Fantasy Football!

webguy20

Alright folks I need some help.

I joined a fantasy football league at my work with a live draft. I know how the fantasy games work but I know NOTHING about the NFL. I'm a college sports kinda guy. Do any of you know any good sites that list who to pick, or good bets or things like that? Personal advice is always welcome too! Thanks a bunch.

RUNN1NGMAN

If you're doing your league through ESPN, the draft tool basically allows you to rack the available players by rating, and you can just pick the top player for each position available. That's pretty much what I do, because I also don't really have a lot of knowledge about the NFL at large. Sometime I'll draft a guy a few spots down on the rankings if I have a good feeling about him or a bad feeling about who's rated higher.

One thing I've learned from a few years of fantasy football is that everyone's roster is in complete shambles by week 3 anyway, so the draft is really not that important after the first few rounds when everyone is picking superstars. Also, depending on the size of your league there will still be plenty of good players available after the draft that you can pick up through free agency.

The most important part of the draft is having a plan and knowing what positions you want to fill first. Most people pick RBs first, I like to be a little crazy and grab the top QB. But I also suck at fantasy football

LavaKnight

Yahoo's roto-arcade is a pretty good general fantasy analysis site. They have one great writer (Behrens), and another good one, but you can probably find some recent articles about draft strategies, and more when we get closer to the season.

Also, Razzball is my favorite site for fantasy baseball. I haven't really looked at their football site, but I'm sure it's great advice.

Slagmire

ESPN and Yahoo are pretty good sources of knowledge on who to draft and typically around what rounds. Here are some basics though:

1) Kicker - Last round. I don't care how well he did last year.
2) Defense - Typically, you're going to draft them late because Defenses typically don't score all that many points in most fantasy leagues. Some suggest you only get one - I typically like having two (one sits on the bench), just so I can have the option of going with a better matchup.
3) RBs/WRs - There's actually a bit of debate on this issue. Typically, over the past few years, most fantasy gurus will tell you to draft a RB in the first two rounds. This year however, there is a more concerted opinion that the stud WRs are really limited. If you're picking somewhere in the middle to late in the draft order in the first round, after the top 5-7 RBs are taken, you may want to consider going WR/WR for your first two rounds.
4) TEs - Outside of maybe three, the production on TEs drops significantly, but there are a lot of sleepers in the TE ranks that can produce some pretty nice numbers and still be available later in the draft (I typically draft my TE somewhere between rounds 8 and 10 unless I snagged one of the stud TEs early).
5) Research, research, research - you don't have to go crazy, but reading up on players is important. If a player is injury-prone or a menace to society, you may want to consider not wasting a draft pick on that person (or at least, picking him later).
6) Mock drafts - Both Yahoo and ESPN offer free fantasy mock drafts and they're pretty helpful.
7) Rookies - most of the time, you don't have to worry so much about drafting rookies. RBs typically do a little better then most, and they're usually considered late round gambles.

truck-a-sauras

Slagmire wrote: »

ESPN and Yahoo are pretty good sources of knowledge on who to draft and typically around what rounds. Here are some basics though:

1) Kicker - Last round. I don't care how well he did last year.
2) Defense - Typically, you're going to draft them late because Defenses typically don't score all that many points in most fantasy leagues. Some suggest you only get one - I typically like having two (one sits on the bench), just so I can have the option of going with a better matchup.
3) RBs/WRs - There's actually a bit of debate on this issue. Typically, over the past few years, most fantasy gurus will tell you to draft a RB in the first two rounds. This year however, there is a more concerted opinion that the stud WRs are really limited. If you're picking somewhere in the middle to late in the draft order in the first round, after the top 5-7 RBs are taken, you may want to consider going WR/WR for your first two rounds.
4) TEs - Outside of maybe three, the production on TEs drops significantly, but there are a lot of sleepers in the TE ranks that can produce some pretty nice numbers and still be available later in the draft (I typically draft my TE somewhere between rounds 8 and 10 unless I snagged one of the stud TEs early).
5) Research, research, research - you don't have to go crazy, but reading up on players is important. If a player is injury-prone or a menace to society, you may want to consider not wasting a draft pick on that person (or at least, picking him later).
6) Mock drafts - Both Yahoo and ESPN offer free fantasy mock drafts and they're pretty helpful.
7) Rookies - most of the time, you don't have to worry so much about drafting rookies. RBs typically do a little better then most, and they're usually considered late round gambles.

great advice, but you didn't mention QB. this is one of the hardest choices of when to select. RB/WR should be a priority in the early rounds, but you'll see the Tom Brady's and elite QB's going early. If you drafted some strong WR/RB you can get away with having a mid level QB, but you have to know the WR/RB strengths of whether you should opt to grab a strong QB in an earlier round. This is where you get into just speculation and BS.

Slagmire

truck-a-sauras wrote: »

Slagmire wrote: »

ESPN and Yahoo are pretty good sources of knowledge on who to draft and typically around what rounds. Here are some basics though:

1) Kicker - Last round. I don't care how well he did last year.
2) Defense - Typically, you're going to draft them late because Defenses typically don't score all that many points in most fantasy leagues. Some suggest you only get one - I typically like having two (one sits on the bench), just so I can have the option of going with a better matchup.
3) RBs/WRs - There's actually a bit of debate on this issue. Typically, over the past few years, most fantasy gurus will tell you to draft a RB in the first two rounds. This year however, there is a more concerted opinion that the stud WRs are really limited. If you're picking somewhere in the middle to late in the draft order in the first round, after the top 5-7 RBs are taken, you may want to consider going WR/WR for your first two rounds.
4) TEs - Outside of maybe three, the production on TEs drops significantly, but there are a lot of sleepers in the TE ranks that can produce some pretty nice numbers and still be available later in the draft (I typically draft my TE somewhere between rounds 8 and 10 unless I snagged one of the stud TEs early).
5) Research, research, research - you don't have to go crazy, but reading up on players is important. If a player is injury-prone or a menace to society, you may want to consider not wasting a draft pick on that person (or at least, picking him later).
6) Mock drafts - Both Yahoo and ESPN offer free fantasy mock drafts and they're pretty helpful.
7) Rookies - most of the time, you don't have to worry so much about drafting rookies. RBs typically do a little better then most, and they're usually considered late round gambles.

great advice, but you didn't mention QB. this is one of the hardest choices of when to select. RB/WR should be a priority in the early rounds, but you'll see the Tom Brady's and elite QB's going early. If you drafted some strong WR/RB you can get away with having a mid level QB, but you have to know the WR/RB strengths of whether you should opt to grab a strong QB in an earlier round. This is where you get into just speculation and BS.

I typically equate QBs with TEs myself - there is a tier of superstars that typically get pulled up quickly (rounds 1-4). After that though, there isn't much differential between most of the QBs in the next tier and you can typically wait a little bit before drafting one. I typically like filling out my RB/WR starting lineup before thinking of a QB if I haven't drafted one of the elite QBs early.

Also forgot about the bye weeks. If you can, try and divvy up your players according to the bye week they have. You don't want to be stuck one week where both of your starting WRs are on bye, as well as one of your backups. Live online drafts will typically show that information to help you out.

Reiten

A lot of who you should draft and what position will depend on the scoring rules for your league and how many teams there are. For example, does throwing touchdowns count for 6 or 4 points? If 6, then drafting an elite QB higher makes sense. Do you get points for receptions? If so, a possession receiver who doesn't score much can still rack up a lot of points, especially in a large league where you have to draft beyond the elite players. Is it a keeper league? If so, drafting rookies in a late round might be good. etc etc

Jebus314

One of the best things to look up about player's your thinking about drafting is injury issues. For example if you are thinking about picking up westbrook as a mid to high second round pick, it is good to know before hand that he had major knee surgery last year, ankle surgery very recently this year, and is one of the older running backs in the league.