5 Things You Shouldn't Do Prior and During a Fantasy Football Draft
Raffi Lalazarian
Every fantasy football website will tell you all the things you should do before your draft. They'll post rankings, podcasts, discuss players, and give you every single bit of strategy to help you succeed at picking the best team possible. There is only one problem. When it comes to the actual draft, you find that all that prep work pretty much goes out the window, as nobody in your league drafts as they are suppose to. Aaron Rodgers had been going at the end of the 2nd round in all your mock drafts, and all of a sudden he's gone at pick 13? Why did Ap go ahead of Jamaal Charles and Lesean McCoy? Why isn't anyone drafting Terrance West? What the heck is going on?!!
You'll find that a fantasy draft is more an adventure in improvisation than one in detailed preparedness. That isn't to say that you shouldn't target players and have plans, but there is a lot more that should be done, or not done, than just printing out a cheat sheet and relying on experts to tell you who to pick.
What goes without being mentioned are the many things that you should not do in a fantasy draft. No, I'm not talking about "Don't take a kicker until the last round sort of stuff," although that is part of it (and please don't). I'm talking about the actual nuts and bolts of preparing for a draft. Many managers engage in activities prior and during a draft that hinders their chances at drafting a great team. It's the little things in life that are important and sometimes not doing everything you can actually turns out to be a good thing.
So here are five bits of advice for the fantasy manager as to things they shouldn't do prior to or during a fantasy draft. The in-draft strategies are centered around snake drafting. You may not agree with them, but coming from a fantasy vet, these are things that I believe, if not done properly, will give a manager an edge come draft day.
1. Do not follow an experts advice, especially one that gets paid for it.
Get off the grid. Yes, the grid. It's the imaginary fantasy vortex that all managers live in prior to the draft. You know it well. It's made up of cheat sheets from every expert on the planet, cut together to form the total number of possibilities that every one in your league is following during the draft. Every manager in your league is more than likely following the guidelines of some expert on some website somewhere. After all, they are getting paid for their advice, they must know something right. Wrong. They know no more than you do. They watch the same preseason games and can come to the same conclusions as you. You are privy to the same information they are. Even the best experts have an accuracy percentage rate of around 57%. 57%! That's just better than a coin flip. Why bother putting your entire season in the hands of someone who is just better than a coin flip? After all, you'll hear every one of these experts say at some point, "Ya I missed that pick," as casually as possible, while you are cursing the day you drafted Cj Spiller in the first round on their advice. We've all been there.
But the biggest reason not to follow an experts advice is so that you hone your own instincts. Fantasy football is about trusting your gut. You need to know what is the best decision that YOU made, so that during the season, that little intuition that was right (or wrong) on draft day could be used again when it's time to make a roster choice. If you allow an expert to essentially pick your team for you, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to do what you feel is best and gain some valuable experience in the process. It's better to go down with choices you made, than choices someone else made for you, isn't it?
Lastly, the best thing about getting off the "grid" is that you can use it to your advantage. Why was AP taken #1 overall and Terrance West not drafted? Because someone probably followed an experts rankings to do so. Knowing this gives a huge advantage to you. You can see certain managers draft according to popular rankings from popular sites, and you can use that to your advantage. One league I was in had many of the managers using ESPN and Matthew Berry's rankings during the draft. Knowing this, I was better able to predict who would be selected when, and saw how the draft was unfolding thanks in large part to that. Needless to say, I finished second that year.
So while experts are great to listen to, and accumulate information from, do not follow anyone explicitly. In fact, discard all that information and make your own rankings up, and be keen on how other people are drafting during the draft. Use what you know against your league. All is fair in love and fantasy football.
2. Don't Stick to a Draft Plan.
Yes. That's right. Don't plan on anything. Well, okay, that may be a bit too extreme. It's always good to have a plan entering a draft, but we all know how those plans work out. The draft is fluid, and full of surprises. The teams that are able to maneuver through those surprises effortlessly are the ones that build the best teams. Just like a real NFL draft, a fantasy draft takes on a life of its own, and you have to be ready to ride the wave as it is forming.
Many managers make the mistake of having plans that they wish to carry out during draft day and stick to the plan religiously. They've mock drafted hundreds of times and determined that the best spot for them to take a second RB is rounds 4 and 5. Lo and behold, when it's their turn in the fourth round there is a wide receiver that slipped and is sitting to be taken. Never in a mock draft did the board in the 4th round have this player available. Taking him would mean altering their strategy. Instead of doing that, they pass on the player and stick to taking a running back. I've heard co-managers say "let's stick to the plan" many times. While a manager won't know the results until the end of the season, this is a situation that could comeback to haunt them.
This exact situation happened last year to my team in the AFFL, where Reggie Bush was available in the 3rd round. He had never been available in any mock draft I had done before, but there he was. The plan was to take a WR, but that quickly changed. The WR was Roddy White. Bush ended up having a huge year, while White got hurt. Had I stuck to the plan, I wouldn't have been as successful as I could of been. Be fluid. Expect to do something unexpected.
Yes you should target players, but don't be so married to your plan that you cannot deviate from it. Chances are that you will be given the opportunity to at some point in the draft, and whether or not you choose to could determine how successful you are. Mock drafts aren't the way to measure how a draft will go. They won't go that way come draft day, so be ready to throw caution into the wind and draft with reckless abandon. The draft will be more fun and chances are your team will be better for it. Which leads me to point three..
3. Do not be afraid to make a risky pick, even if you have to reach.
Why has reaching become such a bad term? Everyone says that when someone reaches for a player, it was a bad pick? Your draft board says that in the third round, Victor Cruz, Larry FItzgerald, and others are available, as usual. Experts have lauded that at this spot you should take one of the stud WRs, but your gut tells you that to pick that rookie running back that is suppose to go in round four. If you have followed the above protocol, you will have given yourself the freedom to make this move. This example was an actual example that happened in the AFFL, where HBK was faced with going with the safe pick at WR, or drafting a rookie in Eddie Lacy at the top of the 3rd round. No expert or draft strategy was promoting Lacy that early. Needless to say, Lacy turned out to be a great pick, and well worth the "reach" on investment.
The teams that are most successful minimize risk in their drafting by loading up on positions where they take the most risk. If you are contemplating taking a player that you are not sure about, you shouldn't discard taking him for that reason, but rather make sure you have enough good players around him at the same position to help offset a possible bust. Winning the fantasy football championship means that you cannot play it safe, and that means taking guys when everyone said not to. The year Arian Foster broke out, Jaj took him in the second round. No expert had him going there. By all accounts it was a reach. Turned out to be a winning move. Risking a pick, or reaching on a player because you like him is just fine. Don't be afraid to do it.
4. Do not forget to track positions of picks of other drafters, especially those behind you.
You have the 9th pick in the 6th round. You are debating between Jason Witten at Tight End and a Wide Receiver. You would love to have them both. You decide to draft Witten first and hope that the WR makes it back to you. Unfortunately the team right behind you snatches the wide receiver you wanted. Oh well, wasn't meant to be. Only you didn't bother to look at what picks 10, 11, and 12 had done before selecting Witten. Had you taken a peak, you would have noticed that they had tight ends, and weren't going to draft one there. You could have gotten the wide receiver there and waited and gotten Witten on the whip. The little things are always big.
Paying attention to what other teams have drafted is huge, and so many managers lose out on players they want because they fail to follow what the league is doing by position. When drafting a quarterback, it's imperative that you follow how many have been taken and which teams have them. If you're in the middle of the draft order, you'll better gauge the likely hood that a quarterback comes back to you in this round or not depending on the number of teams that might select a quarterback due to need. Smart owners will always target the player they want, then look around them to see whether they should take them at that moment or perhaps wait and predict out what teams around them will do. You can't do this enough. If a team near you has three running backs in their first three picks, and you are contemplating a few RBs, don't take the RB first, take something else, as surely one of the guys you like will be available on the way back to you.
This is important for teams drafting at the ends of the snake, but is useful everywhere. If you want to maximize your selections, knowing what order to pick certain positions you're debating between based on what other teams have done is a winning strategy. Don't get lazy. Keep tabs on everyone.
5. Do not Draft 2 Elite Quarterbacks in the first few rounds in hopes of trading one.
This has happened twice in the AFFL and both times by the same manager with dire consequences. You need a top tier quarterback to win the title, but good luck trying to trade one to a league of managers that knows you have to. Chances are that by selecting two elite quarterbacks in the early rounds you are missing out on wide receivers and running backs that will help your team immediately, rather than a player that will sit on your bench for five weeks until a team gets desperate. Wins are too important in a thirteen week season to throw them away, and you are increasing the likely hood that that happens by passing up on starters for a trade option. Unless you think that you can nab top ten talent in rounds 8-13, you're going to be putting your team in a huge hole to begin the year. Is it really worth it?
Aside the fact that you miss out on elite starters, you are drafting a position that is extremely deep. Last season, Nick Foles, Andy Dalton, Big Ben and others finished the season as top twelve quarterbacks, and were more than likely available off the waiver wire. Teams who are wise will opt to just take their chances off the waiver than trade one of their elite players for one of your quarterbacks. You may eventually find a trade partner, but the cost will be for much less than say the third round pick you gave for the quarterback. Don't do it. It sounds good in theory, but it ends up being a move that puts your team in a huge hole for weeks on end.
So there it is, five little reminders for you to take with you into your fantasy draft. Just remember, things will not going according to plan, and no expert is going to tell you the perfect pick when your up to select. Just sit back, trust your gut and let loose. The only decision you can make that won't be a right one will be doing what everyone else is doing. And with 11 out of ever 12 teams not winning the title every year, do you really think that's a wise strategy? Go forth young man. Draft with confidence. You got this.