in other news............
my brother suckered me into NFL Fantasy football
Draft is tonight
any tips or a website I can trust just for a list of players I should draft?
otherwise I'll just go with ESPN. I don't feel good about that
haven't been in a fantasy league in over 20 years
I like using a draft board like this: https://fantasyfootballcalculator.com/adp/ppr/12-team/all?view=draftboard
As the draft is going on, I mark off players who are taken with a sharpie. This allows me to see if there are any players who are falling too far on the draft board (i.e. we're in late round 5 and there's a player who is being taken early round 4 who hasn't gone off the board yet).
Standard scoring or PPR? Assuming it's not a 2QB or superflex league, because that changes strategy significantly... Any weird scoring settings for the league?
Here's your basic primer:
- Despite QB being the most important position in football, it's usually not all that important in fantasy (unless you're in a 2QB or superflex league). You can still take a QB early if it's one of the big ones (Mahomes/Hurts/Allen), shoot for mid-round if you get the right value, or pick it late and hope your WRs/RBs taken early can get you through average QB play. In fantasy, rushing QBs are overvalued relative to the NFL, so you'll see guys like Fields higher on the draft board than you'd probably think of them.
- Defenses and kickers are useless. Punt them to the very end of the draft (last two rounds). If your draft system supports it (NFL.com allows this), you can even finish the draft without a defense/kicker and fill that in before this weekend's games.
- Investigate your platforms IR spots, if the league uses them. Picking up a player who is currently injured or suspended but expected to come back and perform well (such as Alvin Kamara who is suspended) can be a sneaky strategy *especially* if you don't draft a defense or kicker. You can move those players to the IR spot once the draft is complete giving you more WR/RB depth.
- The goal of every draft IMHO is depth at that WR and RB spot. That's where most of your points come from. Being able to sustain bye weeks and injuries is key. In most leagues you don't need a backup QB, backup TE, and never a backup defense or kicker, so load the hell out of the WR and RB spot.
- Strategy-wise, a growing popularity strategy is called "ZeroRB", especially in PPR leagues. It's basically hitting WR/QB/TE early (usually first 5-6 rounds to load those up) and then filling in mid-round RBs from there on. The idea is that it's easier to find RBs on the waiver wire through the season as other RBs get injured, than to find WRs there. I personally like ZeroRB, with one caveat--if you have one of the first few picks in the first round, it can be useful to use what's called "HeroRB" strategy, where you take a bell cow running back with your first pick and then pivot to WR/QB/TE. I had the 2nd pick in a draft Saturday and took McCaffrey, and then didn't take another RB until the 7th round.
The biggest advice is to go into the draft not with "a list of players to draft", but more to think about roster construction, players you like (and what round you'd like them), and how the draft might fall to you based on draft order. The draft board link I provided helps with that more than a list as it's better visually IMHO.
For example, my draft Saturday I was the 2nd pick in the first round, which meant I was the 11th pick in the second round. I was hoping that Mahomes/Hurts/Allen wouldn't all be gone at that point, because I like to have a top QB if I can. But they
were gone, which meant that instead of panicking and taking a QB in the 2nd/3rd round, I knew I'd hold off until my picks in the 4th/5th. So I loaded up on WR with those 2nd/3rd picks. I was hoping for Herbert at the end of the 4th, but he was gone. Burrow was still there, so I got him. If both were gone, I would have given up on QB and planned to take one in the late rounds (8th-12th).
Hope this helps.
