Canon Fodder – Sports Blog

With fantasy football season fast approaching, Canon Fodder will be offering a few articles in the coming weeks on subjects ranging from the do’s and don’ts of drafting to the immutable laws of the NFL and fantasy sleepers for 2008. Three weeks from now even the most novice of fantasy players should be able to confidently stride into their draft safe in the knowledge they have a leg up on the competition courtesy of the Canon Fodder draft primer.

Part I of our primer will focus on what every fantasy team owner should be doing to prepare themselves for their draft. The efforts invested in August can pay dividends all the way through December as your team smites one opponent after another during the seventeen-week NFL regular season. An owner adhering to the following tips will be ready for anything draft day can throw their way.

The Do’s of Draft Preparation

Gain a thorough understanding of your league’s structure and scoring system – Fantasy leagues are like snowflakes in that no two are exactly alike. This is especially true with regards to scoring systems. Some leagues have bonuses for running backs eclipsing 100 yards and 300 passing yards for quarterbacks. Other leagues eschew yardage altogether opting for touchdowns and field goals. Some implement defensive teams. A few forward-thinking leagues even use individual defensive players. If you don’t understand how your league plays, you’ve little chance of being competitive.

Be wary of fantasy football magazines – That magazine you picked up at the local bookstore in the second week of August was likely put on the rack back in early July. Sure, the date on the cover says “August 2007” and if you’re looking for an actual publishing date, good luck finding it. Publishers go out of their way to hide the fact their material was out-of-date soon after ink hit the paper. Such is the Achilles Heel of publishing in the Information Age. Besides, with so much free content being available on the Internet, frugal owners have plenty of opportunities to glean current information without having to drop $7 on antiquities like printed media.

Create your own position lists – So you’ve gathered current cheat sheets and player projections and you’re ready to waltz into the draft, right? Wrong. Now it’s time to sit down and do some nitty-gritty research. Begin with the quarterbacks and go one-by-one through each position. Find a website with current depth charts and begin sorting your position lists. One effective way to create a position list is to break the list into six tiers: top-notch elite players (keeper-worthy), better-than-average players, starting players (average players with secured starting jobs), players in flux (guys battling for starting positions), the backups, and, finally, the youngsters. (This last group should be chock full of rookies and younger players still looking to make in impact in the NFL.) Breaking each position down into the preceding categories takes a bit of time but the resulting lists can help illustrate the value of drafting a top shelf wide receiver or tight end over an average running back mired in a platoon situation.

Reverse-engineer your team – Going into your draft without a game plan is akin to flying blind. Determine how many players each roster will end the draft with, factor in any possible keepers, then lay out a blueprint for your perfect team. How many QBs will you need? Two, three or four running backs? Between this team schematic and thorough positional lists, drafting a team becomes of process of fitting the most talented pieces into the areas of most demand. When you’re towards the end of your draft and looking to fill those last few backup spots on the roster, turn to the lists of youngsters. These players are the ones that occasionally turn to diamonds in the rough. Why waste these valuable spots on dilapidated journeymen when you could discover the next franchise cornerstone like Tom Brady?

Continually update your lists – Creating your position lists in a format like Excel allows for easy altering. Players get hurt. Others get promoted and demoted. Any list drawn up today will require some upkeep for a draft two weeks in the future.

So there are a few tips to get any fantasy player started on their way to a successful draft. Check back in over the next few weeks as Canon Fodder pops out a few more odds and ends to aid fantasy players in their quest for dominance.

Like what you’ve read so far? Tell a friend. Have a question, comment or observation? Let me hear from you. E-mail me at jeff@canon-fodder.com.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Canon Fodder, Fantasy Football, Jeffrey Petts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.