Fantasy Football 2012 Primer, pt. 5: Drafting Guidelines

Let's cap this off with a look at a few of my guidelines for drafting in fantasy.  In reality, fantasy football is heavily based on luck, but as with any game of luck, there are ways to play the odds and put luck on your side.  My guidelines don't really change much from year to year, as they aren't based as much on the crop of players and are based more so on the drafter (you!).  Here we go.

The League: very funny show, heavily based on fantasy football.

1) Draft who you want, whenever you want: It might seem simple, but don't let the ESPN or Yahoo! or whoever rankings influence you too much.  If you're sitting there in the second round and you don't like the "recommended" pick, and there happens to be a guy who might be there in the third round when it's your pick again, but might not, go grab him now.  It's that simple.  You're naturally going to be much happier with a team of players that you wanted from the start, rather than a group of guys you picked because "it made sense with the rankings".

2) Don't draft a kicker until the last round: Even though I just gave you rule #1, this is the one policy I have from year to year.  Statistics show that the difference between the guy who finishes first among kickers and the guy who finishes fifteenth among kickers is generally insignificant.  They are the most unpredictable part of fantasy and there is greater value in drafting sleepers or solid backups before picking up your kicker.  As the season progresses, the waiver wire will fill with guys who average 2-3 more points per game in the kicker spot so if the kicker you draft is that bad, you can replace him.  For example, Stephen Gostkowski of the Patriots is the #1 ranked kicker this year.  If Brady and the gang are scoring touchdowns, Gostkowski's production is gonna fall and naturally, he will not have been worth picking up before the last round.

3) Keep an eye on the trends during your draft: Following along with rule #1 again, keep an eye on possible trends before your pick comes up again.  If there's a run on RB's or WR's, the guy you wanted two rounds from now might not be there if you wait, so you should go ahead and grab him now.  I do want to note that it would be nice to not have to fall victim to drafting trends, but rule #1 is first for a reason, and trends will sometimes dictate that you reach with your pick a little bit.

4) If you need to, take your entire draft time to make your pick: Whether your pick lengths are 60, 90, or 120 seconds, feel free to take all of the time you need to pick.  I know, others in your league might get annoyed if you're doing this constantly, but ideally, you're using the full frame of time to plan ahead a little bit as well.  Be courteous, but don't cave in to complaints either.  They're allowed to take the full amount of time too.

So that'll do it for this series.  If I do this again, I'm gonna get it started a bit earlier in the summer, as I felt a bit rushed in research.  I felt the quality of my presentation may have suffered a bit because of that as well.  Let me know if this was helpful for you or not; I'd love to continue it from year to year (probably in a smaller amount of entries).  Good luck on your drafts and your league this year!