One of the most intimidating parts of playing fantasy football, especially for rookies, is the draft. How do I make sure I make the correct selections in the correct order? How do I avoid making a dumb move that becomes the joke of the 2013 season? The answer is proper research and preparation. As with any other aspect of life, the more prepared you are, the easier it will be to execute your game plan and do so with confidence. This article aims to provide you with guidance on why preparation is important, when it makes the most sense to prepare, and how to do the research and preparation itself.
As we have already mentioned, the preparation of the draft is somewhat obvious. The more you know about the players entering the draft, the better your decisions will be and the confidence to do so will be high. There is nothing worse than jumping into something unprepared. If you’re really ready, you’ll know which players you want to select, what order you want to select them in, and which players you want to avoid entirely.
The timing of the research and preparation phase is also an important factor in being ready for your fantasy football draft. You don’t want to start the investigation too early, as many preseason events could make player values very fluid. Waiting until the last week or two might also be a bad idea, as a lot could come up in your day-to-day life and you’ll be forced to pack in a lot of information in a short amount of time. We recommend starting at least 30 days before your draft, and we’ll describe an ideal system later in the article. For the NFL season that begins the first weekend in September, fantasy football drafts are typically held in mid to late August. This puts the preparation from mid to late July. This proposed moment gives you enough information to know where free agents have signed, the status of off-season injuries, or any other important team-related issues.
We now move on to explaining the actual process of preparation and research. This has been proven multiple times by many fantasy football gurus we know.
Step one is to start watching or reading NFL-related ESPN or other news sources as regularly as possible. This keeps you informed on key news from the highest profile players in the league. Don’t feel like you need to go overboard and only watch sports channels. Just keep an eye on what seems to be the biggest news. Also, feel free to start this before the previous 30 day mark.
second step is to make your preliminary cheat sheet guides. Print multiple (at least 5) draft cheat sheets listing all available relevant players by position for the current NFL season. They are usually free and can be found on almost every major website dedicated to fantasy football. Be sure to find the cheat sheet ratings that correspond to your specific league rules (ie standard scoring, IDP or PPR format).
Step three it’s a really fun step and it really gives you a preview of how your draft will flow, and that’s the mock draft. Mock drafting is essentially a group of real people who meet online to review mock drafts live to get a sense of what a standard draft will look like on actual draft day. To get started, choose an online mock draft platform and register an account to get started. This is where cheat sheet prints come in. Before your mock drafts, make notes on your sheets to indicate the players you want by position in a certain order. Run the mock drafts and craft according to your preliminary grading sheets. Indicate who you recruit and in which round.
Step four It’s for tuning. Now that you have a pretty good idea of how the draft will flow, start going through your printed cheat sheets to rank players again. We recommend sorting each player by level (ie Elite, Cool, and OK). This will give you the final outline to take to your draft day.
The above four-step process is only a recommended guideline and there is no doubt that the preparation and research phase of each person’s draft will be slightly different. Whether you follow these steps or not, the key to a successful draft is being ready and confident. Do what makes you feel good about getting to draft day without hesitation or doubt.