A time to let go

It has been another year of me enjoying the rookie drafts just the right amount. I think I'm the only person in the world satisfied with the Lost ending (they had to come up with something) and OK with it being over. I feel the same way about the rookie drafts.

It's fun adding talent to your team and making trade offers, pretending to be a GM. After the draft and the subsequent auctions the team is all but ready for the regular season. There will be injured guys and there will be in-season additions, but this is almost it.

When I manually added the rookie picks onto the Zealots forums, I couldn't help but look back and view the greatest and worst hits. I realized that in the sixth year of the league that I have but three players left from my original draft and rookie draft. Marion Barber, Will Witherspoon, and Charles Tillman are the players. They are fringe starters at best.

It's fun to look at how your roster was created. I got Larry Johnson and Torry Holt in the third round and both guys were cornerstones of my franchise. Holt faded away and eventually didn't make my 53-man offseason roster, which shows how far he's dropped. I traded Larry Johnson for Willis McGahee and some roster chum, and I turned McGahee around for Romo the summer before Romo took over the starting job for the Cowboys. Ben Roethlisberger was the first QB I drafted (Jake the Snake Plummer was my backup), and I was fortunate enough to turn him into two draft picks that became Ray Rice and Michael Crabtree.

A good part of the upcoming summer is that one can rest a bit before the following season. I have a big redraft coming up in August, and that should garner most of my attention. The dynasty cabinets have been restocked and everything on the shelf should be fine until fall.