How do we draft?
It's a constant theme each summer. Every year I share my two cents on everything ranging from research to in-draft strategies to targeted players.
But there are no universal "best practices." There are schools of thought, but no unifying theory--or at least, no theory that 100% of fantasy managers can get behind. A couple years ago, a notable fantasy analyst wrote that RB-RB is the standard best practice for starting a draft. I might have written on this blog the next day (or maybe just thought about writing) that while absolutes might make fantasy more digestable, they don't necessarily make us smarter or better.
Yesterday I was thinking a lot about this topic. What makes one theory "better" than another? Why do we adopt some perceived best practices, and not others?
As always, I really want to hear your thoughts on this--on how you draft. And yes, that means what you look for in rankings, or in research, or in player profiles. But it also means, literally, "how you draft." You're in a room (or maybe outside), your laptop open with several tabs in the background. You've made notes. Your preferred rankings are . . . somewhere. You can't remember, but you read through them a couple days ago.
Or you're a very, very serious drafter. You pre-set your rankings in the online system. You've made a list of players you want if they fall to you. You've even sketched out a rough 6-to-7 round plan that hopefully will give you a QB, three RBs, one or two WRs, and a TE, before you turn your attention to handcuffs, rookie WRs, and a high-ceiling backup QB.
I wish I could say my draft is a magical hour-and-a-half of perfectly executed decision making. I wish I could share that while my opponents stress about what to do, I'm always in control and one step ahead of the competition. Players falling to me like donuts parachuting from the sky. Well-earned bliss after months of preparation.
Nonsense. Every year I try to figure out the "best" way to achieve this, and every year I fall well short. The rankings I've developed each preseason are the rankings I use for my draft. They reflect how I think. They layout and colors help me figure out which players I should target, and when. But it still isn't right. There's no perfect system. It's still me in the draft room, my over-confidence and fallibilities culminating in some kind of love-hate therapy session with myself, nodding my head cooly with every "smart" move, or clenching my fist after drafting Mike Davis in the fifth round.
Last night I took yet another crack at my top-400 rankings, walking through the pain points of past drafts. What did I need that I didn't readily have? How can I better track the entire player universe--and not just the next 10-20 players on my list?
If you're a PFN Pass or Touchdown Pass subscriber, this morning you can see the results. It doesn't look like much. Just one more column in a sea of rows and columns. But it aims to keep me focused when I draft a starting RB. I call it "Tandem Targets." Using some Google Sheet formulas, I've set up the spreadsheet so that next to Josh Jacobs' name, you'll see "Zamir White. Rank: 122. ADP: 214. This tells me that I'm mich higher on Jacobs' likely handcuff than the market is. So if I draft Jacobs, I'll be able to immediately assess an ideal round to draft White.
There's a law of diminishing returns with all this. The more columns, the more cumbersome the rankings, and the harder it is to fully utilize when it matters most. So maybe this was an evening not well spent. Or maybe it could become a regular feature. It comes down to draft behaviors: the information we cling to, and the information we wish we had at our disposal . . . and nothing too complex. There's a sweet spot in there.
What's your approach? What do you have that you don't need, and what do you need that you never seem to have?
---
Sign up for my 2022 Fantasy Draft Rankings ("PFN Pass") or 1:1 Advisory Services ("Touchdown Pass"):
https://pass.profootballnetwork.com/
It's a constant theme each summer. Every year I share my two cents on everything ranging from research to in-draft strategies to targeted players.
But there are no universal "best practices." There are schools of thought, but no unifying theory--or at least, no theory that 100% of fantasy managers can get behind. A couple years ago, a notable fantasy analyst wrote that RB-RB is the standard best practice for starting a draft. I might have written on this blog the next day (or maybe just thought about writing) that while absolutes might make fantasy more digestable, they don't necessarily make us smarter or better.
Yesterday I was thinking a lot about this topic. What makes one theory "better" than another? Why do we adopt some perceived best practices, and not others?
As always, I really want to hear your thoughts on this--on how you draft. And yes, that means what you look for in rankings, or in research, or in player profiles. But it also means, literally, "how you draft." You're in a room (or maybe outside), your laptop open with several tabs in the background. You've made notes. Your preferred rankings are . . . somewhere. You can't remember, but you read through them a couple days ago.
Or you're a very, very serious drafter. You pre-set your rankings in the online system. You've made a list of players you want if they fall to you. You've even sketched out a rough 6-to-7 round plan that hopefully will give you a QB, three RBs, one or two WRs, and a TE, before you turn your attention to handcuffs, rookie WRs, and a high-ceiling backup QB.
I wish I could say my draft is a magical hour-and-a-half of perfectly executed decision making. I wish I could share that while my opponents stress about what to do, I'm always in control and one step ahead of the competition. Players falling to me like donuts parachuting from the sky. Well-earned bliss after months of preparation.
Nonsense. Every year I try to figure out the "best" way to achieve this, and every year I fall well short. The rankings I've developed each preseason are the rankings I use for my draft. They reflect how I think. They layout and colors help me figure out which players I should target, and when. But it still isn't right. There's no perfect system. It's still me in the draft room, my over-confidence and fallibilities culminating in some kind of love-hate therapy session with myself, nodding my head cooly with every "smart" move, or clenching my fist after drafting Mike Davis in the fifth round.
Last night I took yet another crack at my top-400 rankings, walking through the pain points of past drafts. What did I need that I didn't readily have? How can I better track the entire player universe--and not just the next 10-20 players on my list?
If you're a PFN Pass or Touchdown Pass subscriber, this morning you can see the results. It doesn't look like much. Just one more column in a sea of rows and columns. But it aims to keep me focused when I draft a starting RB. I call it "Tandem Targets." Using some Google Sheet formulas, I've set up the spreadsheet so that next to Josh Jacobs' name, you'll see "Zamir White. Rank: 122. ADP: 214. This tells me that I'm mich higher on Jacobs' likely handcuff than the market is. So if I draft Jacobs, I'll be able to immediately assess an ideal round to draft White.
There's a law of diminishing returns with all this. The more columns, the more cumbersome the rankings, and the harder it is to fully utilize when it matters most. So maybe this was an evening not well spent. Or maybe it could become a regular feature. It comes down to draft behaviors: the information we cling to, and the information we wish we had at our disposal . . . and nothing too complex. There's a sweet spot in there.
What's your approach? What do you have that you don't need, and what do you need that you never seem to have?
---
Sign up for my 2022 Fantasy Draft Rankings ("PFN Pass") or 1:1 Advisory Services ("Touchdown Pass"):
https://pass.profootballnetwork.com/