The Draft From Down Under

Chief BUM checking in from Cairns. Hope you all get this e:mail. As always it was great to see so many of you at the draft last weekend. Hopefully the guys picking before you didn’t steal all your players - thanks Phil and Paul. And if they did, maybe you’ll get your revenge on them on one of the 2 trading days, October 7th and November 11th. In the meantime the teams you drafted are attached and will start playing next Sunday. This Year Last Year Looking at how this years teams shape based on 1999 scores Dave G appears to have picked the best team with a team 1999 total of 496 just ahead of Paul whose 495 points come from just 7 players - he drafted rookie RB Travis Prentice in the 3rd round. The full table is attached and shows Andy H bottom having selected one rookie (Ron Dayne), one player who was injured most of last year (Mark Chmura) and one who held-out for much of the season (Joey Galloway - yeah thanks like I needed to be reminded of that). A Papas Fritas Full of Rejects On draft day we left a team on the shelf who would have scored 12 points more than Mark’s 481 points Championship Winning team last year. The best reject team (1999 scores) are QB Steve Beuerlein-Carolina (£3m) 120 points, RB Terry Kirby-Cleveland (£0.5m) 54pts, Donnell Bennett-Kansas City (£0.5m) 48pts, WR Tim Dwight-Atlanta (£2m) 54pts, Hines Ward-Pittsburgh (£0.5m) 42pts, TE Luther Broughton (£0.5m) 24pts, K Jeff Wilkins-St Louis (£1m) 124pts, HC Dave Wannstedt-Miami (£0.5m) 27pts. A grand total of 493 points (from 1999) for the bargain price of £8.5million. Most Fancied Teams Since producing the player pricing sheets in time for draft day a few players have changed teams including Phil’s WR Andre Rison who was cut by Kansas City and then signed by Oakland. With that taken into account the NFL teams with the most players drafted at the BUMS draft were unsurprisingly Superbowl winners St Louis and Superbowl favourites Washington with 7 players each selected to the league. Three teams had nobody drafted by the BUMS, they were the usual suspects - San Diego, Philadelphia and New Orleans. The full team list is attached but since this the teams have made their final roster cuts and two BUMS draftee’s have gone, Cheryl’s RB Mario Bates (cut by Arizona) and John’s Franchise kicker - shockingly cut by Seattle. They will have to wait and see if they are signed by another team and if not wait with Daz (Robert Edwards) and H (Mark Chmura) to change them at the first trading day. Still at least John has plenty of money to play with. So the scene is set for Sunday and the start of my Championship season - no worries!