Fantasy Football Draft Geek

My final drafts are in the books. No major occurrences in either so I wont recount the details. After all.... 99.9% of the drafts are done at this point and it's time to look forward to the start of the season!

The biggest question for all of us, now that the drafts are over, is "Who do I start week 1?"

The answer to this is really no different than the decisions we had to make while organizing our drafts. The two essential parts of ranking players, whether for the season or week by week are:

1. Projections
2. Scoring System

Any online league worth its weight should have a set of projections and should automatically apply your leagues scoring to those projections. Your works is done... right? Well it is if you trust those projections. All of my leagues use yahoo, which I believe is a very good league manager. That being said, I don't necessarily trust Yahoo enough to be my sole source. After all, the rest of the players in my league have the same data. Where is my edge?

Because of this, I use Yahoo's projections (and my gut) as a starting point.
I then turn to yet another of my spreadsheets. I update this spreadsheet with weekly player projections, as well as a "Settings" worksheet that contains all of my leagues scoring systems.
In this settings tab, I have a select list that contains the names of all of my leagues.
This can be done by going to data/data validation and using the following settings


The Source which is "=Leagues" is a named range I have that contains the different leagues.
Below this select list I have the scoring rules. The first column uses a HLOOKUP on the leagues and settings to retrieve the settings for the selected league:


Now that we have the current settings it is a simple matter to apply them to the projections.

With this extra set of projections I have multiple sources to consider when setting my lineup.

I realize that this post may be a little late for those of you who have already drafted. For those of you who have not this post may have come just in time!

In my opinion, the single most important thing you need to know going into your fantasy football draft is the impact of your leagues scoring system. As part of my research I typically compile projection for all “draftable” players. How I do this is another conversation, but it is what I do with those projections from league to league is what I’d like to focus on.

There are any number of variations that can be defined in a league's setting. Each commissioner has his or her own preferences and it is important you understand the impact of those going into your draft. Not only does this affect the order of player rankings, but it affects where you draft a position in general. The best way to drive this point home is a real world example using two leagues I am in this year.

Here are the basic scoring systems for the two leagues:


Based on the above, we can guess that League A rewards Wide Receivers and receiving Running Backs more based on the PPR and lower Receiving Yards Per Point. League B rewards Quarterbacks more based on the lower Passing Yards Per Point and higher Passing TD value. While all this is true, it is hard to really get a sense for the magnitude of this difference based solely on the numbers. The magic happens when you apply these numbers to your projections and graph it out. Yes, there is something about a graph that makes everything so clear! So, here are the above leagues graphed out against identical player projections.




To say that League B favors Quarterbacks is an understatement. There is a much greater point dropoff after the top QBs are gone. League A (my favorite league by the way), does a great job of really evening out the positions, making for a much more interesting draft.
If you graph out your projections against your leagues scoring you are very likely to pick out an anomaly in your leagues scoring system that other drafters may not be aware of. That edge could be enough to push your team to the next level!

I had my second draft this past weekend. Overall this draft went a little smoother than the first.

This is very QB heavy league, which I knew going into the draft. My goal going in was to get a QB from my top tier (consisting of 4 QBs). I was picking 4th of 14 teams. Tom Brady, Drew Brees and Peyton Manning were gone before my second pick (not unexpected). This left Aaron Rodgers as the lone QB in my top 4. Based on Rodgers' Average Draft Position (ADP) I was pretty confident I could get him as my next pick. I decided to go after a top WR, which were also starting to go fast. Ironically my next ranked WR was Greg Jennings. I grabbed Greg and sat and prayed until the next pick. Turns out my gamble was rewarded and I landed Rodgers in round 3. My one mental mistake in this draft was not grabbing a backup QB. The one thing I have going in my favor is that this league has a very shallow bench. Because of this, I expect players to often drop and pick up based on their own needs. My hope is that a quality backup QB will be dropped, that I can snag.

Here is a copy of the draft board.


Note: If you like this draft board template, you can get it for free below. If you have any comments on my draft or on this draft board template, post a comment!

I had my first draft this past weekend and what a complete debacle that was.

The owner decided to allow 18 teams to join. If you know anything about fantasy football that is WAY too many.
When there are that many teams, there are usually just not enough players to go around. (Note: I say "usually" for a reason.... keep reading).

In addition to that, the league is an auto-draft. If you've read my previous posts on auto drafts you know I am not a fan of them.

To compound the problems of this league even more the owner could not make his mind up regarding the scoring system. He had been tweaking it every other day or so leading up to the draft. I thought all was good as I had checked 4 hours or so before the draft and no changes. Around 11:45pm (draft was to start at midnight) my spidey-sense started tingling so I logged in to check everything before the draft. Sure enough, a couple hours prior, the owner completely changed the league scoring to a Point Per Reception (PPR) League. This make a huge difference in player ranking so I frantically began reranking my players. I make it about 30 players down my rankings (saving every other change) and I am locked out... The draft is complete. I gasp, prepare myself for the worst and head over to check out the draft results.

I was pleasantly surprised when, all things considered, I ended up with a halfway descent lineup!! Turns out the last second PPR change may have actually helped me.

My first 3 picks are guys who typically have an added advantage in PPR leagues.
I drafted in the #1 spot I was able to get Maurice Jones-Drew. I know, I know... everyone has anointed Adrian Peterson as the automatic overall #1. However, given this is a PPR league, my projections actually show MJD with a slight advantage.
For my 2nd and 3rd picks I snag Reggie Bush and Wes Welker.

I think what really helped me out this draft are the owners who did not understand the concept of ranking their players for an autodraft.

Here is a copy of the draft board. If you take a look you will see what I mean.


Note: If you like this draft board template, you can get it for free below. If you have any comments on my draft or on this draft board template, post a comment!

Last year we had some players from out of town that were not able to make our live draft. That is when I came up with the idea to use a Google Spreadsheet. The great part about Google Docs is that it allows multiple people to make changes to the same document simultaneously.

I was able to type in everyone's picks as they were made. The players a few states away were able to instantly see the changes on the draft board and then type in their picks when it was their turn.

This template allows you to type in a players name followed by a "player designation" and it will automatically color your draft board based on the players position. example: "Adrian Peterson - RB".

Hey, nothing will replace the feel of putting a sticker on a board, but how can you beat a FREE draft board! If you have the need for something like this, give it a shot and let me know what you think.

Ok... wow. I dropped this blog like a bad habit last year.

Rather than give a week by week breakdown of the remainder of last season, I will just get to the important stuff... The results.

I would say by anyone's standards I had a descent season last year. I was in three leagues in and won 2. (2nd place in the other). Not too shabby at all.

Well preparation has already begun for this upcoming season. Only time will tell how often I post.
If you stumble across this blog and are interested in it... post a comment!