Fantasy Football: The Draft

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So the draft is on. Now, what's your strategy? Who do you pick? And more importantly, when? If you're going in totally blind and don't even know the players, then you MIGHT want to pay attention. It's actually worked for me when I've been shitfaced.

Here's how you can maximize your picks on draft day, even without knowing who's who.

1. Make sure you have an up-to-date roster from a fantasy football magazine you stole from Walgreens. Your commish might provide one, and as commish, he should. Wherever you get it; get it. It's invaluable.

2. Follow that roster. Draft according to the player rankings, not the players. Here's an example. If you get the first pick overall, pick the first player on the roster. Don't pick some guy you went to high school with or the guy with the cutest ass. Pick the player that the pros have picked.

3. To follow this draft process, you'll pick the the highest / best player on your roster from a position, per round. Remember! You can't pick someone who's already been picked.

In our make believe draft, I chose 16 rounds. Here's a rundown of what position you pick in each round: (pick the highest ranked guy you can get)

Round 1.  Running Back

Round 2. RB

Round 3. WR

Round 4. QB

Round 5. WR

Round 6. WR

Round 7. this is where it gets tricky. By now, your basic roster is filled except for the Tight End, Kicker, and Defensive Team. These are usually viewed as second tier positions because the difference between a #4 defense and a #14 defense isn't that great. Here, you can draft a good RB/WR/QB to have as backup, or if you're really sure about the starters you have,  you can generally get a #1 TE, K or Def here. Some people will laugh if you pick a Defense here, but honestly you can win the whole thing with a great pick that stays steady and runs you away from the pack. I personally think that it's good to get at least one great kicker, defense or tight end. If you slack on all three of these areas, you will lose.   

Rounds 8-12. Pick the highest level of backup you can, and pick your backups in order of RB, WR, QB, WR, RB. Running backs get hurt. You WILL need backups. In this made-up league, you'll start 3 wide receivers, and at least one will be off or hurt. You'll need quality backups. And you'll need a good backup QB. Sure, you have Tom Brady. But lets say he gets hurt in week 3. You, my friend, are totally screwed. People get hurt. Some of the best get epicly hurt. Get good backups.

Rounds 13-15. Manditory trash rounds. Time to figure out where you are. Make sure you have at least one of each starting position. And if one of your main tier players 'might' have injury problems, go ahead and grab his team's backup. Example: you have the Dolphin's QB and he's prone to injury, get his backup so that if the main QB gets hurt, you're already set.

Round 16. Grab a guy based on your gut feeling. Now's the time to get the sleeper. Or get that jerksauce who doesn't know when to retire. Whatever.

So there's your rundown of a 16 round draft under the parameters I set up in my last post. Remember, this strategy could work if you have no idea who the players are. This is for newbs. And that's ok. Everyone's a newb sometime.

But wait, what if you know the players, you just don't know who should you pick? I'm going to break down my tops in every position. Stay tuned.