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Fantasy Football 101By
Brandon Anderson Hey everyone, welcome to the world of fantasy football. Glad to have you here, and I just have one question – where you been? Seriously, I’ve been ballin’ now for over half of my lifetime, and it’s about dang time you showed up. Yeah I know, you’re new at this and don’t know exactly what to expect. No worries! I’ve got 15 simple rules to save you on draft day. We don’t have a lot of time, so let’s get started… 1. Don’t be “that guy” who takes a quarterback in the first round. You’re right, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are two of the best – if not the two best – players in the entire NFL. And you can’t win a Super Bowl without that star QB, right? Just ask the Chicago Bears. But this isn’t the NFL, this is fantasy football. And yeah, at the end of the day most fantasy QBs are going to end up with high point totals, but that’s just it. There are a lot of really solid QBs in fantasy football. And you can win with an average one or two later, because the point difference between the best and the next tier isn’t always so huge. I’ve had many drafts in my lifetime where I never even touched a QB until the 7th or later and did just fine. So don’t be “that guy” who calls out Donovan McNabb at the end of the first round. Even if McNabb has a good season – heck even a great one – the rest of your league already knows you are clueless before you’ve even opened up your first beer. 2. Recognize the value of running backs, but don’t overdo it. The rookie fantasy player takes a QB in the first. But the guy who is one step up is the one who goes overboard on the RBs. Let me explain. You can type “fantasy football” into Google and get a couple million hits at least. All but about two of them will cram RB-RB-RB-RB down your throat. Go RB early and often!! Don’t miss out on the stud RBs!!! The RB is the center of the universe!!!!! Okay, seriously, we get it. Running backs are absolutely important. I would say that you’re probably in tough shape if you leave the first two rounds without taking one, and you’re crazy if you don’t have one in your first three picks. And I’ll almost always draft a backup before I fill out my last WR spot or my TE, sometimes even before I take a QB. But the point is that you don’t have to take a RB with every one of your early picks just because most of them are valuable. Not every RB will pan out, and not every RB selection early on is a good one. If you’re taking a RB just to grab another one in the second round and passing up Peyton Manning or a superstar WR like Steve Smith, you are probably making the wrong choice. Value them – but don’t overvalue them. And for heaven’s sake, don’t draft RBs with your first 4 or 5 picks straight. Every year in one of my leagues, some guy tries it. He thinks he’s thought ahead and will corner the market – not a bad strategy, right? Only now the rest of his team is so awful that the whole league has him cornered because he has to make a deal just to field a starting lineup that doesn’t include Eric Moulds. So get a couple RBs early, but don’t go overboard. 3. Don’t even think about drafting a kicker or defense before the 8th round. The early defense is a dead give away of a newbie fantasy baller. But defense wins championships!! NFL, my friend. Defenses take up roster spaces in fantasy football. Okay, it’s not that bad – it can definitely be a good thing to have a top defense. But it is never a good idea to draft one under any circumstances, no matter how good you’re sure they are. For one thing, the top fantasy defenses from one season very rarely repeat to the next year. They may not fall dramatically, but don’t expect Baltimore and Chicago to automatically finish 1-2 in your league again this year – but I bet they’ll be the top two off the board. And I bet two people will draft them too early and look like idiots. The best strategy is almost always to wait until late and draft a pair of defenses, matching up the schedule as you go. Baltimore is great, but they still play Cincinnati twice a season. Wouldn’t you rather play Buffalo’s defense against Cleveland one of those weeks? If you choose wisely, you can pick two average defenses, match up the schedules, and turn them into one pretty good defense. Or if you’re even more bold, you can just grab a new defense off waivers each week and play the matchups. Kickers are even less valuable than defenses. Yeah they will score a bunch of points, but so will the rest of the kickers. I wouldn’t even think about sniffing a kicker before the 11th round. The top kickers almost never repeat even in the top five from year to year. Let your buddies burn their early picks. There’s an easy formula for a good kicker – find a team who will be in position to score often but does not quite enough fortitude to punch it in. Robbie Gould last year… Neil Rackers the year before… easy stuff. 4. Don’t be the guy at the end of a long run at the same position – start a new run. Every draft inevitably has a few long runs, and the run always goes just a few guys too long every time. Don’t believe me? The first run will be the obvious one – the RBs in the first round and beginning part of the second. We’ve already been over that one – don’t just force yourself into taking a decent RB in the mid to late second just to have one. You’re much better off taking Steve Smith or Chad Johnson and starting a new stud WR run. The next run will usually be a group of WRs that lasts from the middle of the third until the middle or end of the fourth. It starts out nice with guys like Anquan Boldin and Javon Walker, and then it continues with some more good picks in Donald Driver and Marques Colston. But before too long, you’re sitting near the end of the fourth panicking that all the WRs are disappearing and you quickly scoop up Darrell Jackson or Deion Branch, convincing yourself they’re as good as the rest of those guys above. Don’t do it. You’re far better off taking one of the RBs available, someone like DeAngelo Williams, Marion Barber, or one of the rookies. The TE run may or may not happen depending on your league, but it usually does. I don’t know when it will start, but as soon as someone takes the second TE, you can bet a huge group will follow shortly thereafter. It’s not a bad idea to try to get someone like Todd Heap, Jeremy Shockey, or Tony Gonzalez. And a few will follow that up with Kellen Winslow and Alge Crumpler – still not bad. But pretty quick, someone’s going to try to convince themselves into pretending like Chris Cooley, LJ Smith, or Jason Witten are even close in value to that list of guys and take them a round too early. People, come on – half the league has a TE now, just wait and get one a bit later! The bottom line is that you don’t want to be left scraping the bottom of a barrel. Take the value elsewhere. 5. Watch those bye weeks. This is another common rookie mistake in fantasy football. Look, every team in football has a week off. When you go to your draft, just print out a list of bye weeks and bring it with. There’s nothing worse than finishing up a big draft, looking over the roster the next day, and realizing your star WR, your kicker, and both your RBs are all off the same week. Hey, the fantasy football season is short. You probably only have 12 or 13 games, so it’s a pretty bad idea to just mail in a game like that. It’s not too difficult to just space out the bye weeks. Put it this way. Usually when it’s your pick, you are looking between a few guys each time. Just look at the bye weeks and it will help you narrow things down. Like everything else, don’t take this rule to an extreme. You drafted LaDainian Tomlinson #1 overall and are set on spacing out all of your bye weeks so you never have more than one starter on a bye. But it’s come to your fourth pick and you realize in astonishment that no one has taken a TE yet – Antonio Gates is still there! Hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. That’s just too good of value to pass up. You can sacrifice the bye week problem. Just don’t target Philip Rivers in the 7th, okay? Alright, that’s five rules to live by as you start out your fantasy season. Check back the rest of this week for two more installments of five rules each. By the end of the week, you’ll be rockin’ and ready to go! | |
