Fantasy football draft: All-time Green Bay Packers

It’s the NFL preseason. Which means it's fantasy football draft season.

In every fantasy football league around Wisconsin, there’s one player who tries to take all the Packers players, leaving you with no Packers to root extra hard for.

But what if there was a fantasy draft of nothing but Packers players? And time travel?



The rules: Four teams, eight players per team (QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, WR, TE, K). Snake draft. When drafting a player, you add up fantasy points for their best season in Green Bay and divide by the amount of games they played that year.

Our methodology is as follows:

Scoring: 6 points for receiving/rushing touchdown, .1 point for each receiving/rushing yard, 4 points for passing touchdown, .04 points for each passing yard, -2 points for turnover, 3 points for field goal, 1 point for extra point).

Criteria: We took the top quarterbacks (4), running backs (8), wide receivers (12), tight ends (4) and kickers (4) in Packers history based solely on fantasy production.

This means -- for example -- that while Bart Starr was an amazing quarterback who led the Packers to five championships, his fantasy production falls short of the quarterbacks on our list due to the nature of the game during his era.

First, the draft board.

Next, a few stray observations:

-- Aaron Rodgers owns the top five fantasy seasons in Packers history, and accounts for seven of the top 10. He's definitely our No. 1 pick.

-- Brett Favre and Ahman Green are the only other players to crack the top 10.

-- Speaking of Starr, he doesn't check in until No. 31 on the quarterback list. He averaged 11.81 fantasy points per game during the 1964 season.

-- Starr would have been the No. 28-ranked quarterback under standard fantasy scoring rules last season, behind Ryan Tannehill and just ahead of Brock Osweiler. (Side note: Yes, the game has changed.)

-- The league's top quarterback in 1964 -- Charley Johnson, who threw for 3,045 yards and 21 touchdowns -- would have averaged just 12.29 fantasy points per game.

-- Like Rodgers, Crosby absolutely dominates the record book at his position. He accounts for six of the top 10 fantasy seasons for a Packers kicker.

-- But wait! In addition to being the top running back on our board, Paul Hornung was a placekicker for the Packers as well, and would technically be the highest-scoring kicker in our format.

So, let's draft.

Now, let's check out the teams.

Team 1 went with a no-brainer right off the bat, grabbing 2011 Rodgers. 1's lack of a true RB1 could hurt them, but Howton and Walker give this group one of our mythical Packers fantasy league's best receiver corps.

Team 2 landed the best running back on the board in 1960 Hornung, as well as our QB3, 1989 Majkowski. Will Hornung be enough to carry 2009 Grant, our RB7?

Team 3 went a little off-script here, seeing the drop in quarterback scoring coming and grabbing 1995 Favre rather than going best available and passing on our RB2, 2003 Green. Favre is a decent upgrade over Majkowski, but that running back group is looking a bit dicey.

Team 4 went with a common strategy in the first two rounds, passing on 1989 Majkowski and loading up at running back with 2003 Green and 1962 Taylor. That leaves 4 with our lowest-ranked quarterback, 1983 Lynn Dickey. 2014 Nelson leads a very modern group of receivers. Will 4's decision to sacrifice quarterback strength for running back depth pay off?

 

The results:

Aaron … Rodgers … lost? Despite all of their real-world success, Rodgers and Hornung fell to a well-balanced squad quarterbacked by Lynn Dickey. Team 4's strategy paid off. Green and Taylor made the difference, as did a very consistent trio of receivers, successfully masking Dickey's shortcomings.