Every year, drafting and building your fantasy rosters can be a tricky proposition.
In that vein, understanding how to draft takes an understanding of how a player may be used in a particular offense (or defense) and where that player ranks in the pecking order for touches.
In other words, the volume of touches is crucial to most players’ ceilings.
But do you have the time or knowledge to understand all the nuances of volume, tendencies, and offensive strategies? If you do, good for you, but seeking outside help and advice is always a good strategy for most people.
We all know that getting all the data you need to draft effectively and maintain your roster with waiver wire pickups is crucial to a successful fantasy rosters season.
To be in the best position to draft effectively, there are a few things you need to calculate and understand to optimize your draft strategy and your fantasy rosters success.
Those factors are: understanding your league scoring, fantasy draft rankings, post-draft waiver-wire maneuvering, and knowing the team and match-up insights.
Understand League Scoring
The most important thing you need to know before your league’s draft is your league’s scoring. Are you in a point-per-reception (PPR), half-PPR, or traditional scoring? Each of these types of scoring offers different challenges to maximize points for your roster.
If you’re in a PPR league that scores traditionally (6 points per touchdown), drafting a running back with a three-down back may be a better strategy than drafting a running back that only runs on 1st and 2nd downs.
However, if you have no idea about how your league scoring goes, you may end up drafting a workhorse back on early downs without being able to maximize point-scoring.
Fantasy Draft Rankings
Every year, players’ rankings will vary due to usage and volume share, changes in offensive schemes, free agency, retirements, and contract situations. Considering all these factors can take a lot of time and energy to research it all effectively.
Instead, finding a tool, app, or website specializing in collecting and analyzing the data to create comprehensive fantasy rankings before your league’s draft will give you the edge you need in your next draft.
Have A Strategy And Stick To It
Create a 5-round draft strategy that centers on players based on projected usage first, with running backs being the first couple picks.
The value and volume of wide receivers in the NFL offer much less difference (after elite WR’s) than any other position. Running backs is not a deep position, so loading up on RB’s in the first few rounds is a great suggestion.
A big mistake that fantasy league owners make is to get caught up in a “run” on a particular position.
Every year, team owners get sucked up into the rush for a specific position, but is this phenomenon due to FOMO or simply a byproduct of everyone in the league having similar draft strategies?
Post-Draft Waiver
After your draft, most leagues offer a watch-list for you to put on players. It’s a good idea to start tracking back-ups, secondary wide receivers, and rookies that weren’t drafted in the league.
Every year a player jumps into a significant role after the first couple weeks of the season. The reason may be underperforming play in front of him, injury, or other reasons.
Finding a gem post-draft is part of being a good, responsible team owner, instead of waiting until the bye-week or injury, get ahead of other team owners in your league by tracking players as soon as possible.
Team And Matchup Insights
The hardest thing to project is how a team will game plan week-to-week. It’s a good idea to understand tendencies outside of a clear game plan, such as the Titans running from the first to last whistle. Gaining insights into team matchups and how they want to attack an opponent will help you roster and plan your games.
The annoying thing is that a team like the Patriots will change their game plan drastically week-to-week. Just look at the game in Buffalo where they ran the ball for the entire game, only attempting three total passes and then weeks later, relying on the arm of Mac Jones to (try) and win the game against the Colts.
This unpredictability makes depending on a Patriot running-back a dicey proposition.
Taking a strategy and being flexible with it is as important as your ability to adapt as the season goes on. Injuries, roles, playing tendencies will all be a factor, but no of that matters without a good draft strategy.
