I am part of decent sized gaming community and I have been asked into a new game. That I know absolutely nothing about. Fantasy Football eludes me in every way. Does anybody have any tips about the draft? We are very competitive in my group and even though I will be outside of my comfort zone, I am determined to score some touchdowns.
Pick your kicker in the last round. NEVER break this rule.
That sounds easily done. I don’t know any of these rules that seem so obvious to other people. I just don’t want to get run over haha.
How up to speed are you on the NFL? What the best advice is kinda depends on how much you know the teams/players.
Just about every site that’s used to run FF leagues has mock drafts going on right now. Just join a mock draft and practice picking a team.
After you get a general idea of what players are picked early in those drafts you can start figuring out why and compare it to the scoring rules for your league.
Some are pretty clear. If running backs get 1 point for every 10 yards they run the ball then obviously a guy who runs for a lot of yards will get you lots of points.
Some are more subtle. Many, but not all leagues, award a point for every pass reception. So a running back with fewer running yards but lots of catches may be worth more than someone who runs for more yards but never catches the ball.
Plan how many of each position you want to draft. If your league has you playing 2 RBs and 3 WRs each week than you’ll need at least than many plus a couple backups at each position. When choosing backups pay attention to bye weeks. It doesn’t do you any good to have a backup that has a week off the same week as your starter.
Final point is you can lose a league with a bad draft but you can’t win it with a good one. The real game starts after the draft when you have to start replacing injured or underperforming players during the year with trades or pickups from the waiver wire. That’s where the champions are made.
I am not up to speed with the NFL. I wont even lie, I just haven’t been keeping up. The bye weeks is something that I have trouble understanding. Everywhere I have read says that its a big deal, but i don’t fully understand how to plan for it.
Unlike some other fantasy sports, FF is a series of one week one on one matchups. You pick a lineup of about 9 players (usually 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 Defensive team). Those players get you points according to how they do THAT WEEK. You usually have 13 or more players on your team so each week you have to decide which of those players is “active” earning points and which ones are on the bench getting no points.
Your opponent does the same and whoever has the most points at the end of the week wins that match.
A bye means a team isn’t playing that week. Obviously you don’t want a player in your active lineup who has a bye since he won’t get any points that week. Instead you’d replace him with one of your bench players.
The importance of bye weeks when drafting is simply that you don’t want all your players for a given position to have the same bye week or you won’t have anyone to get points at that position. So when you get to the later rounds of the draft and you’re selecting, say, a backup RB and there are two guys who are more or less similar, take the one with a different bye week from the other RBs you already drafted. That’s all.
Okay that is fantastic! Thank you so much for all of that information!
Go for RBs and WRs for the first 4 or 5 rounds. You’ll be tempted to pick a QB because they score a lot of points, but don’t unless it’s a 2QB league. Basically the dropoff between the best and the worst RB/WR is a lot more than the best QB and the worst QB.
I get that. Another question is: Is it bad if i choose people that are from the same team? I wanna use my favorite team, but i feel that is a bad choice haha.
Research research research. You need to know who the players to own in FF are and why…how that can and will change…how to value players…what the rules of your league are, specifically, and how that can impact your choices, in the draft and beyond. Keep abreast of injury and suspension news, know how teams play and why, and who they play when. Find sites that explain FF to learn strategies for drafting, trading, using the waiver wire, and selecting starters. They’re all over the net.
And that’s just scratching the surface.
Another thing you will want to consider: at what week does your league’s “playoffs” start, and how long do they last? I am not a FF expert by any means, but I am under the impression that, in most leagues, the top 8 teams after week 13 advance to the playoffs, which is single-elimination during weeks 14, 15, and 16. Most leagues end before week 17 as a lot of the better players don’t play, or at least don’t play as much as they usually do, in week 17 because they’re on playoff teams and the coaches don’t want them to get hurt in “meaningless” games.
No, that’s not necessarily a problem, assuming you aren’t overvaluing them just because they are “your” guys. What it does is put eggs in one basket, which increases your variance. Say you pick Andy Dalton and AJ Green. Now, a lot of your points are going to depend on Green catching balls. If he does, you’re going to have a ton of points. If he doesn’t, two of your positions probably score pretty low. Is that a bad thing? Ehhh, it depends, but for a newbie, it’s probably a good thing. After all, if you’re new to something, you want to maximize the effect of luck.
Oh, and the other aspect to picking players from the same team is the idea of a handcuff. Say you pick up Arian Foster. Cool, he’s still really good, and will probably put up some nice points. BUT you know that he’s fragile as fuck, and will definitely go down with an injury at some point, because he always does. So you make sure you pick up Jay Ajayi later in the draft. He’s your handcuff. You keep him on the bench until Foster breaks a leg, and now you have his replacement ready to start. LeVeon Bell/DeAngelo Williams is another good handcuff pair, especially knowing that Bell is going to be suspended for the first 3 games of the season. Handcuffs are more relevant for RBs than WRs, simply because teams utilize them differently.