So your draft day is coming up and you need to prepare. Snake drafts involve a fair share of luck and opportunity, but that doesn’t mean you want to go into one without knowing your stuff. Odds are if you’re playing fantasy football you’re doing so on one of the big online hosts, ESPN, Yahoo!, etc. They’re sure to have plenty of information and listings and a draft kit. Be sure to read them over.
Once you’ve done your basic research, gotten to know this year’s studs and potential studs, you need to make your cheatsheet. You can’t formulate a strategy without a cheatsheet to work from. Most big fantasy football sites have cheatsheets available for download, but I recommend you study several of them along with on-going pre-season news and make your own based on everything you know. Listing them by position makes finding the right guy easier than a big list of everybody together.
1st Round
Now to the real strategy work. The reality of fantasy football is that runners are the most valuable player in your line-up. In real life football, running backs get less significant every year, but in fantasy they’re #1. Why is this? Well it’s a matter of economics. In fantasy football quarterbacks tend to score more points than their running back counterparts, but there also tends to be a good quarterback available for every owner in a ten team league.
Let’s use ESPN fantasy football to crunch some numbers. In 2009 the top fantasy quarterback Aaron Rodgers scored 327 points, while the tenth best quarterback Donovan McNabb scored 223. That’s a pretty big difference! But Aaron Rodgers is actually an anomaly, the 2nd best QB, Drew Brees, scored 280 points, a much more realistic score to expect. (Note: Just because Aaron Rodgers’ production was an outlier last year, doesn’t mean that on draft day you should think he won’t repeat it. He’s a scrambling back who could easily get 50 to 60 points just running with the ball.) And while Donovan McNabb only scored 223 points, the 9th best QB, Roethlisberger, scored 257; Donovan underperformed a bit so let’s exclude him too and use Big Ben instead.So the difference between the best starting quarterback and worst starting quarterback (throwing out our outliers) was just 23 points. That’s only 1.4 points a game! Of course if you were the lucky/smart guy who landed Aaron Rodgers, or the unlucky/not as smart guy who landed Donovan McNabb, the difference seemed more important. But most owners don’t bank on getting the break-out, 300+ points a season quarterback, nor do they believe they’ll end up stuck with that last, underperforming quarterback either. And remember, economic markets aren’t truly based on math; they’re based on psychology and the perception of the math.
Now let’s look at running backs. Last year Chris Johnson led the pack with an astounding 329 fantasy points. Down the list at #10 is Steven Jackson at 180 points. But again, the leader on our list is a bit of an anomaly, the second best running back was Adrian Peterson at 265, so let’s use him instead. The difference between Adrian Peterson and Steven Jackson is 85 points. That’s 5.3 points a game, which counts as a big difference in fantasy football. The difference between Adrian Peterson and the 5th best runner Thomas Jones (221 pts) is 44 points or 2.75 points per game. That’s not as bad, but still more of a difference than we see in our quarterbacks above.
And what this drop-off between the best running back and the tenth best running back means is owners feel like they might get shut out in the running game if they don’t get a top guy. Only six runners broke the 200 point mark in 2009, meaning four owners couldn’t have even owned one of them. And in most leagues you get two running back slots in your starting lineup, so even if you do get the #1 guy, you have reason to take another great guy if he’s available with your second pick. You can see, rapidly declining quality along with 20 starting RB spots in a standard league adds up to running backs being a scarce and therefore very valuable commodity.
This is why if you get a top draft spot in the first round, you are strongly advised to take a running back. In 2010 there are four top running backs available, Chris Johnson, Adrian Peterson, then a slight dip to Maurice Jones-Drew and Ray Rice. If you get a top four pick, you’re probably planning to get one of these guys. It’s the sensible thing to do.
But what if you don’t get a top four pick? Common wisdom seems to be toward taking one of the next three running backs: Steven Jackson, Frank Gore or Michael Turner. There’s some sense in this, all of these guys easily have the potential to top 200 points, and even have the potential to earn up to that magical 250 point line. On the other hand, they also all have the potential to underperform themselves down to the average 170 to 180 point range. And if you spend your top draft pick on a running back who only scores 180 points this season, you’re liable to feel upset.
So there’s another option, take a top tier quarterback or wide receiver. This year there are two quarterbacks, Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers, and two wide receivers, Andre Johnson and Randy Moss, who are viable for this strategy. The idea is, these guys have so much potential for fantasy points over the rest of their field, that they’re more valuable than a second tier RB.
As I mentioned before, last year Aaron Rodgers scored 327 points, while the next highest guy only scored 280. That’s almost 50 points! Now he did throw for a little over 4,400 yards, which is a lot. And he did scramble for 5 touchdowns, which is also a lot. But neither number is unsustainable. Normally if a quarterback throws well over 4,500 yards (like Drew Brees’ 5,000 yard season in 2008 or Tom Brady’s 4,800 yard season in 2007) you can’t expect a repeat. It just takes a certain twist of fate combined with a hot streak to throw for over 4,500 yards, and you can’t expect it two years running. But when you’re an elite QB, throwing for 4,300 to 4,400 yards two years in a row isn’t impossible, nor is it impossible for a scrambling quarterback to get three hundred yards rushing and five touchdowns in consecutive years. It would be best to temper your expectations for Rodgers down to the 310 to 320 range, but that’s still awesome.
Drew Brees is a Super Bowl MVP, and that’s a lot of what you’re paying for with him. Last year he was the #2 QB with 280 points and I have a feeling he’ll score somewhere between 270 to 280 points this year. I know some projections have him topping 300 points, but I don’t see it. He’s not a scrambling quarterback so he needs to make his points in the air, and I don’t think he’s due for a 4,700 to 5,000 yard throwing season next year. There’s just some basic trends with quarterbacks and if you look at Drew’s year-by-year stats 2010 doesn’t look like a break-out year for him.
Andre Johnson and Randy Moss are both the top receivers on two very pass heavy teams. Many are projecting them as possibly posting 210 points each this year (a little bullish in my opinion.) But if he stays healthy Andre Johnson should break 200, which could make him a bigger producer than some later first round runners you may end up stuck with. And that means he could outscore the “average” starting WR by 50+ points over the course of the entire season.
If you’ve got one of the early picks in the second round you’re going to want to round off whatever pick you got in the first round. If you got a top quarterback you can grab a top wide receiver now. Or if there was a run on the best WRs, you can grab a still potentially great running back. When you think about fantasy value for a player over an imaginary “average” player at his position, getting a top 1-3 quarterback or wide receiver is going to be better than getting an 8-10 running back, so just keep that in mind.
In fact keep that in mind while I tell you, this year ESPN did an analysis of fantasy drafts for the past ten years or so to determine which draft position was the best. They found the top three positions were first, second, and tenth. The guy with the tenth pick usually got the third best value over the coming season after the players actually played. The reason was because the tenth guy gets back to back picks and frequently takes a great QB and a great WR. Watch in your drafts, the guy with the sixth pick often will take the 6th best RB and then in the second round after the elite QBs and WRs are gone, will take another RB. This just doesn’t tend to work out well. Although people are starting to smarten up.
Part 2...
Part 2...
