Introduction
Football is right around the corner and with it, fantasy football is also. We’re not just talking about any fantasy football league though, we’re talking about a Campus to Canton league. Below you’ll find numerous tips and information on how to build a strong foundation for your C2C league, and it will also give you a sense of urgency when thinking about your preseason preparations. After all, you never want to get caught off guard.
Draft Strategy
Everyone has their own draft strategy. However, it’s up to you to figure out what that strategy is going to be. You can organize your strategy according to position, according to the other members in your league, or you can use player tiers to set it all up.
Understanding Player Tiers
So, what are player tiers exactly? Well, player tiers are something that some fantasy managers use to tell which players are better than which without directly comparing. For example, Patrick Mahomes is a top-tier quarterback, so he’d be at the top of the list. Somebody like Jimmy Garoppolo might find himself in Tier 4. In your draft strategy, you could make it clear to yourself that you want a quarterback in the first three tiers, and don’t want to wait long enough to only be left with tier four signal callers. Tiers help generalize groups of talent, so you don’t have to constantly be sitting there weighing the odds of each individually ranked player.
Explanation Of Player Tiers And Their Importance In Drafting
As stated earlier, player tiers are what separates the good from the bad. There will be situations where you can’t decide upon two players, and with tiers, you might be able to figure out that one is listed far lower. It doesn’t decide for you, but it could help with your thinking/strategy. Now, their importance in drafting can only go as far as you take it. If you want to craft your entire strategy alongside player tiers, then they will be immensely important to how you draft your team. If you don’t utilize it, then you won’t see much importance to player tiers. This entirely depends on how much stock you put into the rankings.
Tips On How To Use Tier-Based Drafting To Maximize Value
Let’s say that you are all-in on using tier-based drafting. One tip that you can use is to know what type of position you value the most, and what position you value least. If you have great stock on the running back position, then you can make sure that you get a tier-one running back early on in the draft. If you don’t believe you need a strong quarterback to win your league, then perhaps waiting until there are only tier-four quarterbacks left on the board could be your ideal situation. Tier-based drafting goes hand in hand with the type of position you want to target, and the way that your league is set up.
Balancing College And NFL Rosters
Arguably the toughest thing about Campus to Canton leagues is balancing both the college and the NFL roster. When you’re trying to set everything up and get organized, the best thing that you can do is just spend some time each day looking over things. You don’t have to make sure everything is perfect in one day. If you have a month or two before the season starts, you can take a day to check our quarterbacks in both leagues, followed by running backs, and so on. Another tip would be to just spend equal time with them. Don’t give one more attention than the other. It’s easy to think that you’re competitive in one, so that deserves more attention. Both should get a few minutes a day to ensure that everything is correct.
Strategies For Balancing Short-Term And Long-Term Goals
This is a tricky one. On the one hand, you want to go all in and win a championship in either league. On the other, you don’t want to get too crazy and part ways with your young talent. This dilemma is why you need a strategy that is bold/confident but doesn’t push you to do anything crazy. You want to be aggressive in the draft, free agency, and the trade market. You don’t want to be overly willing to make deals though, especially if that involves what you believe to be the future of your roster.
Tips On Targeting Players Who Can Immediately Contribute And Those With
High Potential
Probably the toughest part for some people is understanding the difference between players that will immediately impact your roster, and ones that will take some time to develop. Immediate-impact guys can usually be found often. Sometimes they are in the form of a veteran receiver that is heading towards the end of his career yet will always give you consistent fantasy points. High-potential players are the ones who might not be doing much fantasy-wise right now, but you know that they have what it takes to become quality players in college and the NFL. So, despite them not performing much, you hold onto them and wait for their chance to shine. The best tip to give here is that you should always be looking for both types of players. Don’t just get high-potential players, and don’t just target impact guys. You want to get a great mixture of both, to constantly have youth on the roster, and to constantly be competitive with the immediate contributors.
Research And Analysis
Research and analysis come after you finish the draft and you’re waiting for the season to begin. This is the time to go over your entire depth chart, see what positions you feel are weak, which ones are strong, and how deep your bench is.
How To Leverage Matchups And College Schedules
Leveraging matchups and taking advantage of college schedules is easy to accomplish. Leveraging matchups is all about knowing the opponent. For example, you have a superstar wide receiver who’s going against the toughest college football team in the nation. You might think to bench him straight away. However, deeper research could show that the team he’s competing against gives up the second most points to opposing receivers this season, despite being so dominant. There are deeper statistics like that to help you make decisions and choose who to start. Looking ahead at schedules can help you as well because a player might have such an easy-looking schedule down the line, that you would think twice about dropping them from your roster.
Studying Depth Charts
It’s always best to have a strong understanding of what your team looks like. Some too many people draft their teams, don’t look at them until football is on, and try to play it out that way. While that works for some people, it doesn’t for the majority. Looking at your depth chart and figuring out the weakest and strongest positions are vital to long-term success. It helps you plan for your waiver wire targets and possible trade targets and gives you an early indication of where your team might stand in the middle of the season.
Importance Of Understanding Team Depth Charts
To hammer this idea home, you need to know the importance of team depth charts. Being familiar with your own is superbly helpful in itself, but it also helps you know other teams’ depth charts and what they might need. If you know that you’re going up against a team with a weak quarterback room, it could help you plan your moves and try to target waiver-wire quarterbacks so that they don’t have available backups. This is just an example, not the only advantage of knowing team depth charts. The bottom line is that understanding team depth charts can take some time, but it gives you an entirely new perspective on your team, and other teams when you figure it all out.
How To Identify Potential Breakout Players Based On Depth Chart Positions
Every single position on the depth chart has different indicators of breakout players. For tight ends, you want the player to see the field a lot. So, what are the indicators that they will continue to get snaps? The best indicator is that they are a great blocking tight end because coaches love when tight ends can go out, block, and catch passes. For potential breakout players, you want a great pass catcher who isn’t a liability when they need him to block. The same can go for running backs, as coaches love to see them catch passes out of the backfield and throw a couple of blocks for their quarterback as well.
Monitoring Training Camp Reports
When training camp kicks off for the NFL, you’re going to hear a million different team reports. There will be so much noise on players who are standing out, players who aren’t, etc. These reports are usually incredibly impactful to how you can manage your team, as they give you a deeper understanding of potential breakout players and those who are falling into a slump.
Key Factors To Look For In Training Camp Reports
The most important things to look for in training camp reports are the two things already mentioned, players that are beginning to break out, and players that aren’t doing well. If you have a star player on a team, and a training camp report comes out to state that they aren’t performing well and have even had trouble showing up on time, then it can force you to look for a backup option just in case. If the training camp reports that a player is having an incredible training camp so far, doing everything right, coaches love him, etc., then there’s a solid chance that he’ll be a hot commodity in fantasy sooner rather than later.
How To Use This Information To Adjust Your Draft Strategy
When you begin your draft, it is worth keeping an eye on training camp reports. They could give you indications that you should stay away from a few big-name players, while also shining a light on an underrated player that not many other fantasy managers might know about. Let’s say that you’re getting towards the end of a draft, and you are looking for some late-round value players to target. Then you remember that this one receiver has been getting unbelievable praise throughout all of training camp from their team. You can quickly grab them with the hopes that they live up to the new expectations, and the best part is that the rest of the league might find out about him too late.
Mock Drafts
Some mock drafts are done alongside the computer making selections for various teams, and other mock drafts are done against real people, all looking to get the same practice as you are. They are relatively easy to set up and join, and you can do them as many times as you would like. Believe it or not, these fake drafts can dramatically help you reach your full potential by the time the real thing comes around.
Benefits Of Participating In Mock Drafts
Where to begin on the benefits of participating in mock drafts? Well, the first place to start is that you can get a feel for when players will be taken. If you have your eyes on this one underrated player, then a mock draft can help you figure out when that player is normally targeted. The same goes for a player that is incredibly talented and well-known. Another benefit of these mock drafts is that you can test out your different draft strategies without any consequences. If you don’t like one, no worries, just jump into a different mock draft and try another.
How To Simulate Real Draft Scenarios To Test Your Strategy
How would you be able to simulate real draft scenarios in these mock drafts? Simple, you can join a mock draft against the computer and organize the draft positions just as you would like. You can also change the positions that are available to be drafted, to get a feel for how things can go. It doesn’t matter what type of draft strategy you are entering with; a mock draft can help set up that exact scenario for you so that you will never be caught unprepared again.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, you want to remember a few key points. You want to be sure to check your team depth charts to get a better feel for how your team is set up, you want to create a solid draft strategy possibly centered around tiers, and you want to be sure that you utilize mock drafts to get a feel for various scenarios in the drafting process. If you’re looking to have a successful draft and a successful year in the league, then you can utilize some of this information to put yourself in great situations to do just that.