For the first time in a few years, I landed the No. 1 overall pick in a fantasy football draft this past weekend in the second of my two Yahoo! leagues. Of course, the last time it happened was the season after I won a league championship, and I struggled to make the playoffs with a .500 team. Here’s hoping better things come out of this No. 1 pick. The entire draft result is here, and here’s what my team, the Thamesmen, looks like:

I’ve won the lottery for Adrian Peterson. Now let’s hope he delivers as expected.

Taking Adrian Peterson at No. 1 was obviously a no-brainer. I’ll admit that I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Maurice Jones-Drew, but Peterson just seems to be more of a sure thing. Then I was able to get top-notch players at QB and WR with back-to-back picks, grabbing Tom Brady and Calvin Johnson. I felt like it was important to get a top-level player at QB, RB, and WR rather than load up on RBs, which I usually do, because in this league you only have to start one RB, and being an eight-team league, there’s plenty of depth out there in the free-agent market. I’ve loaded up on RBs in this league before, yet always seem to be missing one more big weapon at either QB or WR come playoff time. And of course, I snagged a couple of my old favorites, Antonio Gates and James Harrison.

There are always a couple players that I just have a good feeling about every preseason, and I always seem to end up with them in every fantasy league I play in. This year, that guy is Ray Rice, who just seemed like too good a bargain in the mid-teen rounds to pass up. And after beating myself up on chickening out at the last second and missing out on Joseph Addai in my other league’s draft, I wasn’t about to make the same mistake again, even if it meant possibly drafting him earlier than I should have.

Looking at this team, I feel good about the players and the depth I have. Then again, I always end up with a ton of depth in this league. The problem I usually have is that I have roster-management issues and always seem to start the wrong guys on the wrong weeks. Maybe I’ll package a few of these guys later in the season and trade for another top-notch player.