Did somebody pressure you into joining a fantasy football league? Maybe even pressure you to bet on it? If you’re not much of a football fan and now you’ve suddenly got a draft coming up, you probably have a lot of questions. This time of year, thousands of people per day are Googling/Binging:
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- Who to draft in fantasy football
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- How to draft in fantasy football
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- Best fantasy football draft strategy
So, I’ll just try to give a basic overview for someone without a lot of background knowledge. I’m sure experts in the comments will be arguing about this that or the other detail, but the idea is just to give a basic process a beginner can follow and not embarrass themself.
In the first of several acts of self promotion, I will point out that DraftBlaze offers fantasy football draft cheat sheets that show you your recommended pick in real time. It’s easy to set up and use. If you don’t want to read an (honestly kind of long) article, you can check out the cheat sheet here.
Ask not “who should I draft in fantasy football”?
A lot of experts debate about which players are expected to outperform, is this player or that player better, etc. and make it seem really complicated. But, coming up with a list of a few players you want before the draft isn’t going to cut it. In a snake draft, all the players take turns, and the top players are gone in a few short rounds, so your precious list of players isn’t very likely to pan out for you. It’s more helpful to have a rough idea of which positions to fill on your team when.
Anyway, without further ado, here are instructions for this basic fantasy football draft strategy.
Step 1: Choose your starting running backs and wide receivers
Running backs (RBs) and wide receivers (WRs) are the most important positions. They make up a lot of your points, and there’s also a relatively small number of players in those positions that generate a lot of points.
“But which running backs and wide receivers should I draft?”. It’s good to have some ideas, but you don’t need to worry too much because during the draft, the platform your league uses (like ESPN or Yahoo Sports) will automatically sort the players according to projections from their experts. They’re not 100% correct (obviously that’s impossible), but they give a general idea of who the top players are. You can easily filter them by position, team, etc making it easy to select.
Screenshot of the ESPN draft site showing how to use the filters. Note the players are already sorted according to ESPN’s rankings/projections. It’s an old screenshot but it checks out.
So, at the beginning of your draft, just use the rankings to pick the top-ranked RBs and WRs until all the starting positions on your team are full. The draft platform should show which positions you’ve filled.
How do you know you’ve filled all the spots? The draft site shows who’s on your team on the left side of the screen. Make sure all the starter positions are full for the relevant positions:
This is where you can view who you’ve drafted to your team, and who’s in the starting positions.
Step 2: Draft tight ends and quarterbacks
Assuming your league has a spot for these positions, the next most important are quarterbacks (QBs) and tight ends (TE). Fill these spots next, just using the rankings to find the best available players in each position.
Step 3: Draft backups
Your team will have a ‘bench’ – backup players. You don’t get points for them, but you can hold onto them and play them when needed. It’s important in case of an injury taking out one of your top players for several games. Also, every team has a ‘bye week’, a week where they don’t play. When one of your starters is on their bye week, you will need to use a player from the bench instead. We recommend buying your favorite at super low prices with free shipping, and you can also pick up your order at the store on the same day.
So, go through each of the starter positions you’ve drafted (RB, WR, QB, and TE) and get a solid backup for each. Here, you have to make sure your players don’t have the same bye weeks. If they do, they’ll both be out at the same time, so they’re not effective as backups. The bye weeks are shown for the players in the draft platform, so as you’re drafting just keep an eye out for players with the same bye week as your starters.
Where to look for Bye Week information in the ESPN draft site. Yahoo’s site is very similar.
It can be tough to keep an eye out for this as the draft is running. It’s a lot to keep track of at the same time. To put in a little bit of self-promotion, our fantasy football draft cheat sheet gives you recommendations in real time during your draft, and handles all of this logic for you. You can check it out here.
Step 4: Get a kicker and defense
For these positions, it’s often best to follow a strategy called “streaming”. This is where you pick a different player each week depending on who is projected to do the best. You’re allowed to add a player if they’re not on anyone else’s team before each week’s games start (though in some leagues you have to bid for these players, called “waiver wire”).
Kickers and defenses have very different scores from week to week depending on who they’re playing. A defense can be the top scorer one week, and then the worst the next week because they played a strong offense.
I recommend picking these positions towards the end. It’s still useful to have a good one you can keep on your bench, but I recommend going and adding a different player each week. You can use the projections for each week right there in the ESPN or Yahoo app/website, and just select the ones projected to do the best.
Step 5: Knock yourself out
By this time, there will probably only be a few picks left. Honestly, these rounds often don’t make much difference since these players don’t score much. You can continue getting back ups for any positions. If you want to get fancy, you can look for rookie players who have a chance of outperforming expectations, but chances are your fate for the season was mostly decided already.
Outro
I didn’t exactly answer the question “who should I draft in fantasy football”, but I have (hopefully) provided a basic fantasy football draft strategy for a beginner to draft a reasonable team. As a word of caution, knowing a lot about football is still definitely helpful. People in your league who watch ESPN all day have likely heard things about players so know who might be best to avoid, or who to draft early. My “football knowledge free” strategy might not beat somebody who watches ESPN 15 hours per day, but it will get you a solid team, and lack of embarrassment around friends/family/coworkers.
And to point it out one last time, our fantasy football draft cheat sheet handles all of the logic I explained for you. It makes sure to draft in an optimal order, following the steps I explained. It also makes sure you don’t run itno problems with bye weeks. But, if you want to do it on your own, you should be equipped to do so now.
