This past weekend the East Tennessee Media League held its second annual fantasy draft.  Last season Brian Trent of the Citizens-Tribune dominated the regular season only be be knocked off by your’s truly in the Championship Game.  Anquan Boldin ran wild in Arizona’s Week 17 game and he was the primary reason I was able to defeat Brian.

Well, Boldin wound up on my team again, but I’m afraid my decision to pass up a couple of other wide receivers, namely Randy Moss and Reggie Wayne, may hurt me in the long run.

I picked sixth in a 12-team league.  When my first pick rolled around I was torn between Moss and Joseph Addai.  But, I knew if I passed on Addai my number one runningback would be someone like Willie Parker by the time by second pick (19th overall) came around so I took Addai.

With my second pick I wanted a wide receiver and had pretty much my pick of the lot behind Moss.  The two that jumped out at me were Wayne and Andre Johnson.  Since I already had Addai from Indianapolis I was too afraid of putting all of my eggs in one basket by banking on the Colts’ offense and taking Wayne so I gambled on Johnson, despite last season’s big injury.

The remainder of the second round and the first part of third saw folks grabbing up the rest of the top receivers.  I, however, did end up with Parker as my third pick, 30th overall.  He was among the league leaders in yards, but only scored two TDs since Pittsburgh passed so much in its red zone offense.  I’m hoping that is rethought this season.

Anyhow, my draft went okay and I’m favored in my Week One pairing.

Boldin went 43rd overall as my fourth round pick.  I took another receiver I had some good luck with last season in the fifth round, Santonio Holmes.

I may have reached a little in the sixth round, taking Jeremy Shockey as the 67th pick overall, but most of the quality tight ends had already been grabbed up and Shockey is moving into a pass-happy New Orleans offense this season.

I took QBs in rounds eight and nine, missing my targeted QB of Drew Brees by one position in the eighth.  The guy in front of me took Brees and I had to scramble.  I ended up rolling the dice with “Jet” Favre.  My number two is capable of big numbers, but hasn’t yet lived up to them — San Diego’s Philip Rivers.

Our league plays two extra positions, a W/T and a W/R, so I spent my next two picks getting a number four receiver and number three runningback.

Chicago’s Matt Forte has the inside track to the starting job there so I took him number 102.  Reggie Brown is one of the few healthy targets McNabb has in Philly so I picked him up at number 115. 

Baltimore was the only top 10 defense left when I drafted it in the 11th round.

I went ahead and took my primary kicker in round 12, taking Neil Rackers, finishing out my list of starters plus a second QB.

With my next seven picks I took my back-ups, including wide receivers Deion Branch (hoping he picks up the slack with Bobby Engram banged up), and Antwan Randle El.  I’m not real confident in Forte in Chicago so I took his top two reserves in Kevin Jones and Adrian Peterson (not to be confused with Minnesota’s Adrian Peterson).  I grabbed Arizona as a number two defense and Washington’s Shaun Suisham as a number two kicker.

In my Week One match up I’m a 39 point favorite.  In fact, my Week One projected stats according to Yahoo is 186.  Only one other team is projected to score that many points in week one, so I’m hoping for a good start in my title defense season.

Well, to all who haven’t drafted yet, good luck.  Next week I’ll share the weekly line-ups and give a rundown of who all is competing in the Media League this season on our Scoreboard page.

Until then, take care.