It’s Friday, New England , and a happy one at that! With an invigorating free agent period coming to a close soon, there is excitement in the air around Gillette Stadium as their first preseason game against the Jacksonville Jaguars is less than a week away! Today, though, I want to take a step back from all of that. I want to take you away to a realm that is majestic, controlling, and heart-warming. It has a special place in the hearts of millions of sports fans and the season is now underway to really start to get excited about a sport that requires wit, speed, and more than anything, a true understanding of what the ultimate goal is. Vince Lombardi once said, “Football is 10% physical and 90% mental,” or something along those lines. Fantasy football is no different.
The basis of fantasy football, for those one or two people that don’t know, is that you draft a football team of real professional football players from the NFL and you keep track of them from game to game. Their success (or lack thereof) determines a point amount in your fantasy football league as you play weekly against another fantasy football opponent. Some play for fun, some play for cash, but myself, I play for glory. If you’re reading this and you’re starting to get sick of it and feel I’m ridiculous, you should probably stop reading; I don’t want non-believers reading this anyway. If you are a believer and you know exactly what I’m talking about, then keep reading to see my draft strategy that might be able to give you that edge in this upcoming fantasy football season.
With my draft only two days away, I have been planning for it for nearly two weeks straight. Not in little increments either, I’m talking around eight hours a day of reading stats and updates that I feel will help give me the upper hand on my very competitive league. Yes, it’s true that I’m over obsessed with the game, but my own dad won the league last year. How do you think I feel about that? So here it is, my every situation draft strategy!
- Draft a running back
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| AP is dominant in Fantasy Football |
The NFL is changing more and more to a passing league. No more are the days of Walter Payton or Emmitt Smith running up and down the field. Now we have “committees,” or groups of running backs that take turns running the ball in different situations. The Patriots (six running backs on their current roster) are a perfect example of this strategy. Therefore it is imperative that you draft one of the few “pure running backs” that are left in the NFL. By this I mean Adrian Peterson, Arian Foster, Chris Johnson and Jamal Charles to name a few, players that are the running back for their team. Since there are so few of these players in the NFL (I’m pretty sure that I named at least half of them there) they must be your first round pick!
- Know your league
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| Andre Johnson is the best FF receiver. Period. |
My league has fourteen teams in it. Each team has seventeen positions to be filled (ten starting and seven bench spots). That means that in the draft there will be a total of 238 pick, making my league a very thin league. By that I mean there will not be a lot of depth at any position because there will be so many players taken so fast. In my league, therefore, it is important to control the wide receivers. Why? Because it is the largest category of good to decent players. If you can control the wide receivers in my league, the rest of the league will be begging for a trade with you. This changes based on league though. If you’re in a standard size league (usually ten teams) then the running backs are great to control for exactly the reason I mentioned in the above section. If you can take the majority of the solid running backs, you have an advantage over the rest of the league. My rule is if the league has ten teams or less, control the funning backs. If there are more than ten teams, do everything you can to get as many good receivers as possible.
- Don’t panic about your quarterback
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| OVERRATED!!! Except you Tom. |
In small leagues (ten or less) quarterbacks will last surprisingly long. Sure, you probably want to draft Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady with your first pick (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Tom drafted as the absolute first pick in the draft) but what’s the point when there are equally good fantasy players? Remember, fantasy football doesn’t give you points based on how clutch a player is or how good of a leader they are; it’s all about the stats. I usually pick my quarterback in the 4th round. This gives me time to get a good running back and a couple of good receivers under my belt without sacrificing my quarterback position. While quarterbacks may score the most points, they are often canceled out by your opposing quarterback. Accompany this with the fact that any quarterback can have a breakout fantasy season (Josh Freeman for Tampa Bay
Rookie or veteran, hopefully these three tips help you be more successful this year. Good luck and may the best team win!
I love lists! I was able to follow this without my eyes glazing over (a comment of my involvement with sports, not the quality of your writing, you're very good). The pictures are very well integrated now, as well. I had no idea that people spent so much time working on fantasy football teams! I suppose it's really no different than people watching television or playing World of Warcraft for hours on end. Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI would love your input for my fantasy football picks =)
ReplyDeleteSend them at me! Tell me about your league too, remember, you have to understand the league!
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