If you landed a top fantasy draft slot ... um, sorry. That has not gone well

So when you landed that top-five pick in your fantasy draft this year, you were probably pretty stoked.

Maybe you talked a bit. Or you placed a few side bets. Or suggested to your commish that the league go winner-take-all.

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I mean, you were perfectly positioned. Jamaal Charles or Adrian Peterson in the first, then maybe Aaron Rodgers in the second. That's a title winner right there. Boom. CHAMPIONSHIP.

Time to get yourself fitted for one of these:

But here we are entering Week 4, and things have not quite gone according to script.

Through the first three weeks of the 2014 season, across the full universe of Yahoo leagues, teams that drafted at the back half of the first round are outperforming the early pickers by a non-trivial margin. Clearly, the ugly, unforeseeable Peterson situation is a significant factor, as are the slow starts by Charles, Matt Forte and Eddie Lacy.

Courtesy of our friends at Automated Insights, here's a look at fantasy team winning percentages by draft slot through Week 3, in leagues with 10, 12, 14 and 16 managers:

As you can see (and as you probably could have guessed), the later you picked this year the better your current record — especially in deeper formats. That swing in winning percentages between the top-five and bottom-five picks in 16-team leagues is huge. (I've included ADP info above, just so you can see the picks that were most commonly associated with each spot. Dez obviously did not go ninth in every draft, Lynch did not always go tenth, etc.)

Again, this phenomenon is really all about the early running back duds, and of course there's still plenty of time for the top-of-draft RBs to justify their ADPs. Charles is expected to return this week, while Lacy and Forte finally get friendlier matchups. There are really no clear takeaways from the data above; it's basically just barstool trivia at this stage, not actionable fantasy intel.

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If you're thinking that perhaps the winning percentages above give a boost to the Zero RB zealots ... well, it's not so simple just yet. For one thing, that crowd also avoided DeMarco Murray, Marshawn Lynch and Le'Veon Bell, three backs who've been carrying some of the most successful fantasy teams to this point.

Also, according to Automated Insights, teams that avoided running backs in the early rounds aren't necessarily surging (not that this means much after only three weeks.) Across all Yahoo leagues, 4.7 percent of teams avoided running backs altogether in Rounds 1-4. The combined winning percentage of those teams right now is 49.9. Fantasy owners who snagged two running backs among their top four picks have an aggregate winning percentage of 50.2.

Drafting two backs among the top four selections is, we should note, the most common approach by far — 54.0 percent of Yahoo teams did so. Another 32.6 percent of teams drafted one RB within the first four rounds; those teams currently have a winning percentage of 50.3.

With just three weeks in the books, no one should form any conclusions about best draft practices. All we really know for sure is that the Charles and AP owners are hurting. When January arrives and the full-season numbers are in, we'll update all this data to see if we can shape an optimal draft strategy for 2015. For now, let's just worry about getting a Week 4 win.