Where to Pick McFadden

Most reasonable fantasy football pundits agree that Darren McFadden should be the first rookie selected in fantasy football drafts this summer. Heck, for what it's worth, the pollsters in FFLegend's unscientific survey say that he'll have the biggest impact amongst the rookie running backs. I completely agree. In fact, I probably have Run DMC ranked too high. At least the more I see other rankings around the industry, the more I believe that to be the case.

Will McFadden be the "next Adrian Peterson"? I doubt it, but what if he comes close? Or what if he is? Every year there is at least one rookie running back who makes a significant fantasy impact, and McFadden has all the skills to be that guy this season. So if he has at least a chance to be the next AD, why is 11th amongst running backs (his current ranking on my cheat sheet) too high? Because the mock drafts suggest he can be taken later.

A lot of people must be skeptical of the Raiders situation. I don't blame them one bit for that; after all, they have been one of the worst teams in football for several years now. Moreover, with Justin Fargas and Michael Bush around, their backfield is very crowded. To which I wonder: if McFadden is everything the scouts and draft experts made him out to be, shouldn't he transcend all of that?

Regardless, I took part in an industry "expert" mock draft on the Monday immediately following the NFL Draft back in April and made McFadden my second-round pick, 17th overall... a selection that raised a lot of eyebrows and probably made some chuckle. My other options at that point, however, were not as compelling in my mind as a guy who has the potential to be the "next big thing." The 16 players already gone by that point were: LaDainian Tomlinson, Adrian Peterson, Brian Westbrook, Steven Jackson, Joseph Addai, Ryan Grant, Marion Barber, Tom Brady, Frank Gore, Ronnie Brown, Marshawn Lynch, Larry Johnson, Randy Moss, Clinton Portis, Terrell Owens, and Braylon Edwards. Honestly, I didn't see another running back with McFadden's potential impact left on the board, and with Brady as my first round pick I needed to take a runner over, say, Reggie Wayne, because I would have been left without any feature backs to choose from by the third round.

In retrospect, I could have probably waited, though, because there's a good chance Darren would have slid to the third round. In fact, according to the Average Draft Position stats compiled from multiple sources at FantasyFootballChamps.com (my full-time gig) McFadden has been a fourth-round pick thus far in early mocks.

Thus, when the opportunity arose to do another industry "expert" mock draft this week, I accepted and wondered how late McFadden would go. I thought bout taking him with my third round pick after taking Westbrook and Brady with my first two selections, but figuring he'd slide, I opted for Steve Smith in the third round instead. The move paid off, because 10 minutes ago I spent my fourth-round selection on McFadden. Do I think that might be too low for him? Clearly, I do. However, if the consensus of the fantasy-football-playing public is that D-Mac is a fourth-round pick this year, so be it. It pays to wait.