It’s about that time of year again… FANTASY FOOTBALL DRAFT PREP. To get started, we’ll give you four quick tips to help kick off the 2019 fantasy football season.
1. Value in fantasy football is huge.
Bias is bigger. I highly recommend taking the 15 minutes or so to create your own fantasy football draft rankings and printing out an ADP sheet as well. Why? A few reasons why:
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- 1. You will remove any bias on draft day because you will follow your rankings
- 2. While every other player has the same old outdated ESPN cheat sheet, you will be drafting with rankings up to date and different than everyone else.
- 3. An ADP sheet (ADP sheet) lets you know when to expect a player to go in drafts. This can be very beneficial on draft day when deciding between two guys.
2. NO QB!
I highly recommend the “NO QB” strategy. Week to week the quarterback position is by far the “noisiest” position in fantasy football. I say this because on a week to week basis our top 12 fantasy quarterbacks for that week change rapidly. Last year alone we had weeks where Josh Johnson and Nick Mullens were startable options. Streaming quarterbacks is easy and people under value depth at the more important positions (running back and wide receiver). While everyone else is overpaying for their quarterbacks, stock up on running backs and wide receivers. Lets use last year as an example:
The top 3 quarterbacks last year all had ADP’s in the 10th round. So while others were taking Aaron Rodgers (who finished as the 4th QB) in the third round, you could have been picking guys like Adam Theilen and Travis Kelce. Never take a QB ahead of their ADP
3. Myth: Drafting Early is “Not Smart”
A common misconception is drafting early is “not smart”. I disagree with this for a few reasons. Many people will use the injury excuse as a reason – which I get – but there’s also an 11/12 chance that player who gets injured is not on your team. 1/12 he is and 11/12 he isn’t. That is a massive advantage. More reasons as to why drafting early can be beneficial is there’s an edge on knowing more information about certain teams, reacting to news too seriously or “recency bias”.
The Rams are a perfect example of this. After the recent news about Gurley, his ADP has plummeted going from the mid/early first down to the mid/late second. Not only is his stock falling too quickly, but Darrell Henderson’s stock is a massive overreaction. As you can see, Gurley’s stock is falling very quickly where Henderson’s is growing pretty rapidly. To me this is a perfect example of an overreaction.
*These graph’s were found via Fantasy Football Calculator*
4. My fourth and final strategy is making sure you get that cornerstone running back. I highly recommend drafting at least one RB in the first 3 rounds. Last year among the top 27 players on ESPN fantasy football playoff teams, 15 were running backs. I recommend a safe play early. Guys like Saquon Barkley, Melvin Gordon, Christian McCaffery, Ezekiel Elliott, Alvin Kamara, and James Conner fit the mold. Working off this topic – another good strategy is stocking up on running backs in the later rounds. Last year, having guys like James Conner, Nick Chubb, Aaron Jones, Matt Breida, James White, and Adrian Peterson would have been very beneficial as seen in the graphic below.
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I agree that drafting early is not a mistake. My brother does fantasy football and he always drafts early and to my knowledge, he does well. I wonder if there are any fantasy football podcasts I can listen to to help increase my own understanding of fantasy football.