Draft Day strategies (1 Viewer)

[Rounders]

I have started to see a couple of threads in here about draft day strategies. Well I'm here to tell you that they don't work. Why? Because unless you play FF in a vacuum, you can not predict what your leaguemates are going to do (part of the fun of FF if you ask me).

I have seen some guys say, you need to start your draft RB, RB, RB or RB, WR, WR, or WR, WR, RB. To this I say: you are severely limiting your chances at winning a championship. Sure it will work out for some, but in most cases it will not.

I'm not claiming that I know all, but I do know what works for me. I have been fairly successful at this hobby for 10+ years by applying a simple concept on draft days. DRAFT FOR VALUE. Yes this is what this website screams about, but I think that it can be lost sometimes. I do not enter ANY draft saying I need 2 good RB's in the 1st 2 rounds. I simply go with the flow and THINK.

My offseason prep is all about reading as much info I can so that I can formulate opinions on players. Once I have read so much I could puke, I start thinking about how my leaguemates are going to draft. Then when I go to the draft I'm flexible enough that I'm confident that I can leave ANY draft with a solid team that will contend for a championship. Then it's up to the FF gods.

I just wanted to throw out this nugget of information for you to read. It has worked well for me over the last 10+ years. So next time you are thinking "I need to start my draft RB, RB, RB, WR, WR, QB" think again, because you never know if a Steve Smith will be on the board when you are thinking about your 3rd RB.

Just my

 

[Mungo Burrows]

I have started to see a couple of threads in here about draft day strategies. Well I'm here to tell you that they don't work. Why? Because unless you play FF in a vacuum, you can not predict what your leaguemates are going to do (part of the fun of FF if you ask me).

I have seen some guys say, you need to start your draft RB, RB, RB or RB, WR, WR, or WR, WR, RB. To this I say: you are severely limiting your chances at winning a championship. Sure it will work out for some, but in most cases it will not.

I'm not claiming that I know all, but I do know what works for me. I have been fairly successful at this hobby for 10+ years by applying a simple concept on draft days. DRAFT FOR VALUE. Yes this is what this website screams about, but I think that it can be lost sometimes. I do not enter ANY draft saying I need 2 good RB's in the 1st 2 rounds. I simply go with the flow and THINK.

My offseason prep is all about reading as much info I can so that I can formulate opinions on players. Once I have read so much I could puke, I start thinking about how my leaguemates are going to draft. Then when I go to the draft I'm flexible enough that I'm confident that I can leave ANY draft with a solid team that will contend for a championship. Then it's up to the FF gods.

I just wanted to throw out this nugget of information for you to read. It has worked well for me over the last 10+ years. So next time you are thinking "I need to start my draft RB, RB, RB, WR, WR, QB" think again, because you never know if a Steve Smith will be on the board when you are thinking about your 3rd RB.

Just my

The pre-defined draft templates you are talking about are strategies.VBD is a strategy.

DVDB is a strategy.

Some are more responsive and adaptable than others. Some are poor strategies.

You should always go into a draft with a strategy, but that strategy should be sufficiently flexible to allow you to adapt to circumstances as they unfold -- and I think this is what you were saying.

 

[jziccfbg]

I have started to see a couple of threads in here about draft day strategies. Well I'm here to tell you that they don't work. Why? Because unless you play FF in a vacuum, you can not predict what your leaguemates are going to do (part of the fun of FF if you ask me).

I have seen some guys say, you need to start your draft RB, RB, RB or RB, WR, WR, or WR, WR, RB. To this I say: you are severely limiting your chances at winning a championship. Sure it will work out for some, but in most cases it will not.

I'm not claiming that I know all, but I do know what works for me. I have been fairly successful at this hobby for 10+ years by applying a simple concept on draft days. DRAFT FOR VALUE. Yes this is what this website screams about, but I think that it can be lost sometimes. I do not enter ANY draft saying I need 2 good RB's in the 1st 2 rounds. I simply go with the flow and THINK.

My offseason prep is all about reading as much info I can so that I can formulate opinions on players. Once I have read so much I could puke, I start thinking about how my leaguemates are going to draft. Then when I go to the draft I'm flexible enough that I'm confident that I can leave ANY draft with a solid team that will contend for a championship. Then it's up to the FF gods.

I just wanted to throw out this nugget of information for you to read. It has worked well for me over the last 10+ years. So next time you are thinking "I need to start my draft RB, RB, RB, WR, WR, QB" think again, because you never know if a Steve Smith will be on the board when you are thinking about your 3rd RB.

Just my

I feel anything more specific than 3 out of the first 5 rounds need to be RBs --- could cause foolish picks --- I agree VALUE (but I do use that above rule and try to stick to it...)

 

[Warpig]

No. One of the leagues I am in is very predictable. The guys draft straight outta the magazine! I can pretty much tell you who drafted who without even being there! Thank god for FBG.

 

[KnowledgeReignsSupreme]

Any strategy that doesn't go RB RB RB WR WR WR QB is a losing one.

 

[Tiger Fan]

I have started to see a couple of threads in here about draft day strategies. Well I'm here to tell you that they don't work. Why? Because unless you play FF in a vacuum, you can not predict what your leaguemates are going to do (part of the fun of FF if you ask me).

Just my

For the most part, I agree with you, but you're statement above is grossly wrong. Given the right preparation, I can have a damn good idea of what my opponents are going to do.

 

[gocats]

I have started to see a couple of threads in here about draft day strategies. Well I'm here to tell you that they don't work. Why? Because unless you play FF in a vacuum, you can not predict what your leaguemates are going to do (part of the fun of FF if you ask me).

Just my

For the most part, I agree with you, but you're statement above is grossly wrong. Given the right preparation, I can have a damn good idea of what my opponents are going to do.

 

[John Mamula]

I have started to see a couple of threads in here about draft day strategies.  Well I'm here to tell you that they don't work.  Why? Because unless you play FF in a vacuum, you can not predict what your leaguemates are going to do (part of the fun of FF if you ask me). 

Just my 

For the most part, I agree with you, but you're statement above is grossly wrong. Given the right preparation, I can have a damn good idea of what my opponents are going to do.

In a WCOFF satellite we just participated in I went through our draft slot and successfully targeted almost every player we wanted before the draft based on value we saw. There were a few minor changes on draft day, but mainly because there was even more value available to us than I thought there would be at a couple late rounds.

Once I get my draft slot and see ADPs of players and/or mocks, I can pencil in an overall draft strategy that will dictate who I draft and where.

 

[stlrams]

Any strategy that doesn't go RB RB RB WR WR WR QB is a losing one.

You're a complete idiot if anyone drafts basd off a set strategy... You draft off your own projections (forget what the football guys.com staff tell you). Don't follow the herd mentality otherwise you draft guys like like Mcgahee and Barlow last year....

 

[The Jerk]

I have started to see a couple of threads in here about draft day strategies.  Well I'm here to tell you that they don't work.  Why? Because unless you play FF in a vacuum, you can not predict what your leaguemates are going to do (part of the fun of FF if you ask me). 

Just my 

For the most part, I agree with you, but you're statement above is grossly wrong. Given the right preparation, I can have a damn good idea of what my opponents are going to do.

In addition to the above statement, I think it can be good preparation (if not technically strategy) to project the possible rounds in which you might take a certain player in a given year.A player who has dropped due to injury, league suspension, etc. can be targeted in a specific round. Knowing you might draft this player can impact your entire draft.

I agree that having a rigidly defined draft strategy is not advisable. However, having Plans A, B, and C in place before the draft might help some people who are not as adept (or as comfortable) adjusting on the fly during the draft. As the draft unfolds, you are able to identify which plan best fits what is happening, and you can focus on the specifics of each pick without allocating brainpower to your overarching strategy.

Like anything else, the more you do it, the better you become, which is why mock drafting is a great idea for newcomers to FF. You can jumpstart your experience by seeing how many different ways you can still end up with a solid team -- or how a few bad decisions can lead to a pretty weak roster.

 

[BroncoFreak_2K3]

I have started to see a couple of threads in here about draft day strategies.  Well I'm here to tell you that they don't work.  Why? Because unless you play FF in a vacuum, you can not predict what your leaguemates are going to do (part of the fun of FF if you ask me). 

Just my 

For the most part, I agree with you, but you're statement above is grossly wrong. Given the right preparation, I can have a damn good idea of what my opponents are going to do.

In a WCOFF satellite we just participated in I went through our draft slot and successfully targeted almost every player we wanted before the draft based on value we saw. There were a few minor changes on draft day, but mainly because there was even more value available to us than I thought there would be at a couple late rounds.

Once I get my draft slot and see ADPs of players and/or mocks, I can pencil in an overall draft strategy that will dictate who I draft and where.

Bagger and the Jerk:When you guys target your draft slot, are you solely relying on what ADP is saying where a player should fall,or are you also using some past drafting experience with your fellow team owners? what other tools do you use to narrow your choices down?

I'm finding it hard to pinpoint those who may be there for me in certain rounds because we have guys in our league of varied FF experience and expertise. Even utilizing the DD, I can only go as far as a couple of rounds in before a lot of questions begin to arise.

Do you actually map out who you want in each round? Do you also account for odd ball things happening and develop contingency plans? I'd be very interested in hearing how you develop your drafting strategy much more.

 

[John Facenda]

You draft off your own projections (forget what the football guys.com staff tell you). Don't follow the herd mentality otherwise you draft guys like like Mcgahee and Kevin Jones last year....

Fixed

 

[Buddy Ball 2K3]

I dont follow any strategy either for the most part. I do value the VBD system but when it comes down to it I let the draft come to me.

I won my league last season and one of the biggest reasons is that I took Gates in the 3rd round (before I had any WRs) and made wise trades through out the year. Gates however was my biggest advantage week in and week out.

 

[Tiger Fan]

I have started to see a couple of threads in here about draft day strategies.  Well I'm here to tell you that they don't work.  Why? Because unless you play FF in a vacuum, you can not predict what your leaguemates are going to do (part of the fun of FF if you ask me). 

Just my 

For the most part, I agree with you, but you're statement above is grossly wrong. Given the right preparation, I can have a damn good idea of what my opponents are going to do.

In a WCOFF satellite we just participated in I went through our draft slot and successfully targeted almost every player we wanted before the draft based on value we saw. There were a few minor changes on draft day, but mainly because there was even more value available to us than I thought there would be at a couple late rounds.

Once I get my draft slot and see ADPs of players and/or mocks, I can pencil in an overall draft strategy that will dictate who I draft and where.

Bagger and the Jerk:When you guys target your draft slot, are you solely relying on what ADP is saying where a player should fall,or are you also using some past drafting experience with your fellow team owners? what other tools do you use to narrow your choices down?

I'm finding it hard to pinpoint those who may be there for me in certain rounds because we have guys in our league of varied FF experience and expertise. Even utilizing the DD, I can only go as far as a couple of rounds in before a lot of questions begin to arise.

Do you actually map out who you want in each round? Do you also account for odd ball things happening and develop contingency plans? I'd be very interested in hearing how you develop your drafting strategy much more.

Even though you didn't ask me....I find that for my local league, people either draft off of 2 sources (1) A Magazine (2) ESPN cheatsheets. So I use the Average Magazine Rankings and the Cheatsheets to guage where everyone is going. I find that FBG is over all my leaguemates heads, so using their projections and the DD would be a waste of time. However, I utilize DD to track players so I can analyze where the people in my league have drafted certain positions each year.

I actually map out who I would ideally get each round. Most of the time I'm right, and a lot of the time, value slips to me that I wouldn't expect. I think Dodds perfect draft article is a good first step....but you have to make sure you have good information about your fellow draftees.

 

[John Mamula]

Bagger and the Jerk:

When you guys target your draft slot, are you solely relying on what ADP is saying where a player should fall,or are you also using some past drafting experience with your fellow team owners?  what other tools do you use to narrow your choices down?

I'm finding it hard to pinpoint those who may be there for me in certain rounds because we have guys in our league of varied FF experience and expertise.  Even utilizing the DD, I can only go as far as a couple of rounds in before a lot of questions begin to arise.

Do you actually map out who you want in each round?  Do you also account for odd ball things happening and develop contingency plans?  I'd be very interested in hearing how you develop your drafting strategy much more.

First step is to know your draft slot. This dictates who I will get and when to take certain positions. I also have certain rules regarding positions. I will not take certain positions in the first X rounds regardless of what "value" falls due to scarcity.I recently did this for a WCOFF satellite and I had never drafted with any of these people before. So the second step is to scrounge up some draft results from previous drafts of similar scoring to give me a decent range of where people were going in this scoring format (effectively creating my own ADP).

The third step was to take my projections and cross-reference them with the ADP from the previous drafts to see what players would potentially fall to us in each round. Essentially there was a targeted guy with a "bucket" of comparable players who would/should be there as options if my main choice was gone. Given my initial draft strategy from the first step of what positions to take and when, that gives me an outline of what to follow, although a lot of rounds is a best available player between certain targeted positions.

After doing all of this it gives you a preliminary mock draft. From there you can analyze how your draft looks, and then you can run some sensitivity on it seeing what happens when you start to switch around players you may draft. To verify where my team total points potentially stand I will matrix out the regular season and list who my starters would be each week (based on my projections divided by 16 games as I do not project individual weeks). This includes backups who will start for players on bye weeks. This tells you if you might be weak in a certain week and you may need to re-think your strategy if you have too many corresponding byes. It also allows you to see what happens when you switch a RB and a WR you may draft in the 2nd round and see what true points you gain or lose by doing so, based on your depth at the positions you drafted.

This whole mentality really gets away from VBD from a quantitative standpoint of picking players in each round who have a max # based on some random baseline. It focuses on what your team will look like over the course of the season and what the best strategy is to build a consistantly high scoring team week in and week out (your best chance at winning games). It looks at the entire draft at once and seeing if the strategy you thought may be best really is.

You still need to be flexible in each round, but there should be some hard and fast guidelines of how you want to build your team. There are certain positions that are more scarce than people think, and there are certain positions that are more abundant than people think. Likewise, knowing what strategy to take with kickers and defenses and where the value lies there is important as well.

A lot of this hinges on projection strategy such as avoids the hyped players as well. There is a lot of work done on projections and converting it into the appropriate scoring system and then analyzing your draft slot and seeing how the draft will play out for you.

I may go RB/RB/RB in one draft slot but do something else completely different in another. While that is flexible, once I know my draft slot I pretty much already know how the first 4-5 rounds should play out with where the value is falling.

 

[The Jerk]

I have started to see a couple of threads in here about draft day strategies.  Well I'm here to tell you that they don't work.  Why? Because unless you play FF in a vacuum, you can not predict what your leaguemates are going to do (part of the fun of FF if you ask me). 

Just my 

For the most part, I agree with you, but you're statement above is grossly wrong. Given the right preparation, I can have a damn good idea of what my opponents are going to do.

In a WCOFF satellite we just participated in I went through our draft slot and successfully targeted almost every player we wanted before the draft based on value we saw. There were a few minor changes on draft day, but mainly because there was even more value available to us than I thought there would be at a couple late rounds.

Once I get my draft slot and see ADPs of players and/or mocks, I can pencil in an overall draft strategy that will dictate who I draft and where.

Bagger and the Jerk:When you guys target your draft slot, are you solely relying on what ADP is saying where a player should fall,or are you also using some past drafting experience with your fellow team owners? what other tools do you use to narrow your choices down?

I'm finding it hard to pinpoint those who may be there for me in certain rounds because we have guys in our league of varied FF experience and expertise. Even utilizing the DD, I can only go as far as a couple of rounds in before a lot of questions begin to arise.

Do you actually map out who you want in each round? Do you also account for odd ball things happening and develop contingency plans? I'd be very interested in hearing how you develop your drafting strategy much more.

I never map out who I want in each round with the noted exception in my post of players who are sliding down due to mitigating circumstances. I can remember targeting Michael Irvin one year because he was suspended for 4 games and I know my league will overcompensate and let him slide farther than his value.I do a draft position analysis for my most competitive league so I know historically how many players are drafted each round by position to give me a ballpark idea of what I may get in each round. This of course varies depending on where your selection is in a given round. I keep that sheet with me so I know that in the fourth round I can expect to get the 6th-7th QB, 26th-28th RB, 17th-20th WR, 3rd-4th TE, etc. It's only a guide, as each season is unique and other owners are adjusting their strategies, too.

I also use my slotted draft position and tier by position for the first 50-60 players or so. Think of a spreadsheet with five columns (QB, RB1, RB2, WR, TE). I use two columns for RBs, one for more conservative and one for more aggressive (read higher risk) picks. Now place players in rank order by position, keeping the players aligned by row along their projected overall ranking. Something like this for this year:

                   Alexander          LJohnson                    Tomlinson                    Portis             Barber                    RBrown             LJordan                    RJohnson           SJackson                    CWilliams          JamesPManning           DDavis             McGahee        CJohnson                    JJones             KJones         SSmith                    Droughns                          Fitzgerald                    JLewis                            Holt                                                      RMoss                    WParker                           Owens          Gates                                                      HarrisonHasselbeck         WDunn              TJones         Boldin                                                      DJacksonKeep in mind this was thrown together quickly and will change greatly before my draft. But you can see that knowing your draft position and counting players, you can already see what some of your choices may be at given rounds.Last year, I circled one name on my list for the fifth round: Larry Johnson -- extenuating circumstances. I got him, and led my league in scoring by a wide margin although I lost in the Super Bowl by 1 point.

Anyway, last year was a pretty good example of drafting a solid team using my typical approaches (i.e., my tiering spreadsheet) but then also targeting one player who I thought was worth taking ahead of the rest of my league.

There's more I could say, but this at least covers the overview. Let me know if you aren't sure what I'm doing here.

Edit to add: I also use the draft dominator to help me, especially as the draft progresses beyond the fifth round. But I find I do better when I force myself to tier the players and massage the tiers until I feel I have it right. Maybe it's just because I've been doing it this way for about ten years now.

 

[Routilla]

The competition in my league is at its all time high. There was a time that I could rape the other guys for all the RBs as they drafted WRs, QBs, and their favorite players. Well those days are over now and my strategy has changed a bit. I have been able to cause runs on positions though. Even if I need a RB in the 4th and there is only a couple that a may consider, I am now going with better WRs or QBs to bolster my team. It can cause others to panic when I don't stay on RBs(as in the past) and when they see I'm assembling PRO-Bowlers at other positions I have found that it actually forces some pretty nice RB value to stay on the table for the middle rounds. I look forward to another successful draft. Good luck to all in their upcoming drafts.