I signed up for a FF league. The draft is tonight. I am completely clueless.
Fortunately, it’s all for funsies, so there’s nothing important on the line except my dignity. I don’t follow the NFL at all (huge college football fan, though) so I only have a dim awareness of who the good QB’s are, and virtually nothing about running backs or WR’s.
Is there a resource where I can get prepped fast? Ideally, something that just ranks every player at every position? Free?
fantasy toolbox (dont’ know the url- just google it) is a good one. If you’re using Yahoo, they actually have their own rankings as well.
Personally, I’ve found that the best thing to do is to figure out the rules of the league, and then try and figure out what the actual high scorers are going to be. The conventional wisdom is that you pick running backs and receivers first, as they score the most touchdowns, etc… and a lot of leagues prioritize scoring over yardage and/or receptions. But the one I’m in gives points for yardage, receptions, completions, etc… so that quarterbacks are by FAR the most point-scoring people in the league. So I draft one first, then go for the other guys. Still haven’t figured out why the other guys in the league don’t do it, but then again, I have one of the better overall records, so maybe I do know something they don’t.
The reason (most likely) is that QB is a very deep postition, relatively speaking. I assume you have between 8-12 teams in your league, and one QB per team? Cam is projected #1 by a decent margin. Yahoo standard scoring projects him at 350 points, so it makes some sense to grab him early. But after that? Aaron Rodgers projects at 319, and the #12 guy (Kirk Cousins) projects at 292. So you could grab Rodgers early, but if you wait until literally everyone else has drafted a QB and take Kirk Cousins super super late in the draft, you’ve lost only 28 points over the season. Less than 2 points a game!
And in the meantime, you’re snapping up WRs and RBs a round ahead of everyone else, and the cumulative points of having your skill positions all be a full draft round better than everyone else’s is just huge. Certainly a lot more than 2 points a game.
And the thing about WRs and RBs is that, unlike QBs, there are not plenty to go around. I mean, yes, there are enough rostered warm bodies for everyone, but there are not enough really good players to fill out 12 fantasy teams. Waiting on QBs is a great strategy, in general. And this holds true even with weird scoring rules, because the QBs all scale the same way, more or less.
QB’s have less differential in scoring than RB’s and WR’s. You have to look at scoring in tiers. RB’s and WR’s drop off a lot more quickly in terms of scoring equivalency. While you’re grabbing that QB, you’re missing out on a high-scoring RB or WR that is getting snatched up by another player, who then waits on a QB until later and ends up losing less…especially this year, where there’s a very deep field of fantasy QB’s.
Also, lets not forget that last year Luck was the #1 projected QB, and Cam was around 9th. Cam’s ADP last year was in the 7th round.
Well, I made it – thanks for the input. Yahoo rated my draft at a B-…just like my college career. 
I got Todd Gurley with the 6th pick in the first round. The only mistake I made was taking 2 kickers with the same bye week. :smack:
Well…there’s no reason to take 2 kickers in the first place? Kickers are disposable resources. I don’t even draft one myself. I’d rather pick up one more RB or WR and wait until the evening before the first game to pull the trigger on dropping a prospect and grabbing a kicker. That way I keep the most flexibility in the skill positions, and I have an extra shot at suddenly getting a extra starter due to an injury.
I’d never ever roster 2 kickers. When one has a bye, I’ll drop him and pick up someone else.
I guess it depends on the relative spread between players in the position- if all QBs are within a 10 point band or something, it doesn’t really matter when or who you get, but if there’s a pretty drastic drop off, then it does.
In our 8 team league, according to Yahoo! the top 8 quarterbacks are projected to score somewhere between 621 and 576 points, the top 8 running backs score between 254 and 220 points, and the top 8 WR between 332 and 227, with a huge drop between the top one at 332, and #2 at 289.
So we have a spread of 45 points for QB, 34 for RB, and 105 for WR (62 between #2 and #8) Seems like getting a high WR with your first pick is smarter than getting a QB or RB. Second pick should probably be a WR, then a RB in the 3rd round.
There’s a problem with the no-kicker and/or no-DEF strategy. The point being, you’re going to have to drop those ancillary ‘flyer’ players before week 1 anyway, so they’re not going to produce for you. And by not selecting one or the other, you’re automatically limiting yourself to the lowest tier. Sure, you can stream, and it’s been known to be an effective strategy, but you’re electing to do it for players that aren’t going to score you any points, and gain you no advantage other than that you didn’t have to make a decision or two as quickly. If you’re amply prepared for the draft, you shouldn’t have to worry about that anyway. And if you decide week 1 that you made the wrong decision, you can likely pick 'em up from the waiver wire.
Btw, unless you’re in a league that starts two K’s (which I haven’t yet seen in 15 years of FF), there’s absolutely no reason to draft two. Maybe if you have one of those top K’s and don’t want to drop them to the WW on their bye week, but that’s a one-week thing that you can do the week of, not prepare for in the draft.
My main money league usually drafts about two weeks before the season starts, so there’s lots of time for things to change. I really like having that flexibility when the preseason injury list skyrockets. Having Spencer Ware is probably going to pay off, for example. Also, a lot of the time I’m looking to trade these flyers anyway.
I just don’t give much credence to kicker rankings. While there is skill at kicker, the main thing affecting their fantasy points is opportunity, and they have zero control over that. A kicker for a good team might only get extra point attempts, while the kicker for a bad team may never even get into field goal range. You never know, and it varies a lot by week.
Heh when was the last time one of those players happened to be backups for guys that were injured in the last two weeks of preseason? And what exactly do you expect to get in trade for a flyer you took in the late rounds? (Also, if Spencer Ware made it to the late rounds as a ‘flyer’ I question your opponents’ competence, or you’re playing in a small league. With Charles’ (known) situation, his owner should’ve been all over him well before the 14th or 15th round. He’s one of the few handcuffs that’s worth getting, again no surprise to anyone who knows and reads about FF.)
But hey, more power to you if you can get away with it. Not in the leagues in which I play.