So I’ve been invited to an NFL.com fantasy football league amongst a few of my friends and I have no idea how this works, though I’d still like to participate.
From what I gather, I create a team name, then on Tuesday night we’ll all go through a draft for which players we want. Simple enough so far.
The problem is that I do not, what-so-ever, keep up with players, teams or statistics in football. I watch the playoffs and the super bowl and just generally enjoy hearing other people bitch about their team or needle other people because their team is kicking ass. That’s it.
So what can I do to get caught up on which players I should be drafting and at what priority and which players should I be avoiding like the plague? Anything related to these questions is of course welcomed and anything else I should know will be appreciated as well.
Do you know what settings your league will be using? How many players at what positions count each week? How many teams in the league? That can make a difference in draft strategy.
In most leagues, RB is a priority spot, and most teams will draft one in the first round. Towards the end of the first round, after the top tier of elite RB have been taken, some teams will go for an elite QB, like Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, or Tom Brady. Kickers, Team Defense, and Tight Ends usually go in the later rounds. Most game hosting sites, like Yahoo, will have rankings of players at each position and/or rankings of all players in a single list.
…or a top wide receiver, though I wouldn’t. Definitely try some mock drafts. When drafting, you want to balance need and best player available. If you drafted Tom Brady in the first round, you won’t be drafting another quarterback until at least round 7. Draft a team that will work without making trades.
The first thing you need to do is find out what your league rules/settings are, and find a Top 100 or 300 list for the closest approximation to those rules that you can find. Then find some expert mock drafts with those settings. You need to get a good sense of how players are valued in relationship to all the other players. We can work on draft strategy MUCH further down the line.
If you want to come back and tell us what the scoring system / roster-size is, we’ll be able to point you in the right direction.
Worst case scenario - you have one of us draft for you!
Base your draft on “Value”. Is drafting a 2nd tier RB late in the 1st round a better value, then say the #1 Wr or Qb? Knowing your league settings and opponents will answer a lot of questions.
In my live draft money league we have had going for the last decade, I know certain owners will stock up on RB’s, others have a tendency to draft homer picks, and others like to draft the best on the board to make trades later. I use this info to get the best value of my picks.
If you look at your league’s player page and sort by 2011 points scored, you’ll notice one thing:
“OMG, quarterbacks score WAY more points than everyone else! I’m drafting a QB first!”
(At least, this is typically the thing that first-time players say to themselves.) Do not fall into this trap. Like RetroVertigo said, it’s all about value. If the top 15 quarterbacks are all within a few points of each other, there isn’t any value to them, because they’re all the same - you may as well just wait until the end of the draft to pick one up. But if there are players at a position where there is a very large discrepency between him and the next person at that position, then there’s value. (This is why most people wait until the last 2 or 3 rounds to pick up a Kicker - even if they’re drafting backup players for several rounds before.)
Thanks for the link. I listened to it yesterday and a lot of questions got answered.
I’ve not done any mock drafts yet, but again, the links are appreciated.
Not yet. I’ll look into them and report back later today. I am going to guarantee the rules and settings are the basic default rules though. The league was started by a friend of mine that has never done this before either, as a fun thing my group of friends can stumble around in together.
Yeah, rankings will be extensively looked over in the coming week.
What other strategies are there? Or do you not want to corrupt my fresh mind with inferior strategies?
I don’t understand how this would be a bad or undesirable situation.
Yes I’ll be looking further into our ruleset later but again I’m confident the rules are whatever the basic default rules are. I’ll be back with confirmation though.
I’m not sure we need to be taking my opponents into much account. They’re as new to this as I am, and even less studious.
EDIT:
Thank you for this. It’s one of those small tactics that would be overlooked while I’m trying to get used to the whole thing on a general level. Also, that was one hell of a parenthetical.
Pretty much this. Or, put another way, “take what you’re given.” If everyone in your league is going RB/RB (which used to be the default strategy but isn’t really any longer) the first 2 rounds, instead of reaching for a sub-optimal RB pick, take a stud WR or QB.
I assume you are doing a serpentine (snake) draft? If you are doing an auction draft, things are slightly different, but it’s important to get a feel for how much money people are spending early in the draft. In my experience, most of the time people tend to over-bid early in the draft, leaving many bargains later on; however, it’s crucial to recognize if this is NOT the case, so you can pick up some high-profile talent at a (relative) bargain price.
The above has been true in the past, but not this year. Most sites and mocks project that the first round could have as few as four RBs taken, with the other top picks being quarterbacks and Calvin Johnson. Tight ends Jimmy Graham and Rob Gronkowski should be gone by the end of Round 2.
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I am going to guarantee the rules and settings are the basic default rules though.
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That is the absolute best-case scenario. The worst thing a commissioner can do to new players is to screw with the defaults - the kiss of death is when they say, “Oh, wouldn’t it be interesting if…” You want to be able to easily read or listen to an “expert” article/podcast and know that what he says directly applies to your league (because experts usually use the default as, well, a default).
The only big difference that is very common is what is called “PPR”, or “Points Per Reception”. It started getting popular about 6-7 years ago, when RBs were still the powerhouse position - and leagues were looking for ways to get more players into the mix. There are always way more WRs available than RBs, so awarding points for receptions was an easy way to boost their value. Leagues are split pretty evenly between PPR and non-PPR, but info is readily available for both rankings.
I don’t mean that’s bad. I mean if you spend a first or second rounder on a quarterback you should reduce your investment in your backup quarterback commensurately.
Fantasy football is kind of in a flux strategy-wise right now because the real game has evolved considerably over the last couple of years.
I started playing in 2001, and back then nearly everyone drafted running backs in each of the first two rounds. In leagues with flex slots (slots that let you start either an extra running back or wide receiver, or sometimes even a tight end) people would often draft running backs in the first three rounds. The reasoning was pretty simple: wide receivers touched the ball 100ish times a year at most, and running backs touched it 300ish times a year. Quarterbacks touch the ball most of all, of course, but their numbers are unpredictable.
Plus, there were two starting wideouts on every team, and in great offenses there might even be three 1,000-yard receivers. However, even the best running teams only had one running back you could start every week. In 2001, there were 10 backs who carried the ball 300 times.
That’s just not the case anymore. There were only two running backs who carried the ball 300+ times in 2011 (Maurice Jones-Drew and Michael Turner). That means almost everyone is going to be starting running backs who share carries, and that means except for the top 3-5, every running back is worth less.
So, every draft still has at least three running backs in the top five picks, and usually all of the top five will be running backs - but the second half of the first round and the second round include far more wide receivers and quarterbacks than they used to. The RB-RB-RB-everything else draft is dead.
The draft is just listed as “standard”, so a snake draft I guess? This should be viewable to the public, let me know what you guys see. I don’t see anything regarding points per reception.
My team is the Skooma Addicts, from the game series the Elder Scrolls. Now you can keep track of my progress like your own home grown FFer.
8 teams. Not standard. Scoring is standard, though.
Teams in your league will be significantly better than in a “standard” league, which has 12 teams. For you, that means you need to downgrade players from what you read about them. For example, if you see “Santana Moss is a viable WR3”, that means he’s good enough to be somebody’s primary backup wide receiver in a 12 team league. In your league, though, he’ll be somebody’s last resort or not even on a roster for most of the year.
This is what I was going to come in to say. This year there are really only 4 top tier RBs and there are 2 TEs and 3 QBs that are difference makers (4 QBs if you believe in Cam Newton).
Pretty much everyone who writes about Fantasy agrees that the first 9 players off the board should be (in some order)
Arian Foster, Ray Rice, LeSean McCoy, Chris Johnson, Matt Forte, Calvin Johnson, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees and Tom Brady with various other people occupying the 10 spot that used to be occupied by Ryan Mathews before he broke his clavicle (maybe Gronkowski, maybe Graham, maybe not). If one of that 9 falls to your spot in the draft (what position are you drafting in anyway? And how big is the league?) take them. Take one of those first four RBs or one of the QBs over either Johnson or Forte, but be happy with the other guys if you can get them.
There is a strong argument to be made that there is better value to be had drafting Rodgers, Brady, Brees in the first round over one of the top RBs, and certainly over anyone other than Foster, Rice and McCoy due to the depth of the second tier of RB and the propensity for RBs to get hurt. For example I drafted Jamaal Charles in all my leagues last year in the first round…that was a poor choice in retrospect since he tore his ACL at the start of the second week and missed the rest of the season. That isn’t going to happen every year, but RBs get hurt more than other positions, so stock up in the middle rounds.
Also pretty much everyone agrees that WR is so deep this year that unless you are drafting Calvin Johnson you don’t need to worry about getting a wide out until round three, probably round four and that if you aren’t going to get Gronk or Graham you should wait until after round 10 to draft a TE (though personally I still think that Gates has plenty left in the tank if you can get him at a good draft spot.) The strategy I am going with this year is QB and RB in rounds 1&2 and then RB and WR by value for the next several rounds since I am likely to miss on one of the top TEs pick up a late round TE sometime before I get my defense and kicker and kicker and Defense in the last two rounds.
On that podcenter page that dalej42 linked to there is a podcast called the Geico Fantasy Draft Special. It’s a *really *good podcast that ESPN puts out every year and which helped me wrap my head around drafting for the first time when I first started to play fantasy football.
I have been pretty successful in Fantasy Football for years with the same strategy. Usually the first 1-2 rounds you want to load up on the top tier QBs and RBs (Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Cam Newton, Arian Foster, Lesean Mccoy, Ray Rice etc). The reason being that those guys are significantly better than other players at their position. The middle rounds you fill out the WR and add additional RB and TE players. If you cannot get Gronkowski or Graham at TE, wait on drafting a TE until the 6-7 rounds as you can get comparable production from multiple TEs at that point. And do not draft any Defense of kickers until the final two picks. People often make the mistake of drafting D/K too early.
There just isn’t enough statistical difference between the best and worst K/D to justify drafting them before adding a RB or WR who might turn into a point producing machine. Additionally, there are plenty of injuries in football and the bye weeks play a major role. If you do not have 2-3 good QB, and 3-4 good RB and 3-4 good WR, you are going to inevitably end up losing games.
The goal for fantasy football is to just get into the playoffs. Once there, anything can happen as teams often rest their good players. It just becomes a crap shoot.
There definitely is enough statistical difference between the best and worst defenses to make it worth adding a defense early. The problem is that identifying good fantasy defenses (not good defenses, period, but good fantasy defenses) is a total crapshoot. For example, Pittsburgh and San Fran both allowed 220 real-life points and change in 2011. However, in the SDMB He Hate Me league scoring format, PIT scored 194 fantasy points and San Fran scored 272.
If I’m just selecting a bunch of players for predraft rankings (as backup for not being able to attend the live draft, right?), how in the world does one determine what specific spot a player gets?
Example:
My predraft ranking is shamelessly copy and pasted from NFL.com fantasy section. Arian Foster being 1 and Aaron Rodgers being 2. So if I understand this correctly, if Foster gets chosen before I get a pick, Rodgers replaces him.
But if someone was going with a 2-3 RB before QB strategy, shouldn’t their top 10 (or however many) be all RBs so they can make sure that they’re first two or three picks are still RBs?
Having a nonRB in the top ten will just have you auto picking that person if no one else is available and now you don’t have a first pick RB.
Or is it just a noob mistake to even do auto picks?
Fantasy Football is basically just a ton of research on relevant player statistics and hoping you’re able to get who you want in the draft, correct? Or hoping you can find a team manager you can sucker into trading away a desirable player, later in the season?
Yes. Don’t autodraft. Use your draft list as a guide and get the best value you can. Work the draft. Go in with a plan, but adjust to what the other players are doing. Read this article by Chris Harris (a fantasy analyst I happen to like a lot) on value based drafting. It will answer this question in more detail.
No. Well, yes, but no. Fantasy football is essentially betting that you know more than the other guy. You don’t win your league with the early round picks. Those are safe guys that everyone knows about. You win your league by knowing which players to reach for, which players to hold back on and finding guys that you “know” are going to be great but no one else likes. And it’s about more than the draft.
DISCLAIMER: STORY ABOUT MY PAST FANTASY SUCCESS IS ABOUT TO FOLLOW.
I got into the playoffs last year (and eventually won my league) due to players I got off the waiver wire when my draft picks went down in flames. I made it to the playoffs the year before by drafting Darren McFadden at the end of the draft, Arian Foster in round 9 and picking up Peyton Hillis off the waiver wire so even though my top three draft choices all underperformed (Michael Turner, Beany Wells and Andre Johnson) my value choices carried me though.
That’s really what fantasy is about. Saying, I know more about this team/player than you guys and I am going to exploit your misevaluation of situations. The deeper the league the more important the draft is, the shallower the league the more important game day management is. But it’s all about looking at what everyone else thinks and finding out where the collective wisdom is wrong.
Yes - that would be a huge mistake. Draft day is the single most important day of the year for your fantasy team, you need to be present. Having your team autodrafted puts it at the whim of an algorithm, and rarely, if ever, results in a viably competitive team.
If someone was doing that, I’d say they’re operating from a strategy that is 5 years old. Don’t do that. There are plenty of non-RBs that will be extremely draftable in the first round. I highly recommend going with “best player available” for the first 4-5 rounds (but don’t be drafting 2 QBs or something crazy), and see what happens.
Sorta. I’d say having a successful draft is 40% of your season. 30% is successful transactions (whether they be trades or free agent pickups). The other 30% is sheer luck.
