Every single fantasy football draft feels massively important. Why is that? Well, that’s because it can determine the next few months of your football experience. Nobody wants to come away with a bad fantasy draft, and that is why we’re here to help you out with that.
Early, Mid, And Late-Round Strategies
The early rounds of a draft are the most important, by far. These are the players that you are cementing as the core of your team. If you’re in a dynasty, these are the players that will give you a chance at a championship. If you’re in a standard league, it’s the same thing. If this is a rookie draft, then these are the players that will build you up. Whatever the scenario, you want to take this seriously. So, one great strategy would be to look into talent, position, and situation. More often than not, running backs are the most valuable, and they usually get taken rather quickly. Targeting a running back with elite talent and opportunity (Saquon Barkley perhaps) would be ideal. You can even take multiple running backs early on to lock in that position group as a strength. In my experience, stacking up on running backs is never a bad idea, you just have to ensure that you’re taking the right ones.
In the middle rounds, it is all about finding the forgotten gems. This is the area of every draft where other managers collectively forget certain household names. Or maybe they don’t forget, but everybody collectively just doesn’t want to be the guy to draft them. This is where you can swoop in and steal the show. Being able to study and bring in extensive draft knowledge will help you tremendously in the mid-rounds because those forgotten players can be league changers below their ADP.
For the late rounds, you want to look really deep. Of course, you still want to find those forgotten gems that other managers forgot in the middle rounds, but more than that, you want to look for future opportunities. Otherwise known as the sleepers. This year, we saw that a lot with Chuba Hubbard of the Carolina Panthers. He was consistently a super late-round pick due to the team drafting Jonathan Brooks and boasting Miles Sanders in an already bad offensive system. Fast forward to now, Hubbard won managers many championships this season. That is what value can be like late in the rounds, and it’ll never hurt to target a couple of these sleepers. However, don’t take all sleepers, you’ll still want to fill the roster out with solid bench depth to avoid relying too heavily on starters.
Balancing Risk And Reward
Unfortunately, risk and reward play a massive part in any type of fantasy draft. There are going to be opportunities where you can play it safe, and others where you can try something innovative. For those in dynasty leagues, this comes in the form of trades. Perhaps you can trade down in one round to gather more capital later on because you feel confident in getting a player you love down the line. Or maybe you love a high draft pick, so you give up multiple assets to go get them. Either way, balancing that line is crucial to success.
Besides making trades, risk and reward are integral in a normal draft strategy. If you want to go into a draft by taking four running backs, go for it. You will be set in the position for the entire year. However, the risk is that the rest of your position groups will be more vulnerable, and it’ll be difficult to fill the gaps effectively together. Then again, if you’re able to snag some of those forgotten gems along the way, maybe this can be a perfect draft for you. It’s all a give and take.
There will also be situations where you want to draft a specific player. Let’s say it is Alvin Kamara. And when you get up for your pick, you realize he’s still available. But, at the same time, you realize that David Montgomery is also available. You can stick with your head and take Kamara, OR you could draft Montgomery because you know he was projected to go earlier, hence having a higher risk of being gone before your next pick. Whereas Kamara might still be there. This is the risk and reward that I’m talking about because risking one over the other and still getting both is how you win leagues.
Targeting Positional Value
I briefly touched on this earlier, but I want to go deeper here. Positional value is huge and heavily reliant upon the type of league that you’re competing in. For example, I’m in multiple fantasy leagues. In one of them, wide receivers are the most valuable asset to have because our scoring is favored toward receptions. Of course, this makes wideouts get drafted significantly earlier than in another one of my leagues where running backs are far and away the most important due to how much they touch the ball. The first thing you should do is look through your scoring numbers and then figure out the position that holds the most value.
Once you accomplish that, it’s time to weigh the positives and negatives of targeting certain positions and when. Some people draft quarterbacks high, but there’s a drop-off. You might want a guy like Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson early, though would want to wait significantly longer when they’re off the board so that you can grab a guy like Jared Goff. You want positional value, so there isn’t a point in taking Goff in the second round simply because you made up your mind that you wanted someone like Allen, and he wasn’t available. Running backs are targeted early for the most part because there aren’t many three-down play starters in the NFL anymore. Grabbing those workhorses early makes the position group super weak down the line, so the value will be more flushed to the beginning. These are the things that you need to focus on and take into account while the draft is going on and while you’re scouting.