Fantasy Football Draft Strategy 101

It’s that time of the year again. That time when you dust off your football jerseys and start getting text messages from your buddies talking about when your league draft day will be. Fantasy Football has become society’s latest epidemic and has become the ultimate way for friends, family, or even strangers to bond. And by bond, I mean to trash talk. Trash talk for four months. That’s if you are winning.

The key to winning is almost entirely linked to a good draft. Drafting can be complicated. There’s nothing worse than when you have your next pick in your queue list and the person before you snags him up before it’s your turn. Good times, good times.

But that’s why I’m writing this draft strategy outline let’s call it. That picture I painted above is going to happen, but it’s the teams that are able to think on their toes that end up making the playoffs and evidently winning a championship. So enough rambling. Let’s get to it.

Dividing the Draft Round

Creating a Ranking System

Creating Rounds/Position Tiers

Splitting the Draft in 3’s

When I approach a draft, I found that dividing the draft rounds into sections is a helpful way to determine what my goal is in that round. I separate rounds into three sections. The Early Section, Meat Section, and the Late Section. Here’s a breakdown of the thought process during each of these sections.

“Early Section” or Rounds 1-5

Naturally, you’d expect the early section to be the most important aspect of your team. And it is to some extent, it is, after all these are supposed to be the best players on your team. But when I pick in the early section I’m not looking for “safe players.” Safe doesn’t win you championships and doesn’t always provide the best value. I look for players who have a high ceiling (meaning they can have a breakout game any given week), but players who also have a high floor (a good amount of base points to account for those weeks they don’t happen to have a breakout week).

Everyone always wants their first round pick to score 3 touchdowns and when they do you’ll likely win the week. But it’s when they don’t is when it that hurts your team’s overall performance. Finding a player with a good balance of high floor and ceiling helps in these early rounds helps you eliminate this problem.

“Meat Section” or Rounds 6-10

The middle aka meat section is where things unravel, but at least in my opinion, this is where leagues are won. Players you thought would be available during this section are no longer available, and players you thought would be gone in this section are magically still on the board. What I look for here is still a high ceiling, but the difference from the early section is that I’m willing to sacrifice the floor of the players.

In this section, we find players like DeSean Jackson or Adrian Peterson who are players that may not give us the greatest consistency but do provide big games upside in certain situations. Now it’s important to note; I’m not giving up on a good floor (base) all entirely. I’m still looking for players who are part of the offensive gameplan and provide real upside to have double-digit games.

“Late Section” or Rounds – 11-16

This is my ‘boom or bust” section. At this point, you already have your starting lineup already drafted and are starting to fill in the bench players. In this section, I sacrifice the necessity of a good floor, meaning I’m solely looking for players with high upside because they could provide a big boost to a team that already has a good balance between floor and ceiling. While there are instances where you’d want to draft a corresponding player that may be injured or suspended to begin the season, this is a good section to pick those players.

One thing I see a lot of fantasy players do wrong is draft players that they think would be best replacements for bye weeks or if one of their starting players gets injured. Those outcomes to me are situations you deal with on a weekly basis, and that’s what the waiver wire is for. But not on draft day. Draft day is about securing a team with the highest possible ceiling while maintaining a solid base for expected points.

*Writer’s Note* Don’t be the team that drafts the Broncos or Stephen Gostkowski before your final two rounds. These positions are interchangeable with the waiver wire, and often the points difference isn’t significant enough to justify passing on a player with good potential.

So now you’ve split the draft and have an idea for what players you are expecting. Now let’s put it all together and build a ranking system.

Creating a Ranking System

There are several ways you can go about drafting a fantasy football team. One,  you can prepare your butt off so that you know team depth charts like the back of your hand. Two follow whatever site rankings that are defaulted when you sit in front of your computer. Or Three you could not prepare at all and just let auto pick choose the top guy available.

If you’re not one of those guys who could set his team on auto pick and still make the playoff,  I’d recommend approaching your fantasy football draft is a mixture of 1 and 2. Not everyone has the time to read every team preview and memorize each team’s depth chart, so we need to find a way to be more efficient with our time. Here’s how I start.

The biggest thing that will help you build a solid core to your team is creating your own rankings. Whatever site you use whether it’s ESPN, Yahoo, CBS Sports, or even NFL, DON”T rely on whatever is automated in your draft room. Most casual fantasy players draft based on the default rankings in the draft room, by following them you limit yourself to finding players with greater value.

If you’re not comfortable creating your own rankings from scratch, take some time to look at other analyst rankings. Find two or three that you agree with and average the player’s rankings out. By doing that you’ll not only have expert type guidance, but you’ll be customizing it so that you have the final say on creating YOUR team based on YOUR rankings.

You’ll see a lot of Top 50 or Top 100 rankings. Here’s where the customization of your league comes to play. If you’re playing in a 10 team league, you don’t need to rank more than the top 50 players. If you’re playing in a 12 team league, that’s when you’d want to stretch the rankings to a top 60. The reason for this is you want to have coverage on players you like for at least the first 5 rounds.

Once you have your own “consensus” rankings, you’re ready to draft. Now here’s the key. No matter where you are slotted to be drafting, the key here is staying committed to your rankings.

By staying committed to your rankings, you’re finding players that you value more than others and have more control of your team.

Let’s say your heart was set on drafting a running back in the first round, but you have the fifth pick, and both David Johnson and Le’Veon Bell are gone. That doesn’t mean you should force your way to draft LeSean McCoy when receivers like Mike Evans or A.J. Green, who offer better value are likely still available. At least according to my board.

A big reason to keep following your rankings is so that you don’t reach for players in a draft position that they are not worth (according to your rankings). If the player you think you want to select is not the first player on your rankings list, chances are you’re reaching for that player and passing up on a player with better value.

Follow your rankings list to the core for at least the first 3 rounds. After the first three rounds, you evaluate your team. You could be looking at a situation where you drafted three straight wide receivers. That’s not necessarily a bad thing this year when you consider that running backs ranked from 5-14 all have question marks, but at some point you need to draft running backs.

If you find yourself in this situation, use your rankings to find the best available non-wide receiver position player available. You want to make sure you have a decent balance but aren’t forcing picks that make you end up losing value.

A good way I found that’s helpful in keeping my roster balance in the first 5 rounds is creating round tiers. What that means is your labeling the players on your rankings into positional order.

Draft Tiers

Create tiers based on your league size and by round. Say you play in a 12 team league you’d want to have 12 players in your first tier, second, and so on and so forth. This helps you visualize what round you would expect your top 60 players to go. So for a 60-player rankings you will have 5 tiers.

Once you have the over players tiers, then you separate the tiers by positions. If you noticed 6 running backs were in the first 12 players (tier 1) then you would classify those 6 running backs as RB Tier 1. You may notice that you don’t have any tight ends or quarterbacks expected to go in the first round and this is when you place value into the tiers.

Say I have 6 running backs and 6 receivers going in the first round. That would mean my first tier of wide receivers and running backs would be valued in the 1st round. You continue to do these positional tiers until you have 12 players from the same position in that tier. Then you check what’s that last player’s projected round and place value on the tier.

WR Tier 1

1. A. Brown
2. J. Jones
3. O. Beckham Jr.
4. M. Evans
5. A. Green
6. J. Nelson
7. M. Thomas
8. D. Bryant
9. T. Hilton
10. B. Cooks
11. A. Cooper
12. D. Baldwin

Starting with my top receiver to my 12th this tier should last me up until round 3, meaning this tier would be “WR Tier 1-3.” What this is saying is that I would be willing to draft anyone of these receivers within as long as it’s round 3. If anyone of these players should be available in round 4 I’ve found tremendous value.

Now you can choose to create tiers the way I do, or you can choose to create tiers based on players you would draft in that round. For example, if I’d break that tier down into rounds it would sort out like this.

WR Tier 1 Round

1. A. Brown
2. J. Jones
3. O. Beckham Jr.
4. M. Evans
5. A. Green

WR Tier 2 Round

1. J. Nelson
2. M. Thomas
3. D. Bryant
4. T. Hilton

WR Tier 3 Round

1. B. Cooks
2. A. Cooper
3. D. Baldwin

The problem I have with this is that I’m leaving out other players that I would consider drafting at the end of the 3rd round. There are receivers I would consider drafting in the 3rd round, but they didn’t make the top 12 of the position. That’s why I choose to sort it out based on teams and put the round value based on where that tier starts and ends.

Bring it All Home

I know that was a lot of information to take in so I thought I’d leave you with some nuggets at the end.

• Divide your draft into separate parts to place value on the rounds/players you pick.
• Create your own Top 50/60 ranking to cover your first 5 rounds.
• Divide your Top 50/60 rankings into positional Tiers to help you view the value of the round you are picking them in.
• Do not lock into any specific position in the first round. Follow your rankings and after 3 rounds evaluate how balanced (position wise) your team is.

Extra Point

Just because the top guy in your positional tier gets drafted doesn’t mean you need to rush into drafting the next guy on the board (i.e., Gronkowski gets picked there’s no need for you to rush to draft a tight end).

For my next article, I’ll cover a specific strategy for when to draft Quarterbacks and Tight Ends. I’ll give you my opinion on where to draft Ezekiel Elliott and other promising rookie running backs. As well as dive into pick strategies for first three rounds.