Preparing for your Fantasy Draft (1 Viewer)

[Saint]

I thought it would be interesting to have a couple of topics about the fantasy draft. This will be the first topic: Preparation. The next two topics will focus on During the Draft and Post Draft. Many of us have a lot of unique things that we do for the draft. This topic is aimed at what do YOU do to prepare for the draft.

I'm a Draft Dominator guy through and through, but I do a lot of tweaks to prepare it. So here's some of the items I do.

1. Set up the DD with the scoring for the year.
2. Calculate Flex values based on my league's scoring rules.
3. Look at the last three year's of league history and develop a custom ADP list.
4. Using the Projections Dominator, I tweak the projections based on some of my "gut" tendencies as well as some data from other sources.
5. Load the PD file into the DD.
6. Tweak the baselines, as necessary.
7. Then I edit the DD to reduce Strength of Schedule (as I believe Defenses are way too inconsistent to really add a lot of weight to the points)
8. I also add weighting variables to the playoff weeks and where I have double headers in my league.
9. Finally, I go through the Player Pool and set up tiers for the players.

Once those are set up, then I usually mock a few times to get a feel for what's available at my draft spot to see if there are certain directions I should head. So what do you guys do?

 

[Pickle Rody]

My preparation consists of the following:

• February through June - keep up to date on all info I can find regarding the NFL. Pay close attention to the NFL Draft. Determine which offensive rookies I will pay close attention to through mini-camps, OTA's and TC. Start formulating a plan of attack to improve my team and win a title.
• As soon as Draft Dominator is released, set up various league files and tweak each as necessary until draft day. (I do almost as much as Saint with regards to my process of setting up my DD files.)
• I do as much research as possible to ensure that I have the latest news and info. (I slacked off in recent years and the results where indicative of that laziness.)
• Instead of running a bunch of mocks by myself, I invite 2 or 3 of my most competitive league mates over for pizza and beers and run mocks with them. I get to pick their brain about their own goals for the draft and also get a feel for how they think our other league mates will draft. (Every year we have done this, the actual draft unfolds in the first couple of rounds almost exactly as we had mocked.)
• Finalize my draft plan for each league.

• All of my "live, in-person" drafts are keeper leagues. Trading is permitted in all of them leading up to the draft. I am always looking for ways to improve my teams through trades. I've made several already this off season.

 

[chickensoup]

Mine consists of talking about fantasy football as much as I can the month before the draft with league mates. It gets me info on who they like and don't like and I get to throw out a bunch of misinformation out there to give enough doubt as to what I'm going to do.

 

[Saint]

• Instead of running a bunch of mocks by myself, I invite 2 or 3 of my most competitive league mates over for pizza and beers and run mocks with them. I get to pick their brain about their own goals for the draft and also get a feel for how they think our other league mates will draft. (Every year we have done this, the actual draft unfolds in the first couple of rounds almost exactly as we had mocked.)

Ruffrody.... pretty cool idea here. Do you worry at all about them knowing your strategy going in? This idea immediately made me think of possibly trying to find local FBG members that are non-league to do mock drafting over pizza and beers.... Great stuff!

 

[dynastyguy1000]

how do you setup tiers within DD?

 

[Pickle Rody]

• Instead of running a bunch of mocks by myself, I invite 2 or 3 of my most competitive league mates over for pizza and beers and run mocks with them. I get to pick their brain about their own goals for the draft and also get a feel for how they think our other league mates will draft. (Every year we have done this, the actual draft unfolds in the first couple of rounds almost exactly as we had mocked.)

Ruffrody.... pretty cool idea here. Do you worry at all about them knowing your strategy going in? This idea immediately made me think of possibly trying to find local FBG members that are non-league to do mock drafting over pizza and beers.... Great stuff!

Nah.The first year we did it I was a little leery of showing my hand. I realized quickly, that first night, that it was better for the overall mocks, and advantageous to all of us, if we were all honest with each other about our strategies. Myself and the 3 others have 7 championships in the 11 years the league has been in existence. 3 of the 4 of us are FBG subscribers and use DD extensively to prep for the draft. It's what we use to mock. Can't really hide from experts (enemy), might as well join them, right?

Anyway, I'd rather know going into the draft how my most fierce competitors are going draft. In addition, our collective thoughts on other league mates helps me gauge my own perceptions of those folks. Often times I find that they have a more accurate perception than I do. It has drastically helped me to predict how the draft will actually unfold.

I've also found that even though I've flat out stated my intentions, I am still able to actually draft the way I've prepped for. I told folks if they let Chris Johnson fall to me at my pick his rookie year, he was mine. Got him. I told them I would draft Harvin his rookie year. Got him. There are more examples, but you get my point. We all respect each others skill.

I find this exercise of mocking with league mates very beneficial. Not sure how beneficial mocking with non-league mates would be. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of congregating with other local FBG'ers, but if we have no commonality with leagues what would be the benefit of doing mocks together? Of course, other than scarfing up pizza and slamming a crap-load of beers

 

[Pickle Rody]

how do you setup tiers within DD?

I do it in the Notes portion of the Player Pool window.

 

[dynastyguy1000]

not a bad idea. thanks!

 

[Saint]

how do you setup tiers within DD?

I do it in the Notes portion of the Player Pool window.

Exactly how I do it... Works great!

 

[steveski]

Do you guys actually use Draft Dominator during your draft? I tried it in some mocks last year and it was just so cumbersome to select other players picks that I didn't have time to think through the pick I wanted to make. Then by round 5 or so I would miss a player and the whole software would be off and be basically worthless.

Last year I used CheatSheetWizard by fantasy pros. It linked up with my draft (Yahoo) so it automatically selected everyones pick in real time and I was able to spend my time planning and strategizing. I created my own rankings and entered them into the system so it would recommend picks based on my rankings. I liked being able to flip back and forth between Yahoo and the software to see what everyone else saw as the default rankings and where I had the players ranked so I could decide if I could wait anotehr round to select a guy I wanted.

CheatSheetWizard, which also works for MFL leagues, is the only software that I've found that syncs with leagues. Why doesn't draft dominator do this?

 

[Texasmouth]

I do absolutely nothing because my league is so random that no matter how I prepare something crazy will happen.

 

[Junior McSpiffy]

The most important part of my draft-day preperation is spending the night beforehand polishing my helmet (which sounds dirty, but it isn't). No point showing up to the draft if I'm not gonna show up in style. That link in my signature....? It's all about style.

But as for the draft itself, it's all about mock drafts for me. I will do two or three mocks a day. Every week or two, I will go through and compile my own averages, as well as highlight players who I think have value for how I think they will produce. Then I tweak my hand-crafted spreadsheet accordingly.

During this time, it's all about crawling the team pages of different teams. Or at least, it had been. This page has shorthanded a few hours work a week for me. But I will tweak my draft spreadsheet according to how I feel about the news coming out of various camps.

But I don't do a lot of base-lining. I don't have massive stat-crunching skills, so a lot of it is "feel" or seat-of-the-pants for me. But the one thing I do to make sure I'm not too far off base or to spot the holes in some of my observations is after the season, I take a look at my rankings and expectations and compare them to how things turned out. It helps me spot some biases I may have against players or teams that are unwarranted, or try to pinpoint situations that I hadn't seen the potential in so I can spot those the next time they come up for a player. It's not perfect, but it works fairly well for me.

But now that I read all these people leaning on this DD software, I am curious about it. Does it basically give you their projected stats and you go with it? How much leeway do you have in that regard? Also, does it show the history of the players previous season or two on there?

 

[Saint]

Do you guys actually use Draft Dominator during your draft? I tried it in some mocks last year and it was just so cumbersome to select other players picks that I didn't have time to think through the pick I wanted to make. Then by round 5 or so I would miss a player and the whole software would be off and be basically worthless.

Last year I used CheatSheetWizard by fantasy pros. It linked up with my draft (Yahoo) so it automatically selected everyones pick in real time and I was able to spend my time planning and strategizing. I created my own rankings and entered them into the system so it would recommend picks based on my rankings. I liked being able to flip back and forth between Yahoo and the software to see what everyone else saw as the default rankings and where I had the players ranked so I could decide if I could wait anotehr round to select a guy I wanted.

CheatSheetWizard, which also works for MFL leagues, is the only software that I've found that syncs with leagues. Why doesn't draft dominator do this?

I use the DD pretty religiously. There's a risk that if you don't keep up with the draft then you run the risk of having a screwed up draft. There are a ton of adjustments I do throughout the draft using the DD that I haven't been able to find in other tools. I'll be starting another thread on usage during the draft.

 

[Saint]

But now that I read all these people leaning on this DD software, I am curious about it. Does it basically give you their projected stats and you go with it? How much leeway do you have in that regard? Also, does it show the history of the players previous season or two on there?

You can change the projections to whatever you want them to be. Typically the baseline stats loaded are Dodd's projections, but you can use the Projection Dominator to use projections from other FBG staff (Tremblay, Henry, Wood), as well as use your own projections and then you can weight them accordingly. I found it to be a pretty good tool. Once you have your projections where you want them, you can incorporate them into the DD. I typically use a tiering structure so when my draft pick comes up, the tool will tell you who the highest ranking player is, but I look across positions and tiers to select.

It doesn't show stats from the previous years, but if you have an internet connection, it will link you the Player pages on the FBG site, so you can see career stats, news, etc. In addition, the tool has the latest news updates readily available on the players.

 

[Pickle Rody]

how do you setup tiers within DD?

I do it in the Notes portion of the Player Pool window.

Exactly how I do it... Works great!

DD has never had an internal tool for tiers, so I've always just noted my own tiers with a T at the beginning of each tier. My tiers differ slightly from most experts lists, so this is the best way to highlight my own tiers within the app.

I also use the Notes portion of the Player Pool window for other draft notes:

T1, T2, T3...= tier beginnings

v = value pick

R = Rookie (I know rookies can be visually determined by the "1" in the Exp column of the Player Pool, but it's extremely difficult to quickly distinguish on the fly during a live draft. My "R" note makes it obvious to me.)

r1, r1/2, r2, r2/3, r3, r3/4....= round numbers I would draft noted player (obviously this is a player I am targeting as I would not note a player this way unless I am highly considering that player within the realm of my draft strategy.)

? = undecided on this player, but keep an eye on during draft

I keep all of these in the "Note 1" portion, as I don't want the Player Pool window open any further than that. Other windows of DD need to be open during the draft.

My "Note 1" portion of the Player Pool, surprisingly, does not get cluttered up if I have narrowed down my draft strategy. Doing mocks with other league members accomplishes this for me.

 

[Pickle Rody]

Do you guys actually use Draft Dominator during your draft? I tried it in some mocks last year and it was just so cumbersome to select other players picks that I didn't have time to think through the pick I wanted to make. Then by round 5 or so I would miss a player and the whole software would be off and be basically worthless.

Last year I used CheatSheetWizard by fantasy pros. It linked up with my draft (Yahoo) so it automatically selected everyones pick in real time and I was able to spend my time planning and strategizing. I created my own rankings and entered them into the system so it would recommend picks based on my rankings. I liked being able to flip back and forth between Yahoo and the software to see what everyone else saw as the default rankings and where I had the players ranked so I could decide if I could wait anotehr round to select a guy I wanted.

CheatSheetWizard, which also works for MFL leagues, is the only software that I've found that syncs with leagues. Why doesn't draft dominator do this?

Yes, for "live, in person" drafts I use DD exclusively and it is invaluable to me.

I still use it for internet leagues, but it has taken me a few years to get acclimated to the speed of some drafts. If you are not familiar with it (the DD app,) it can get cumbersome during a live internet draft. Very quickly, due to the speed others draft at, you could be under fire to make a pick while still trying to input all picks prior to yours. Hard to find value when you are under the gun. Definitely takes practice and the only way I've accomplished that is to keep trying each year to get better.

 

[RushHour]

I find that after you have been doing this for a few years, you don't have to prepare much at all. I mean, assuming you are staying on top of things in the offseason, which is just like breathing for a lot of us really, the draft is just the culmination of absorbing all that information, through articles, podcasts etc. These days too, I find that there is so much info around and everyone is largley talking about the same things, talking up the same players etc, that by the time I draft, I'm pretty much sick of hearing a lot of it. You form a view about who you like and what you think will happen in the season and at some point, you just go with that.

As far as the actual draft goes, I think you can overthink things or be too reliant on projections (which only have so much value in the first place) and software. I normally just have one spreadsheet with a separate worksheet for each position with rankings (maybe in tiers, but not necessarily). I highlight the guys I'm targeting/players I really want on my team so I don't forget anyone on the day, and I go from there. I'm basically only looking to draft a certain selection of players and won't pick up a guy I don't like just because he drops and becomes a "value". Works for me anyway. Your rosters usually end up changing so much as the season goes on anyway, that the importance of the draft itself can sometimes be a little overstated as well.

 

[cheatsheetwarroom]

1. As soon as the previous season ends, I generate a cutomizable cheat sheet based on each player's fantasy output from the previous season.
2. During the offseason, I monitor player news and adjust my ranking accordingly
3. As the season approaches, I use the Fantasy Guys newsletter to guide my ranking adjustments
4. Right before my draft I generate a printable version of my cheat sheet along with notes that I took on each player.

At the draft itself, I have my computer to do a quick sanity check (i.e. Google News Search) on who I am about to pick to ensure they didn't shoot someone, get a DUI, or get busted for a substance violation.

 

[pizzatyme]

Any way to easily adjust DD ADP? I find the ADP almost useless versus actual APD. Therefore, it loses steam for me when trying to run mocks and using the "my team mock draft" option coupled with the "draft other teams by ADP" option.

 

[Saint]

Any way to easily adjust DD ADP? I find the ADP almost useless versus actual APD. Therefore, it loses steam for me when trying to run mocks and using the "my team mock draft" option coupled with the "draft other teams by ADP" option.

If you have league history, create a user_adp and import it. Then you can use DD to simulate your league's ADP. Here's a link on how to do it: http://forums.footballguys.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=249631&p=7180328