Everybody wonders how to develop the best fantasy football draft strategy. You can see here that I ended up with a pretty decent team and the overall second-best draft in our league, scoring an “A-” grade, according to Yahoo.(It should be noted that the person who got 1st place was auto-drafting, so it may be little more than immodest bragging) Congrats Yahoo, apparently you rate yourself pretty high…
Anywho, I wanted to share the strategy I used to achieve (human intelligence) dominance in this years draft. Follow this short set of rules and you are on your way to ruling your league, as far as the draft goes, that is.
1. Be randomly selected to get first pick. This sounds easy, but it’s a real skill to be randomly selected to go first. Then taking the overall best rated player (according to Yahoo), McCoy, seems like the obvious play, but sometimes you have to avoid thinking.
2. Fill the major slots to get top talent in the first 5 rounds. Don’t load up on RB’s and WR’s and then be left with only the crappiest QB’s, and the dregs of TE’s. My first 7 pick order was RB, QB, WR, WR, TE, RB, DEF.
3. Don’t lock into a set strategy once the draft starts, you need to respond to what others are doing. If nobody has taken the plunge yet, go ahead and scoop up the best defense (Seattle) before anyone else.
4. Scorch other players if you can. For instance, the TE pool was getting low, and I knew my brother in law, Paul still didn’t have one yet. He won the league last year so I’m not pulling any punches, so I go ahead and grab Heath Miller as a backup even though I already have a TE. He was pissed because he was just about to pick him, so not only have I weakened his team, but I know he may be willing to give me a sweet trade later on in the season for Heath Miller.
5. Don’t get emotionally invested and never watch any football games. If you see them play, they will be humanized to a degree, and your capacity to empathize will soon increase. Soon you will be making emotionally-charged, irrational decisions. It’s best to think of them as numbers on a piece of paper. Be a cold and stoic fantasy football technician, unflinching, uncompromising and ruthless. Mwaahhahaaha!
Disclaimer: I barely watch football, know little about fantasy football, and can barely feed myself. But, I was randomly selected to pick first in 2 of the last 3 seasons, so I seem to have that figured out. I am not liable for any damages that could result from you foolishly following my advice.