You would think I was playing the game for years, but this fall will only be my third.
I first started Fantasy Football when I was offered a spot on my office league in 2006. After joining some failed leagues in college, I was still interested enough to actually see what Fantasy Football was all about. I have to say that in that magical year I was hooked. I didn’t know anyone in the NFL and it showed in my first ever Fantasy Football draft. Many mistakes were made, whether it was drafting Clinton Portis the day he was injured in training camp or drafting Mark Brunell as my #1 QB (I must of tried to get all the Redskins) who later got benched after nine games of sucking. I ended up close to last place that year but I already caught the bug- I was going to come back next year and not embarrass myself.
Well last year I certainly prepared for the draft- I read everything I could on players and mock drafted until I knew who were the top picks to get. I started off strong last year but then ran until a tough mid-season where I ended up missing the playoffs by a win. I blame last year on first pick Shaun Alexander. I stayed with him too long while keeping an unknown rookie named Adrian Peterson on the bench. My opinions on Alexander are now rather low- I’m not touch him again, I’d rather play LaMont Jordan (which I often did last season- wow no wonder I did bad, I played LaMont Jordnan!?!)
This year is going to be different. With a couple of years of experience under my belt I’m ready to breakout like a third year wide receiver who’s finally mastered the offensive scheme.
The first step is preparation for the draft. I read a lot last year but this year I now have a good idea of how to efficiently and effectively prepare myself for the upcoming season here’s an outline of my draft preparation roadmap:
- Player Projections – There’s two books I want to review before I rank a single player. The Pro Football Prospectus is an annual preview of the upcoming football season. It includes stats and projections of players and teams using formulas and math similar to Sabermetrics in baseball. I figured I’ll browse through and get myself familiar to different player situations and exceptions. I’ll also use a lot of the knowledge I’ve read from David Dorey’s Fantasy Football The Next Level: How to Build a Championship Team Every Season. Diana bought it for me last year for Christmas and it’s been really helpful in learning how to study and project a player’s future performance. I’ll prolly read up and then find some time to lock myself away for a day and form some opinions.
- The Fantasy Experts – After forming my own ideas then I’ll be ready to compare them to what the so called “experts” have to say. A lot of sites have tons of draft kits and articles including ESPN, CBS Sportsline, Yahoo! Sports, Fox Sports, Sporting News, The Huddle, FFToolbox, and KFFL- a long list I know but at least it’s comprehensive!
- The Draft Strategy – One of the things I learned from reading Dorey’s book was the emphasis on drafting based on your league’s scoring system. What types of players excel in your league’s scoring format? I’ll be sure to take a minute before drafting to figure that out using some cool charts and graphs- it wouldn’t be geeky if I didn’t try some math!
- Mock Draft – It’s nerve wracking when you have 90 seconds or less to make pick a player. Like last year I’ll be participating in a few mock drafts to get a feel for where players are getting taken and to get used to being, “on the clock”. This year a lot of sites are offering free mock drafts including, CBS Sportsline, ESPN, and The Sporting News.
Four steps to the start of another action packed season. It seems simple but I’m curious to see how my new revised preparation schedule will do. I plan on preparing for the draft in August so we’ll see how it goes.
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