Draft Fantasy Football Strategy 2012
Know your preliminary order. Having the first pick in the first round and the last pick in the second will require a very different strategy than picking about halfway through each round. Prepare for both possibilities.
Know how many teams are in your league. Eight, ten, twelve, even fourteen leagues of teams provide different depths of available talent. 196 players will be selected in a 14-round, 14-team league versus 112 in an 8-team league.
Know the first three rounds of your league’s draft. Hint: They’ll look pretty much the same for any league, so let’s cover the first three rounds of a standard 10-team draft.
Quarterback Aaron Rodgers plus running backs Ray Rice, Arian Foster, LeSean McCoy and Chris Johnson will be, in some order, the first five picks. Franchise RBs are more scarce than ever, so forget picking up WRs early. The QB pool is also deep. RBs Jones-Drew and Trent Richardson, plus QBs Brady and Brees, are deadly locks to complete the first round. WR Calvin Johnson sneaks in.
If you have “switch” picks (last pick on first, first pick on second), make the most of them – take talents that complement each other. A better QB or WR plus the best RB left would be a huge compliment to each other. So would a formidable backfield duo of Matt Forte and Darren McFadden.
RB Forte, McFadden, Fred Jackson and Ryan Matthews go out in the second round of any competitive league. Quarterbacks Cam Newton and Matt Stafford have proven to be elite and go to the second round of any ten-team league. WR Julio Jones, Wes Welker and Andre Johnson finish the round along with RB Ahmad Bradshaw.
If you only have one RB after the first two rounds, you should get one in the third. Expect DeMarco Murray, Frank Gore, Marshawn Lynch and probably Michael Turner to be available in leagues of 10 or fewer teams. The elite QBs and WRs worth skipping a RB for are gone, and after this round, so will any RBs you want in your lineup.
If you have two RBs and a WR or QB after the first three rounds, focus on the WRs. Five teams already have quarterbacks, so their competition for the remaining talent is light. Going for an elite TE in the fourth or fifth round will do wonders for your roster. He can still come back for Romo, Rivers, Dalton, Cutler or any of Manning later.
Pick a RB like Mark Ingram or Darren Sproles in the middle rounds, but be smart in these rounds and trend, don’t chase. If you can’t get a higher TE, get a higher D/ST. Most people won’t pick two TEs, so second-tier players will still be around. Likewise, if you don’t get a top D/ST or kicker, leave those positions until the late rounds. They’ll probably be on waivers for week 5, anyway.