Fantasy Football Draft Types & Strategies For Winning Both
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Big Dog’s Guide to Fantasy Drafts – Types and Strategies:
Having a solid draft is essential to a successful fantasy football season. You will make many changes to your lineups throughout the season and if you’re smart, you will also be active on the waiver wires and probably also be involved in trades. However, you most likely will find that if you end up in your league playoffs, many of your your draft picks or advantageous trades you made because you drafted well is the reason you made it that far. I have made the playoffs in my league three out of the four years I’ve been playing and even though I made lineup changes throughout the season, the key three or four players who led me to the playoffs were players I drafted.
Now, there are 2 main types of drafts. A conventional draft and an auction style draft.
The conventional draft is where every team owner picks a number out of a hat and whatever number you pick is the order in which you draft. The team owner who picks number 1 out of the hat has the first pick and the team owner who picks the last number out of the hat picks last in the first round. However, each round “snakes” around and the team owner who picks last in the first round then picks first in the second round going in reverse order back to the player who picked first and then the team owner who picked number 1 picks first in the third round and each round follows accordingly until all teams have a completed roster of players.
An auction style draft gives every team owner the opportunity to draft all players. In an auction style draft, each team owner is given a budget of $100.00 and the league commissioner will use a ranked list of the top 200 or 300 players available at all positions. The commissioner will start with the top ranked player on the list and then move down the list one by one with each team owner able to bid on any and all players available. However, if you bid too high for individual players and run out of money, you are no longer allowed to bid on players and you have to wait until all team owners run out of money to re-join the draft. When the time comes where all team owners have run out of money, the draft then becomes a conventional style draft and team owners complete their teams by drawing a number out of a hat and then selecting from the players who haven’t been drafted until their roster is complete.
As far as strategies, in a conventional style draft, there are different strategies which mainly depend on how your league scoring works. If quarterbacks get 6 points for TD passes, there is more of an advantage to drafting a top quarterback. Also, if your league rewards points for receptions, there is more of a premium in drafting running backs like Brian Westbrook or Steven Jackson who catch a lot of passes out of the backfield. However, the strategies below are geared toward standard scoring leagues where quarterbacks receive 4 points for TD passes and there are no points for receptions.
Running backs are the most important positions to draft early in fantasy football!! That is so important that I should say it again but I think you get the point. If you look at most expert projections or mock drafts, out of the first 20 selections, at least 15 or more of those players taken are running backs. In my opinion, your first two selections should be running backs and then your next three players (in no particular order) should be a wide receiver, quarterback and then a third running back. However, the order in which you pick players 3 though 5 will depend on the level of the players that are available and the selections being made by the other team owners. This basically means that if there is a run of quarterbacks taken by other team owners in the early rounds of the draft, you may want to take one a little quicker than you had planned to get a highly ranked, more productive quarterback. Another note on draft strategies is that team defenses and kickers should be among the last picks you make, especially kickers. You will find that many good defenses and kickers will be available very late in the draft and also be available on the waiver wire throughout the season and you will also find that you will be playing different defenses and kickers in your starting lineup depending on their matchup each week. Lastly, in my opinion you should only draft one team defense and one kicker because this will give you more roster spots for “skill position” players. This will give you more options for your starting lineups each week depending on matchups, injuries or byes and it will also give you more skill players available to use in trade proposals. Also, be aware of player’s bye weeks so you dont draft a number of players with the same bye week. If you do this, it will leave you with less players to choose from for that week and you may end up with multiple “stud” players on your bench during the same week.
As far as strategies in an auction style draft, the only advice I have is don’t spend too much money on more than one individual player. In auction drafts, you will find that team owners start throwing away large amounts of money on the top ranked 20 to 25 players. After that many really good players are available for a lot lower bids as team owners start to get more cautious with their bids because they don’t want to run out of money. I suggest you make a fairly high bid for a top 10 running back and after that just go with the flow of the draft and try to budget your money to procure a well-rounded team at all positions. I remember in 2003, I was involved in an auction style draft and one of the team owners paid $46.00 for Ricky Williams (in 2002, he led the league in rushing) and $42.00 for Randy Moss (this owner was a huge Minnesota fan) that means he spent 88 dollars on 2 players. This meant that He had to fill the rest of his roster with lesser players. Randy Moss ended up missing some games with injuries, so needless to say he had one of the worst records in the league and didn’t make the playoffs. In turn, I tried to be more balanced and ended up spending $36.00 for Priest Holmes (this was before Larry Johnson), $28.00 for Ahman Green, $8.00 for Brett Favre and $4.00 for Hines Ward. I spent $78.00 on four “studs” compared to his $88.00 for 2 “studs”. I did make the playoffs and ended up losing in the championship game, finishing the season in 2nd place out of 12 teams.
Those are my basic draft strategies. However, you will find that no matter how organized you are in planning your draft strategy, you most likely will find yourself waivering from that depending on trends and selections being made by other team owners. Go in with a strategy and then make the best decisions for your team as you go depending on the players available when it’s time for you to pick.
Good luck to all.
Written by “The Big Dog” Barry Simon on July 15, 2007.
Filed under: Fantasy Nuts & Bolts
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