Secrets to Drafting the Best Team

Is your fantasy to win at fantasy football? With the NFL season-and fantasy football season—just weeks away, here are five key tips for building a successful fantasy roster…*

Grab exceptional wide receivers in the first two rounds of the draft. If you were building an actual NFL team, your top priority might be to obtain a top-flight quarterback. But in fantasy football, top receivers such as Calvin Johnson (Detroit), Dez Bryant (Dallas), ­Demaryius Thomas (Denver), AJ Green (Cincinnati) and Julio Jones (Atlanta) tend to be even more valuable. While a well-chosen second-tier quarterback can supply nearly as many fantasy points as a top quarterback, the very best receivers tend to provide significantly more points than lesser ones. Tight end Jimmy Graham (New Orleans) also is a reasonable early-round pick.

Exception: If the top receivers and Graham are already picked, it is OK to use a high-round pick on a top running back instead. Running backs can be just as valuable as receivers in fantasy football, but they’re more injury prone and therefore less reliable.

Draft high-workload and/or ball-catching running backs. Fantasy rules tend to favor durable running backs who get lots of carries. Less valuable are running backs who typically split carries evenly with another back…or who play for bad teams (bad teams often trail by more than a touchdown in the second half, forcing them into passing plays rather than running plays).

Examples: Jamaal Charles (Kansas City), LeSean McCoy (Philadelphia) and Matt Forte (Chicago) are the very best fantasy running backs. Other fantasy running backs worth relatively high-round picks include Adrian Peterson (Minnesota), Marshawn Lynch (Seattle), Eddie Lacy (Green Bay) and Doug Martin (Tampa Bay).

After the top running backs are taken, look for second-tier backs who catch a lot of passes, such as Reggie Bush (Detroit) in round three or four. Pass-catching backs often are overlooked by owners who are focused on rushing stats.

Rookie Bishop Sankey (Tennessee) could be a good choice in round four or five. Tennessee’s QB Jake Locker often dumps the ball off to his running back because he can’t find a receiver open downfield.

Consider a run-oriented quarterback from a second-tier NFL team. ­Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay), Peyton Manning (Denver) and Drew Brees (New Orleans) are the top three fantasy QBs and are worth taking if they’re still available in round three—but they’re often snapped up by then.

If so, consider using a mid-to-late-round pick on a QB on a not-great team who is quick to tuck the ball under his arm and take off down the field. These “scrambling quarterbacks” might not be especially effective in the NFL, but in fantasy, their rushing yards can help make up for their unimpressive passing stats. Scrambling QBs on lesser teams are particularly worth seeking out ­because they could rack up lots of passing and rushing yardage—and thus lots of fantasy points-late in games when their teams are far behind and their opponents are happy to give up quarterback runs and short-pass ­completions.

Example: EJ Manuel (Buffalo) should be available late in most fantasy drafts.

Or pick a different QB off the waiver wire (see the box below) each week based on who is expected to be in a high-­scoring game. To determine which games are expected to be high scoring each week, look for those that have the highest “over/under” gambling lines. This over/under figure is the approximate number of points that the gambling community expects to be scored in the game by both teams together. It’s printed in many newspaper sports pages, or you can find it online at ­RotoGrinders.com or SportsBetting.com.

Snatch up oversized, underappreciated receivers in the middle rounds of the draft. Touchdowns are worth big fantasy points, and tall receivers generally score more TDs than short ones.

Examples: Eric Decker (Jets, 6’3″) is a great choice in the sixth or seventh round if he still is available. Michael Floyd (Arizona, 6’2″) is a nice pick in round four or five.

Don’t draft a defense until the final two rounds, if at all. Fantasy football owners draft a team’s defense as a unit rather than choose individual defenders. (In many leagues, you also get a team’s special teams—its punt and kickoff return units—when you draft its defense.) But defense is far less important in fantasy football than in real football.

Still, Seattle’s defense is formidable and potentially worth a late-round pick. St. Louis’s defense could be worth a late-round pick, too. Most of a defense’s fantasy points are accrued through sacks and turnovers, and St. Louis has a stable of formidable pass rushers who should generate a lot of those.

Otherwise just grab a defense off the waiver wire each week. Pick up defenses that in real life are facing rookie quarterbacks that week—rookie QBs tend to get sacked and turn over the ball a lot. Or pick a defense that’s going up against a quarterback who tends to hold the ball too long, such as Jay Cutler ­(Chicago).

Don’t draft a kicker before the final round, if at all. It’s almost impossible to predict before a season which kickers will deliver the most fantasy points.

The best option is to pluck a kicker off the waiver wire each week. Choose a kicker whose team is expected to be in a close, high-scoring game that week, preferably in a dome stadium or fair weather.

Fantasy Football for Beginners

Fantasy football participants create make-believe teams manned by the real-life performance results of NFL players. How well those players do during the season determines how well these fantasy “team owners” do in their leagues. It’s a way to have fun and deepen one’s interest in football without the financial risk of gambling.

ESPN.com and Yahoo.com (search for “Fantasy Football”) are good places to play. You can form a league with your friends on these websites or join a public league that’s open to anyone. Most leagues are free, but some have entry fees and prize money.

Participants join fantasy football leagues and draft NFL players before the start of the NFL season. Fantasy owners usually take turns drafting players, though some leagues hold auctions in which owners are allocated a certain amount of virtual cash that they use to “purchase” players. About 15 rounds of picks are fairly typical, though this varies by league.

Tip: ESPN.com and Yahoo.com offer mock fantasy drafts to help novices gain experience with the draft process.

During the season, each owner selects a starting team from his/her roster each week. In most leagues, this starting team will consist of one quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, one tight end, one flex player (either an additional running back or receiver), one kicker and one team’s entire defense. A fantasy owner might make adjustments to his starting team each week depending on his players’ health, opponents or other factors.

In most leagues, each fantasy team faces off against another team in the league each week. The teams earn fantasy points based on their starting players’ yards, touchdowns, sacks and other stats in that week’s NFL games. The team that earns more points wins. (There’s no need to do a lot of math—the website hosting your fantasy league will tally up the points and declare a winner for you.)

Team owners can make trades during the season or pick up players off the “waiver wire”—the list of NFL players not currently owned by any team in that fantasy league. The NFL has 32 teams, and the typical fantasy league just 12, so there often are useful players on the waiver wire.

In the final few weeks of the NFL regular season, the teams with the most points in each fantasy league typically face off in a playoff to determine the league champion.

* The strategies outlined in this article apply to fantasy football leagues with around 12 teams, one quarterback starting per team and fairly standard rules such as those used in most ESPN.com and Yahoo.com leagues.

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