Kick Ass Kollege

Fantasy Football 101 – Pre-Draft

Welcome!

Good Morning Class.  Welcome to Fantasy Football 101. I’m the Professor, and I’ll be bringing you newbies up to speed here at Kickass Kollege.

If you’ve been playing for a few years, this article probably is not for you, unless you want a refresher.  But if the guy down the hall at work invited you to join the casual league at the office, or the gal next door invited you to come to the draft because someone dropped out and they need a new owner, the Professor is here to help you get started in Fantasy Football.

Ownership, the Dollars and Sense

So you are now the owner of a fantasy team.  As the owner, you’re paying the bills, and you want to know what you’ve gotten yourself into. There is usually a nominal entry fee in casual leagues. I’ve played in $20 office leagues; they are a lot of fun. Your entry fee lets you draft a team, and the fees for all of the owners are pooled into a pot for the winner, or the top few finishers.

In a 10 team league (typical of casual leagues), that’s a $200 pool. That might be split up with $125 going to the league champ, $50 to the runner up, and $25 to the 3^rd place finisher. You’ve paid you entry fee, you have a financial goal you are playing for, the only other fee you might deal with is a transaction fee.

Transaction fees are charges to make a change to your roster.  In a casual league, that might be $1 per add/drop, and $2 per trade.  I’ll explain transactions in a bit. But be sure you absolutely know your fees and expenses before you start.

Older, more established leagues will have much higher entry fees and much higher transaction fees.  As with any investment, don’t get in over your head.

Know your Rules

My strongest bit of advice for all Fantasy Football players is to read your league rules, and know your league rules. Not just scoring rules, but roster limits, transaction restrictions, and anything else your commissioner felt it was necessary to add to the rulebook. If it’s in there, it was important at one time.

Positions:

Quarterback – The marquee players in the NFL, but less crucial in fantasy terms. Yes, they score more points than the other positions, but in a 12 team league, you still have 20 more QBs as backups or waiver wire options.

Running Back – For decades the RB has been the workhorse of fantasy football. They are often your most consistent players, producing points each week.  Your team will start 2 each game, and there are numerous draft strategies that include “RB” in the title.

Wide Receiver – As in the NFL, WRs can make or break your team. You might get 150 yards and 2 touchdowns from your top receiver, or he might face a tough corner and come up short. WR is often where the fantasy football “lottery tickets” come from.

Tight End – The poor overlooked TE is often an afterthought.  Remember, however, that there are only 5 good ones each year.  If you don’t get a good one, you may get very little production from this position week to week.

Kicker – Kickers don’t mean much in Fantasy.  If you are drafting one before the last three rounds of your draft, you are reaching.

Defense – As with the TEs, there are only a few very good ones.  Unlike the TEs, though, playing against a bad offense can make a mediocre defense look great in any given week.

Scoring:

Touchdowns – You usually get 6 points for every touchdown, whether it is passing, rushing, receiving, or an interception return for a TD.  There are leagues that try to balance QB scoring by reducing passing TDs to 4 points. In those leagues, QBs are worth a little less than in 6 point passing TD leagues

Yardage – A standard is that for every 30 yards passing, you get 1 point, and for every 10 yards receiving or rushing you get 1 point.  Leagues may tweak those numbers, and that will affect the value of the players.

Defensive scoring – This is a mixed bag. You might get points for shutouts, and you will get points for defensive TDs, interceptions, sacks, and fumble recoveries.

Negative scoring – Many leagues penalize the QB for an interception, an RB for a fumble, or a kicker for a missed Field Goal.

There are many, many more variations on scoring methods. Defend yourself by knowing them and knowing their affect on your players’ performances.

Draft Day

Draft day is the most fun that every owner has in Fantasy Football. It’s the Kickass Commish’s favorite day of the year, his Christmas, Hannukah and birthday all rolled into one.  Only one team owner gets to win the championship, but every member of the league is fired up for the draft. The goal of the draft is simple: get the best team you can get so that you can win games. Easy, right?

There are plenty of articles here on Kickass Fantasy Football to give you winning approaches to the draft. Just be sure that when you leave the draft, you have enough players to satisfy your starting lineup requirements, and backups at key positions.  There are many philosophies on effective drafting, but I’ll introduce you to some of the basic concepts. Assume a typical snake draft where owners take turns,  in rounds, picking players until they have a roster filled up.

Before the philosophies, however, I should mention the “cheat sheet”. This is a list of players, in order of value, to help you draft your team.  You might have a sheet of paper, or a laptop with a system that re-orders remaining players.

Stud RB – One of the oldest and most venerated approaches.  Based on the scarcity of true stud RBs in the NFL, and on the economics of hoarding them in your Fantasy League, this strategy still has many followers.

Best Player Available – You take the best player available remaining on your list. Simple, but a bit risky as it ignores the positions, and you could end up drafting 7 wide receivers in the first 7 rounds.

Value Based Drafting (VBD) – a very statistically driven approach, theoretically balancing the value of each position.  If you have good football knowledge, this can be very effective.

“Tier” Based Drafting – This strategy groups together players at a particular position with similar values into a tier.  As long as you get one of the players from the tier you are targeting, you are happy.

You bring your sheet of players to the draft, you pick them based on your strategy, and you leave with a roster of players to take you through your season, right?  No, nothing is that simple.  Here is a link to the second half of Fantasy Football 101 – Post Draft.