We’re ready for the biggest fantasy football draft weekend of the year. You need some quick-hit advice, some swing shouts if you will. Here’s the digestible but useful advice you want to hear before you start building your masterpiece.
General Draft Strategy
ADP gets a bad rap. It’s a rough approximation of what the players cost in drafts, and that has meaning. I never adjust the player order in a draft applet, though I might maintain a list on the side; I want to know what names my rivals are looking at.
If you can pick your draft slot, focus on something in the top of the first round. The talent pool quickly gets flat in the second round, where you can’t separate most of the players. There are more defined small clusters of talent in the first round.
Come up with a draft plan, but consider it a sketch in pencil. The first rule of all of this is to stay flexible. You don’t know what lovely opportunities might surprisingly come available during the draft.
Bye weeks are nothing but a tiebreaker for me. Letting bye weeks significantly affect draft decisions is usually a mistake. If you want a tiebreaker, take the player with the later bye. Your roster is going to look much different in the second half of the year.
More often than not, I find Strength of Schedule analysis to be of little value. Too much is unknowable. Too much changes in-season; it’s a snow-globe league. If I’m going to apply any SOS analysis to my drafts this weekend, it will only be on the extremes, with the outliers. Atlanta’s schedule looks marshmallow-soft — let’s definitely take that seriously.
If a player is already dealing with a major injury, I’ll probably let someone else draft that player. Injury optimism is not your friend, and in fantasy football, you shouldn’t go looking for injuries — they’re going to find you anyway. I realize you might have IR slots and they’re likely open at the moment, but that never lasts for long. Nick Chubb and T.J. Hockenson are essentially not on my draft board. It’s no fun to draft like an actuary, but it’s prudent.
Try to draft players on the front nines of their career, players on the escalator, players who probably haven’t had their best season yet. Occasionally I’ll be open to a boring older veteran if the price makes sense, but you don’t want a roster of back-nine players, especially at the non-quarterback positions.
Listen to everyone you respect, but make your own decisions. It’s your team. You know your league and situation better than an outsider could.
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Be sure to regularly refresh your player queue while drafting. This will cover you if you get bumped offline in the middle of a draft (just don’t have those late-round sleepers at the top), and it will keep you mindful of names you want to be aware of.
Partnering up is one of the best fantasy cheat-codes there is, provided you can find someone with a similar NFL worldview. If your level of interest and sophistication isn’t roughly equal, it likely won’t work out. But when the fit is right, it’s very powerful. Plus, you always have someone engaged with the team, someone to share the experience with.
It’s okay to have a few picks who are mostly floor-driven, but upside is more likely to matter for our purposes. No one wins the Masters making 72 pars.
The best league format is the one you and your friends enjoy most. There are no right answers here. When I’m tasked with setting up a league, I prefer a league that starts more players because I think it rewards depth more and irons out variance more. But please, you do you.
I also prefer Salary Cap drafts to standard Snake Drafts because I like anything that allows for a wider diversity in roster building. I also want a chance at any player in the pool, and I welcome the challenge of having to directly defend and bid against the entire room.
Draft players or bid on players because they fit your roster needs. If you’re more focused on messing up your opponents, especially in a Salary Cap draft, it’s very easy for it to blow up in your face. I’m not saying it can’t be fun to mess with your opponents, but unless you really know what you’re doing, it’s a dangerous game. You’ve been warned.
Positional strategy for 2024
I’m not taking a vanity quarterback this year. The pool is absurdly deep with so many interesting candidates. In Superflex formats, I’m often the latest to draft my QB1 but the first to draft my QB2. That’s also not a bad idea even if you only start one quarterback a week.
At the draft table, I’m generally not taking running back insurance. Obviously I’ll draft a handful of running back lottery tickets — no matter what your preferred build, every smart manager does that. But don’t double up on the teams. Early on, you want to play for the big inning. Later in the season, when team RB rooms are more defined and your personal situation is more defined, the insurance might make sense. It’s not something I chase in August.
If your league starts at least three wideouts (or perhaps more, with flex considerations), I probably want the best WR room in the league. If your starting requirements are something like two running backs and two wideouts, the RB position steps up in importance. Most of my builds will focus on the Hero RB approach, where you land one signature runner somewhere in the first 3-4 rounds but focus on the other positions with early picks. I’ll pivot from this if the overall starting requirements are thin.
Tight end is deeper than usual for the first 10 players or so, then falls off a cliff. This doesn’t mean you need to be early to the position, but you at least need to semi-prioritize it. If your league has 12 managers or more, do not be the last team to address the tight end spot.
In the middle of the summer, it often makes sense to eschew a kicker or D/ST pick in lieu of another contingent-value upside pick. However, this close to the start of the season, forget this gambit. There’s not enough time for much major news to hit in a week. Just fill out all of your starting spots.
My Picks, Pans, Targets, Fades, Advice
We’ve worked on this all summer. Here’s my playbook.
— My Guys
— Big-name fades
— Tight End Tiers
— Team Power Rankings (with plenty of player commentary)
Draft like a champion today. Make this your season to remember.