE BRITISH naturalist George Shaw received a weird specimen from Australia in 1799 - one with a mole's fur, a duck's bill and spurs on its rear legs - he did what any skeptical scientist would do: He looked for the stitching and glue that would reveal it to be a hoax. "It was impossible not to entertain some distant doubts as to the genuine nature of the animal," Shaw wrote of the seemingly built-by-committee creature, which he eventually named "platypus".

Over the past few years, there have been two very popular articles written by our very own Chase Stuart that look at an interesting approach to building a fantasy team with late value picks. Based upon the theory of using both Strength of Schedule ("SOS") and taking two players as a combination to build one very good player, he has discussed both Team Defense by Committee ("TDBC") and Quarterback by Committee ("QBBC") as a general fantasy league strategy. In general I think that this is a wise move because very early on in fantasy drafts there are a ton of RB and WR prospects to go after to build a great team. While there are a few studs at QB and also a few choice defenses, I do not see a huge need in leagues to pursue either too hard in the beginning stages of a fantasy draft.

So with this in mind, I started to think about what else can be done with the committee approach. Tight end? Perhaps. Wide receiver? A possibility, but it might be better to look at third WR options than any other option. What about running back? Hmmm, that might work. What if I could put together all of this and make a total team using committees? Would that even be possible?

Yes, Virginia, there is a Team Platypus.

With all of these concepts discussed here:

• QBBC - Quarterback By Committee (Chase Stuart)
• RB2BC - Running Back #2 By Committee (Jeff Pasquino)
• WR3BC - Wide Receiver #3 By Committee (Jeff Pasquino)
• TEBC - Tight End By Committee (Jeff Pasquino)
• DTBC - Defensive Team By Committee (Chase Stuart)

I've taken a good shot at putting together an Ultimate Team By Committee (UTBC). For the Mike Hermans of the world, I hope you don't mind that I will pass on the kicker by committee. Leave that one for some else to think about.

If It Walks Like a Duck.....

So using the suggestions in the articles and some tweaks based on current ADP, here are the suggestions to build your very own version of Team Platypus:

Table 1: The Ultimate Team By Committee (UTBC) Blueprint

Some of you may notice that there's a bit of inconsistency in Rounds 6 through 10. That's a good observation, and I can explain. Based on QBBC I had to tweak the WR3BC to allow for Matt Schaub and David Garrard to fit into Rounds 6 and 9, respectively. That means I cannot recommend going WR/WR in Rounds 7 and 8 for WR3BC. It also means that the RB2BC recipe of Ray Rice and Cedric Benson is also not going to work here. That's okay - we aren't in the draft yet and we can plan. That's what we do - we adapt. Darwin would be proud.

Let's address what we need here in Rounds 5-10. We want to get RB2BC, WR3BC and QBBC established. Looking back at those two articles I wrote plus Chase's article for QBs and we can modify our earlier RB2BC and WR3BC recommendations.

Table 2 below shows the ADP of the players from 61-120 to give us an idea of where players are going as of August 17th:

Table 2: ADP of Players in PPR Leagues, 61-120

The good news is that we can get four of the recommended players we wanted (Ray Rice, Donald Driver and both Garrard and Schaub). While we cannot get Benson or Ginn, replacing each with Leon Washington and Josh Morgan we are barely giving up any points at all. The Rice / Benson combo was projected to produce 197 points, while the duo of Rice and Washington give 193.6 - that's only 3.4 points of a difference, or less than a 3-yard carry a week. Hopefully you can see why I am fine with making that swap. The story is similar with Driver / Ginn vs. Driver / Morgan. The projections are only 5.4 points different, less than 0.4 points a week. This is not a very big price to pay at all considering that we are getting almost everything else we wanted here for Team Platypus. Note that players in Table 2 that were part of the original RB2BC and WR3BC are highlighted in green, while suggested replacement picks are in yellow.

After Round 10, the draft works out according almost exactly as the predicted plan. Muhsin Muhammad (ADP 148) falls in our laps at Round 11, while TEBC hits us squarely in Rounds 12 and 13 with Heath Miller (ADP 151) and Bo Scaife (ADP 159) well within reach. Down the stretch we can relax with taking a few sleeper candidates or a RB handcuff if you like as we wait to grab Green Bay (Round 15 or 16, ADP 172) and Arizona (ADP 214) towards the end of the draft. Green Bay is a borderline Round 16 pick, so take note of who has taken a defense already and decide if you want to risk them falling past you in Round 15. If you have a long list of equal sleepers at that point, take Green Bay and rest easy rather than be disappointed.

As mentioned before, kickers are kickers - take one late. If your fantasy team has fewer than 18 rounds, TE or defense by committee may be a waste of roster space - consider getting a TE in Round 10 like Dustin Keller and then make Muhsin Muhammad your WR4 to combine with Driver as your WR3BC. On the flip side, if your team has a lot of roster room, don't wait beyond Round 18 to get Arizona and feel free to grab late sleepers.

Best of luck this year.

As always, feedback is welcome at pasquino@footballguys.com.