It’s that time of year again, and if you have already had your draft you are a little bit behind the eight ball…but that is for later. Let us start basic.
If you are serious about drafting then there are a number of different ways you and your friends can decide to draft your teams.
1: Like a girl, you can chose the members of your team by selecting them on how cute their mascots are. CDS does not recommend this strategy, unless you know absolutely nothing about football and your dimensions are 36″-24″-36″.
2. Set auto live draft and sit back and watch because you have not learned a thing in the last four years of being in your Fantasy League.
3. Live Draft
4. Auction Draft
And many more that we don’t really care about. The reason we would suggest you and your friends waiting til this week to do your draft is for situations like Chad Johnson at Miami, or the endless amount of injured players that you currently have on your teams that you now have to find crappy players for. So hint #1, wait til the near end of the preseason for your fantasy draft.
LIVE DRAFT:
Most men you ask about the live draft will tell you that you really only have one way you should go about it. That’s not really everyone’s style though. CDS has a couple of ways to follow. First you can do what everyone else does and choose the running backs first, a great receiver then your QB in the third or fourth round. Then relax a bit and start filling in the rest of the best players as you go, fill your bench, defense and finally ending with you Kicker(if you even draft one). The other way, which I think is hilarious, is to draft the #1 QB in the first round and watch everyone FREAK OUT! Everyone always has their picks in a specific order because that is how everyone has always done it. This gives you the ability to still get a great running back because half of your league will bite and start taking QBs. CDS as a whole would suggest the former method, because lets be honest, it has the potential to really screw up your draft as well.
So to make a rash generalization, the first three to four picks are crucial in a live draft. Pick #1-Top 10 running back, Pick#2-Top 10 running back or receiver, Pick #3-Top 10 running back or receiver or QB, Pick # 4-Top 10 QB/receiver/TE. After that it is all your own gut. However some helpful hints would be things like don’t pick more than one “roll of the dice” pick, meaning do not fill your bench with a lot of hyped up rookies. Also stay away from old injury prone players. Perfect examples would be players like Antonio Gates and Vernon Davis who are top tight tend picks, however they have quite the history of missing games because of a “sprained toe” or something equally ridiculous.
AUCTION DRAFT:
All sarcasm aside, the auction draft literally has two major ways to make your picks, aggressive and non-aggressive. We will attack the aggressive draft first, once you all have a basic understanding of this type of draft.
When choosing players in an auction draft every member of the league starts with the same amount of money (Lets say $100). When it is your pick, you select the player and the starting price that everyone in the league then bids for said player. After the pick is selected a count down begins, when the time is up the highest bid gets the player. Pretty simple.
When selecting players aggressively you go for the best players and bid a large chuck of your money for each. For an example, Aaron Rodgers $38, Arian Foster $37 and Roddy White for $25. Now you’re $80 in the hole with $20 left to buy a crap load of mid-ranged to low-end players. Not a bad way to go since you have three of the top five players in the respected positions. Your later picks will be $1-$3 each and the waiver wire will be your friend come week one.
Non-aggressive will be the exact opposite. When selecting non-aggressive you will be selecting players after the aggressors are done with their first two to three picks. You will spend and even amount of money on most of your players but, this strategy has the bonus of being able to outbid the aggressors in the later rounds for the “good” not “great” players.
Both ways have their strengths and weaknesses, we leave it up to you on which one would work best for the players you have pre-selected to draft.
Now that you have some of CDS’ hints and strategies, we hope all of your BBQing, beer drinking, smack talking drafts go as well as ours have and are going to be later this week. So Dudes, good luck in the 2012 Fantasy Football Draft.
