Strategy in different type leagues (1 Viewer)

[FantaC1]

I'm not looking for specific advice on my teams, but general philosophy on these type of drafts. Do you approach the drafts differently? 

Larger leagues (14-16 teams)

I have a couple of these this year, and I've mainly done 12 teams before now. Do you treat the larger leagues any differently when there are more picks between rounds? I'm especially interested in early round strategies. I'd think it's pretty much best player available after the first few rounds. 

Keeper Leagues

All the keeper leagues I've done have been dynasty leagues. What are your strategies for leagues where you keep 1-3 players. How much do you move up younger guys like Elliott or Johnson. Would you take them over an often banged up guy like Julio in these leagues?

 IDP Flex

I've played in full IDP, but this is my first year with a couple of IDP flex leagues. Do you treat this like a redraft and grab your IDPs at the end or do you target top IDP players early?

 

[Ilov80s]

Larger leagues, you want to play it a bit more safe since the WW will have less players and more competition. So if you are deciding between Olsen and Reed at TE. In a 10-12 team team redraft league, I would take Reed every time because his upside is better. However. in a 14-16 team league I might lean Olsen because his safer. He has a more established track record and less injury history. Now you don't want to draft the world's most boring team ever. There are spots later where upside players are still good picks, just remember every team is thinner so there is more value to a guy that you can trust to get 60 yards in any given week, even if he isn't likely to ever do much more than that. 

 

[Mr. Irrelevant]

I'm not looking for specific advice on my teams, but general philosophy on these type of drafts. Do you approach the drafts differently? 

Larger leagues (14-16 teams)

I have a couple of these this year, and I've mainly done 12 teams before now. Do you treat the larger leagues any differently when there are more picks between rounds? I'm especially interested in early round strategies. I'd think it's pretty much best player available after the first few rounds. 

Keeper Leagues

All the keeper leagues I've done have been dynasty leagues. What are your strategies for leagues where you keep 1-3 players. How much do you move up younger guys like Elliott or Johnson. Would you take them over an often banged up guy like Julio in these leagues?

I've played in every league size from 6 to 32 teams, so maybe that colors my judgment a bit, but IMO there isn't much difference between 12- and 14-team leagues (unless you're playing a 2QB or superflex format, in which case QBs become significantly more important and should be drafted early and often). 16 teams is really where the scarcity factor starts kicking in at positions like TE and RB2, and I usually try to be among the first to grab my guy at a scarce position (e.g. I'll always be among the first to take my RB2 in a standard scoring 16-teamer as there are generally no more than 18-20 primary ball-carriers in today's NFL ... of course this applies a lot less in PPR, where you can find 3rd-down backs very late in drafts that will provide nice near-RB2 baseline weekly scores).

QB and TE in particular tend to be real scarce on the WW in 14-teamers and up, so make sure you have reliable backups at both positions coming out of your draft. If your benches are deep enough you might even consider drafting 3 of them, although in general I'm not a fan of the "drafting guys for their trade value" strategy.

Keeper league strategies vary wildly by the specific rules at play and I wouldn't do justice to the topic in a single post. In general, however, the greater the number of keepers and the more lenient the rules for keeping them, the more you should shift your board towards dynasty rankings rather than standard redraft rankings. So, in one league where I can keep guys forever at the same draft slot, I never keep a guy over 25 years old (I threw back AP at a 3rd-round cost to keep Ingram at a 16th, even though I fully expect AP to outperform Ingram this season) and spend the latter rounds of my draft throwing a whole bunch of darts at rookies and 2nd-year guys in the hopes of finding value in the out years. In keeper leagues where you don't lose picks, or lose your first x rounds of picks, the strategy is completely the opposite ... you want to draft guys who have been studs or you are pretty sure will be studs; there's no point in trying to find "value" among middling talent since it'll never make sense to keep a 4th-round or later equivalent guy.