Fantasy Football: Avoid these 10 Mistakes in Your Draft

By: LoydMartin

Fantasy Football: Avoid these 10 Mistakes in Your Draft

Fantasy Football Avoid It’s not only hurtful, but it is also a little annoying. My editors think I am the one who can spot the most mistakes in draft day. Because Peyton Manning was my first choice after his record-breaking season 15 years ago. Do you seriously think I will ever live up to that?

It makes my life easier to know that every year I can take note of the draft errors that I see and voila, the article is written. Despite the loss of my pride, I am more than happy to accept the assignment.

There are 20 common mistakes in drafts that you should avoid, and we could talk about them all. Here are the top ten mistakes I see most often.

1) Losing Focus

Do you know the Royal Guards that stand there every day and don’t respond to any of it? They are so focused on their job, which is to be there every day and not react to any people’s ridiculousness, that nothing can disturb their concentration.

For the next two to three hours, channel those guys. Fantasy sports is great because you can have some fun with your draft room. There’s a fine line in between trash talking and forgetting that you are on the clock.

Turn off the TV. To check the most recent news, use your phone only to access Twitter. If your leaguemate calls to ask why the guy took a defense during round five (oh, it’ll be there, don’t worry), you can ignore it.

2) Not using the Draft Assistant

This is where I apologize for recommending FantasyPros products. It seems that I’m pushing our stuff and I do so anyway. I use FantasyPros and it’s amazing and you’re only hurting yourself if not.

Draft Assistant syncs with your draft and follows you in real-time. It gives you expert consensus suggestions as to who to draft next, based on your needs. Do you want to know the chances that a player you are considering will make it back to your team? Do you want to know the strengths and weaknesses of everyone else? Draft Assistant will do it all for your.

This is a very detailed study that I did. The only people who didn’t find it useful were a) those who celebrate Christmas in March; b) those who don’t enjoy Breaking Bad and c) those who believe The Godfather Part III to be the best part of the trilogy. If you identify as one of these people, you can stop reading the article and consider the path you have chosen. If you’re not one of those people, be smart and seek expert advice during your draft.

3) Not having players in your queue

This mistake will not be as serious if you use Draft Assistant. Do not be that person who takes 90 seconds to make every pick, just because they are desperately trying to find a draftable player.

Drafts happen very quickly. You should be looking at the rest of the players and figuring out who might work for you. You don’t know who to pick because you know there will be a round where there aren’t enough players.

Although I have not convinced you yet, it is important to use your queue. If you want another reason, your toddler could accidentally reset your wireless router in the middle of your draft, making it impossible to auto-draft Chase Edmonds. This is because there wasn’t anyone in your queue, and draft-room rankings are a bit wonky. This leads me to…

4) Do not put your own rankings into the draft room

You’ve likely played in several leagues hosted on different websites if you are a regular fantasy player. You don’t need me to tell you that some rankings in the draft area are ridiculous.

Sometimes, I believe that one of my leaguemates hacked the draft room to create fake player rankings for us all. It wouldn’t sound crazy if George was your buddy.

Draft room rankings can cause many problems, including the above-mentioned auto-draft issue. You will be there in the eighth round, while your competitor drafts someone else who should have gone three rounds earlier but you didn’t know was still on board.

You should be fine if you use the Draft Wizard. You can use the Draft Wizard, but it doesn’t matter what. Take 20 minutes to personalize your draft room rankings with someone you trust. You can use FantasyPros expert consensus rankings if you are in a hurry to ensure that no one falls through the cracks.

5) Too early defense draft

Fantasy owners should draft their defense using one of their last picks. However, the average difference in draft positions and expert consensus rankings has been less than 30 picks over the past few years. Do not be like this. The flex option that you pass on to your DST will be better if it is drafted early.

You should wait as long as possible to draft a defense. If you don’t have the best options, it will be the easiest position to stream. You can stream your way to a top-10 defense if you plan ahead a week or so.

6) Make sure you have a strategy

You’ll have a rough idea of what you want to do when you start your draft. Drafts can be unpredictable and you may end up with a disastrous strategy.

Let’s say you want to grab wide receivers early but the rest of your league has them. If you don’t want to keep taking second-tier receivers because they were part of your draft-day strategy, it makes no sense. Instead, you should be grabbing all the top-tier running backs who have begun to fall.

It is important to get value from your draft. If that means you have to abandon your preferred strategy, it is okay. A fantasy draft is like jazz: you know the tune, but you have to improvise.

7) Being caught in a situation run

It doesn’t matter how many drafts your have done, it is always disconcerting to see a position move. You were feeling great about how many running backs there were in the draft two minutes ago. You’re starting to get nervous after seven consecutive runs off the board.

You didn’t intend to run back here again, so you don’t necessarily have one. Look at the number of drafts!

Take a deep breath. The value of a draft is everything. So stick to your rankings and select the best player. You’ll be prepared and have plenty of depth at each position. Also, you will know where your sleepers might be.

8) Do not consider a quarterback until the end of the round

Do you remember when the cool strategy of waiting until draft day to draft a quarterback was popularized? Well, now everyone is following the same strategy.

The best strategy for fantasy owners is to wait before drafting a quarterback. However, most quarterbacks don’t make it to the second or third round. You should be open to the possibility of pulling the trigger if everyone else is trying to avoid quarterbacks.

I want to stress that waiting for quarterback is a sound principle, and one I will certainly use this year. There comes a time when you might need to take one sooner than usual. Don’t be afraid to avoid it.

9) Failure to distinguish real football from fantasy football

Do you know how many football fans outside of New England dislike the Patriots? Now imagine that you are a diehard Jets fan.

The woman then married a Patriot fan wife. The couple moved from New York City to New England for “happy marriage, happy life”.

What do you think this person thinks about the draft of Julian Edelman and other Patriots players? Let me tell you a little secret. This imaginary man is me. He feels like a “wicked mawron” about the draft of Patriots.

You know what? LeGarrette Blount was my teammate on many teams in 2016, and I rode his lumbering touchdown runs to at least one championship. Although it can be difficult to root for one or two Patriots players each season, I do what I need to win fantasy glory.

10) Not being informed on draft day

It doesn’t matter how prepared you are. Drafting a quarterback who has just broken his back or tore his knee earlier in the day will not help. You won’t hear about any breaking news regarding football injuries on draft day.

We are now. These are all simple ways to optimize your draft. These are all things I look forward too. Good luck, drafters.

Additional Resource:
https://www.espn.in/ffl/
https://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/
https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/football/