Fantasy Football Draft Geek

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.

Well... Draft #2 is in the books.

This league is a 10 team, Point Per Reception League (PPR). I was lucky enough to get the #1 draft pick. At first I was very excited about this since I was able to grab LaDanian Tomlinson with my first pick. The problem I had with picking first is that players never seemed to drop to me, or I felt like I had to make a pick too early for fear it wouldn't be there next time around. Aside from picking my QB hunch too early (David Garrard in the 7th round), I feel like I had a pretty good draft.

My strategy going in was to avoid the high priced QBs and go for more of a QuarterBack by Committee approach. The reason I opted for this strategy is that due to the scoring for this league, QB is not a high scoring position. Also this league rewards rushing a little more. Because of this David Garrard (more of a Rushing QB) ended up ranked 5th on my QB list. I knew based on my research that David Garrard is usually drafted late 8th round or early 9th. Because of my draft position I was not sure I would be able to get Garrard on the last pick of the 8th round. Since Garrard was pretty much a center piece of my strategy for this league I opted to jump the gun and grab him in the 7th round (1st pick). This, as expected, was met by many taunts. The same people who taunted me for taking Tony Romo in the 10th round last year!! We know how that ended up.

All in all I feel the rest of my draft went fairly well. Here are my picks. Feel free to let me know what you think!

1-1 LaDanian Tomlinson
2-10 Larry Fitzgerald
3-1 Larry Johnson
4-10 Plaxico Burress
5-1 Calvin Johnson
6-10 Tony Gonzalez
7-1 David Garrard
8-10 Julius Jones
9-1 Ronnie Brown
10-10 Chris Johnson
11-1 Vikings Defense
12 - 10 Jake Delhomme
13 - 1 Javon Walker
14-10 Sidney Rice
15 -1 Reggie Williams
16-10 LJ Smith
17-1 Steven Gostkowski
18-10 Jacksonville Defense

Well, my first draft is in the books!

If you read my last post you know that this was an online draft in which many people allow yahoo to pick for them based on a ranking list. As I mentioned in that post, yahoo picks starting lineups first and then fills in the bench. This means that kickers and defenses go WAY early.

I knew this would happen and came up with the strategy to pretty much take whoever was left at the end. I wanted to take my defense on my second to last pick, but I ended up taking it a couple rounds sooner because surprisingly Yahoo's logic started picking backup defenses before I had one!

This league has 14 teams (bigger than I prefer). I was picking in the 11th spot... a spot which I really dreaded until my first pick came up. The biggest shock of the night was that Tom Brady was still available at the 11th pick! A complete no-brainer. The reason this happened is because Brady was listed at #9 in yahoo's default rankings and the 10th and 11th picks in front of me were actually logged in, and intentionally passed on Brady. I personally do not believe Brady will repeat last year, but there is no denying he is an excellent QB and represents great value as the 11th pick.

In this league QBs are also more important than any other position (yes including RBs). In my analysis of the scoring system of this league, I realized that QBs score way more points than RBs and after the top 4 QBs there is a major dropoff in points. My strategy going in was to obtain one of my top 4 QBs. I thought at 11th pick I could grab Peyton Manning at that position... To my amazement Manning was taken before Brady. If both had been taken (as I was fully expecting) I probably would have taken the best RB and on my board and grabbed a QB with my second pick.

As with any draft, there are things you wish you could change. The pick I "might" want back was my TE. From my analysis, TEs actually score the least amount of points in this league. As expected (because of yahoo's draft logic) TEs started going way to early. In a panic, I chose to take the top TE on my list (Jason Witten). I don't necessarily regret this pick as I think he will have a good year. I think however I could have nabbed a perfectly decent TE a round later and had a little better depth... only time will tell.

For those that are curious here is my team in the order they were picked:

1-11 - Tom Brady
2-4 - Maurice Jones Drew
3-11 - Plaxico Burress
4-4 - Lee Evans
5-11 - Matt Forte
6 - 4 - Jason Witten
7 -11 - Julius Jones
8 - 4 - Nate Burleson
9 - 11 - Philip Rivers
10 - 4 - Chris Johnson
11 - 11 - Colts
12 - 4 - Sidney Rice
13 - 11 - Ben Utecht
14 - 4 - Shaun Suisham

Overall I think I did pretty well.... Keep in mind this is a 14 team league, so the team may not look as good as your 8 - 10 team league.

Time will tell... time will tell

I apologize for the lack of posts recently. My first fantasy football draft is coming up this Friday, so I am scrambling to make sure my research is in order and I am ready to go. This is my first year in this league so I am a little unsure of the competition.

It is an online draft. I prefer a live draft (actually sitting in a room with people), but I will take this over a auto-draft any day. I was talking to a friend of mine who has been in the league for a couple of years and he says only about half of the people even log in to do the draft. The other half just lets the site pick for them based on the rankings they provide.

This is an absolutely horrible idea for them... but great for me, since I will be facing them. The league is run using Yahoo. Here is my understanding of the logic Yahoo uses when drafting based off a members rankings:

1. It will pick the highest ranked player on your list who has not been selected.
2. It will fill your starting lineup first!!

#2 is an absolutely horrible idea. Think about it...
Say you have to start 2 RBs, 2WRs, 1QB, 1TE, 1DEF, and 1 K.
Since yahoo will fill your starting lineup first, you will actually pick your defense in the 7th round, and your kicker in the 8th!! This is an absolutely horrible idea. I never pick a defense before the 10th and the kicker is always my last pick of the draft.

Another thing I dislike about this league so far is how early the draft is. In an ideal world you will have your draft as close to the beginning of the regular season as possible. A lot can happen between now and opening day, including a dreaded season ending injury for your #1 pick. I am praying nothing like this happens... but it is certainly possible.

I will be posting again soon to talk about the process I use for my player projections.... So stay tuned. Also I will be sure to post the results of this draft to let you know how I faired.