Rookie Training Camp part 2: The Draft

Today we take a look at the most important part of Fantasy Football… the draft.  This is where it gets decided which players are on which teams.  Also, this is your biggest opportunity to get an advantage over your opponents.  Skill at drafting comes from experience so my first piece of advice is to do as much preparation as you can before hand and be very organized.  The draft works in one of three ways:

Live draft – participants meet in a physical location and are limited to pre-prepared materials to assist in making draft choices.  This is the purest form of draft and makes the participants rely on skill and preparation.

Online draft – participants meet (typically) on the website that will manage the operation of the league and use their software to facilitate the selection of  players.  It has become a common practice for these sites to include in-depth stats and analysis on each player so prior preparation is not as pivotal.

Automated draft – typically only for free public leagues and participants are able to set rankings for players to determine who the computer will select.  An automated draft can be a good idea for your first season doing fantasy football, however you should never miss an opportunity to gain draft experience so I do not typically recommend this to anyone.

Both Live and Online drafts will usually work in what is called a snake rotation.  The draft order is chosen at random and starts with number one, then two, and so on.  After the last participant has made his selection for the first round it is then his turn again right away to start round two.  You then proceed in reverse order till all players have chosen for the second round, and start round three with the person in the first position.  This continues for a varying number of rounds. (Depending on how many players are in your starting lineup which is decided by the Commissioner of your league.)

When you sit down at your first live draft and look at the player rankings you printed out before hand you still can’t help but feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of players on these lists that you have not heard of.  Don’t worry, most people can’t name three wide receivers for every team in the league, just do your best to have a balanced team based off the material you have available to you.

What position should you draft first?

It is common practice to select a running back (RB) first, in fact the first 6 or so picks are typically all running backs.  (In the next installment of this guide I will discuss why running backs are the most important players on your team) Most drafts only see two or three non-running backs taken in the first round and they are typically the best quarter back (QB) and wide receiver (WR) that particular year.

Most picks are based off of which player available has the most value at a position you need.  If we assume that you did indeed take an RB first you want to attempt to get an elite player at either QB or WR but do not force it if other people beat you to them.  If need be take a second solid RB and move on.

After this point it is terribly difficult to plan or predict what will happen in any given draft.  Focus on filling out your starting lineup first with any needed players of the three positions mentioned.  After that the primary three positions (QB, RB and WR) are filled you typically want to take a backup at both RB and WR.  At roughly round 7 or so the first tight-end (TE) is usually taken and then somewhere near round 9 some of the top defenses (D/ST… you select the entire defense and special teams units for a given team) are taken.  My advice to new players is to not be the first person to take a Kicker (K), tight-end or a defense or special teams, while you miss out on getting the best possible option at each of these positions the value of these players is very difficult to predict, and most seasons the top projected player at these positions does not live up to their expectations.

What should I try to avoid?

Two mistakes that new drafters often fall victim to are forgetting about bye weeks and relying on name recognition. Bye weeks are about the most important bit of information you can have on each player.  New drafters often ignore this information and end up accidentally drafting 5 players all with the same bye week.  You don’t want to ever lose a game, and spreading out your bye weeks is crucial to a successful regular season.  Also, new drafters rely on name recognition far too much.  Just because you know his name does not make him the best option.

What should I do to get better?

Practice, practice, practice.  It makes perfect… Many websites currently allow users to log in and sign up for a mock draft.  These results do not matter in the slightest as there won’t be any league to participate in, but the results can be emailed to you and you get the feel for how things work so that fewer elements of the drafting process will surprise you.

Happy drafting!