Fantasy football: 9 ways to draft the best possible team
Fantasy football draft season is here! Get ready for your season with these helpful tips on how to draft the best possible team.
It’s time to draft again.
Fantasy football is back and if you’re like me, you’re putting together spreadsheets and carefully quantifying data to give yourself the best chance of winning your league(s) this season.
If you’re not like me, this piece is for you.
Football is unpredictable, thus, so is fantasy football. As Mathew Berry of ESPN writes every year, winning at fantasy football is about “minimizing risk and giving yourself the best odds to win on a weekly basis.”
With that in mind, there are some fundamentals of fantasy football drafting that give your team the best chance to win week in and week out. Here are nine of them. Follow these and you give yourself a chance.
1. Have a plan and be willing to change it.
It’s okay to have a general strategy, whether that’s going running back-running back or grabbing the best quarterback or tight end early or whatever. However, you should be willing to change your plan if the draft goes differently than you expect.
If nothing but running backs have been taken by the time you pick near the end of the first round, be willing to ditch your running back-running back strategy to take the receiver who should have gone five picks ago. If the best quarterback goes a round too early, don’t sweat it. Grab that solid running back and re-adjust. If at all possible, know what you’re going to do if the guy you want is gone by the time you pick.
More from Detroit Jock City
- Tigers Sign Manager A.J. Hinch to Long-Term Extension
- Lions vs. Bears Week 14 Opening Odds Disrespect Detroit
- Former Tigers Celebrate Jim Leyland Hall of Fame Call
- This Pistons Team Could be the Worst in Detroit Sports History
- 4 Free Agents Tigers Should Sign During Winter Meetings
2. Depth charts are your best friend
Find a depth chart cheat sheet and wield it well. Starters on bad offenses are going to get reps, no matter who the quarterback is or how bad the offensive line is. 20 touches or 10 targets a game means some level of consistent production. Certainly enough to stash on your bench and get eight points from when you desperately need those eight points in a critical game down the stretch.
Depth charts also let you know who is breathing down your starter’s neck for playing time. It helps you find handcuffs and guys who are poised to break out if an injury happens, but also gives you an idea of how many reps the starter will actually get. If the backup is good, he’ll eat into the starter’s production. If not, the starter will get more reps. More reps equal more opportunities to score points. Even six additional carries or three additional targets a week makes the difference between starter and benchwarmer, and depth charts can help you find those precious reps.
3. Don’t draft kickers or defenses early. Come on, you know this one.
Defenses and kickers are a dime a dozen. No, literally, you can purchase 12 kickers and defenses for 10 cents at the official FanSided Store right now, but only for a limited time.
Draft a good kicker or defense, sure, but not until the last two rounds. That extra half-point per week you’ll get from your super amazing kicker does not make him worth drafting in the seventh round. Kickers and defenses are both very unpredictable, so streaming them based on matchup isn’t a bad idea.
Detroit Lions
4. Great depth is more important than filling out your starting lineup.
Unless you’re in a 20-team league, there are more startable players at every position than there are teams in your league.
You will need depth at running back and wide receiver almost every week, so draft for that. The difference between a fourth-round quarterback and an eighth-round quarterback is maybe a couple of points a week, which you will easily make up for and surpass by having decent depth options for bye weeks while the rest of your league is scrambling for a waiver pickup.
5. If you only need one, only draft one, with few exceptions.
You probably don’t need a backup quarterback, tight end, defense or kicker. Seriously, you don’t.
There are 32 starting quarterbacks, tight ends, defenses and kickers in your league, roughly half of whom can put up top-ten numbers often enough to start. Why waste a spot on your bench for a guy you’ll play once?
There are only three exceptions to this rule:
One: if your high-profile starter is injury prone, grab a startable backup and his handcuff if you can. You’re banking on scoring a lot of points at that position, so you need to have a backup plan. This is also why it is rarely advisable to draft an injury-prone person at the one-starter positions before the middle of the draft.
Two: if your league has more than one starting slot for a position or you have a flex slot. You obviously need two quarterbacks in a two-quarterback league, and starting two great tight ends is a pretty cool way to use your flex position if the draft falls that way.
Three: if you are in one of those 20-team leagues. You definitely need to draft a backup in that case. Wait around and draft three rookie quarterbacks or something so you can stock up on the good talent before it goes away, then give it a few weeks and learn which of your quarterbacks is startable.
6. Expect to lose your best player.
Every player on your team needs to be replaceable. Sometimes it’s easy, like with flex players and kickers, but it needs to apply to everyone on your team.
Draft your first guy, then forget about him. Draft as though you don’t have him. That way, if you do lose him, you’ll have enough depth at the position you’re expecting the most points from to mitigate his loss.
7. Don’t draft to trade.
This usually happens with quarterbacks. You grabbed a solid starter who will play every week, but this other top-ten quarterback is falling down the board. It’s tempting to grab them for trade bait later in the season, especially because good quarterbacks are a seemingly scarce commodity.
Again, they’re not as scarce as you might think. There are always a couple of backups or rookies that get their chance to start. One or two will play well and those guys will get snapped up for free on waivers and started by teams who waited to draft a quarterback. They won’t need to give up other talented players to get a quarterback and you’ll just be sitting with a really good backup quarterback taking up valuable space on your bench.
8. Ignore bye weeks, strength of schedule and teammates.
Unless you had a perfect draft, your roster will change significantly even by the time bye weeks hit. If you stack all of your starters’ bye weeks in one week, sure, you might lose that game, but you don’t know how your roster will change by then. Players get traded, players get hurt, players don’t perform and players come out of nowhere. Prepare for that by not worrying about bye weeks.Same goes for
Same goes for strength of schedule. You don’t know who the best teams are going to be, that’s why they play the games. Don’t avoid a player because the defenses in his division are supposed to be good. Draft good players based on their own merit, not their opponents’.
You don’t mitigate risk by avoiding drafting teammates. To some extent, their value is tied together, so while you might get some good weeks or bad weeks from a quarterback-wide receiver combination depending on who they play, at the end of the day, they’re going to score their points whether or not they’re on your roster. Don’t pass up a good player just because you have his team’s quarterback or running back already.
9. Draft the player you want.
Fantasy football is fun. If you’re going to have more fun by drafting all of the starters on your favorite team than you would by drafting the best players, then do so. It’s your team and it’s a game. Have fun with it, even if that means drafting Matthew Stafford a round early to make sure that he’s on your team.
Next: Detroit Lions linebackers dominated Colts in preseason opener
What are your thoughts? How do you like to draft? Let us know in the comments or tweet at us at @DetroitJockCity!