Fantasy Football Tips for Draft Day

Draft day. Perhaps the most important day of your fantasy football season. This is when you build your team. This is when you laugh at your opponents when they pick an injured player. This is when you find gems in the 7th round who outperform players picked in the 3rd. In other words: don’t screw it up! Let’s go over some advice that you should follow on draft day:

1. Have your own cheat sheets! I can’t stress this enough. So many people use the rankings that their draft software uses (a la Yahoo), without noticing that they have not updated it to reflect recently injured players. Also, your scoring system is not reflected in pre-made rankings. If your receivers gain one point for each reception, that will have a huge effect on the placement of possession receivers. Use the given rankings as a basis, but alter them to reflect injuries and scoring systems.

2. In a local league? Don’t draft your local players. It’s a natural tendency for fans to overrate players on their favorite teams, so if your league is based in St. Louis, you would probably have to overpay to get guys like Bulger or Holt. Hype them up the weeks before your draft while conversing with the other owners, and then sit back and laugh when your favorite play gets picked three rounds too early.

3. Serve lots of alcohol at the draft…and don’t touch it! Let your buddies confuse Luke Staley with Duce Staley, while you remain unimpaired. Although most will be fine after a couple drinks, it’s simply not worth the risk. Any slight advantage you can get is worth it, and if just one owner accidentally skips over a player because of the drinks, you’ve done your job. Remember kids, don’t drink and draft!

4. Keep track of everyone’s picks. Online, this shouldn’t be a problem, because your drafting service will likely do it for you, but it may be a difficult task in a live draft. However, it’s worth the troubles. You may be thinking, why bother? Simply, it gives you the ability to pass on certain players you know will be available later. For example, you’re picking 8th in a 10-man league, you are ready to take a kicker, but there’s also a deep-sleeper RB on the board. By looking at your notes, you notice that the guys with the 9th and 10th pick have already taken kickers, and would have no reason to pick another. Therefore, you can safely take the sleeper RB, confident that your kicker will be there when the draft swings back around.

Although this isn’t the complete guide to building a championship team, these simple tips will give you the edge, which might just score you a few key players that might eventually make a huge difference.

Mark G is a fantasy football veteran, who has played for many years and won his fair share of championships. He runs Fantasy Football Spiral, a free site that offers fantasy football strategies, rankings, predictions, a forum, and more. If you need even more resources to win your league, check out the site and you won't be disappointed.

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