I get asked a lot as someone who has played fantasy football for 20 years and won lots of leagues, “How do you make sure you have a good draft?”. Well, it’s not easy. In fact, a lot of the time I walk away and think I didn’t have a good draft. The Scott Fish Bowl X Draft in 2022 for example. I walked away from that draft and I hated it. It just didn’t look good at all. And guess what, it wasn’t!
When I look back at the drafts I wasn’t happy with, I can most of the time relate it to the fact I didn’t do enough of the below things to allow me every chance of success. To be honest, in a snake draft, most of the work is done before the draft has even begun. The outcome, for the most part, should be predetermined. By this statement, I don’t mean that you should get the players you expect. What I mean by this, is that if you are prepared, you should have a good idea of what is coming up, and you should be able to anticipate which players should be available in the appropriate rounds.
Okay, sometimes people throw a spanner in and select a QB high that causes panic. There could also be an irrational run of running backs in the 3rd round as people are scared they are going to run out. However, most of the time, the trends are fairly predictable.
That means, if you have done the work before the draft, you can be prepared and make the selections you kind of expect. It also means that you can potentially influence the draft and cause people to panic also.
Now, I will preface this whole segment with the age-old adage, “You cannot win your league at the draft”. This statement has never been more true today than it was 10, 15, or 20 years ago. However, you can certainly lose your league at the draft. Meaning, that if you don’t draft well, you could really struggle to take down the title.
Draft Day is the best day in the fantasy calendar. Why not enjoy it more by following these top 10 tips to ensure you crush your draft and get yourself off to the best possible start?
- Snake Draft Pick Strategy: Early | Middle | Late
- Draft Targets for Every Round: Early | Middle | Late
- Fitz’s Draft Primers: QB | RB | WR | TE
- Fantasy Football Mock Draft Simulator
1) Do some research and get some great resources from people you trust
Can you believe it? By reading this article, you are already 1/10th of the way there to have a good fantasy draft. You are reading this because you want to win. You will probably listen to podcasts from great analysts. You will read tons of material from great people, and you will be informed and ready to crush your draft. You will be amazed at the amount of people who don’t do this. Their draft will be in 2 days and they will print off Adam Rank’s rankings or print off something from ESPN and expect that will be enough.
Believe it or not, you need to actually do some work. You might get lucky with printing off rankings one year. Maybe even a couple of years. However, it is not a sustainable model for success.
By doing research on strategy, where professionals have players ranked, what some mock drafts look like, actually doing mock drafts, or even just listening to and reading about the new rookies, changes in teams from 2022 to 2023 is a massive leg up on probably 50% of the people in your draft (I mean, not if you are in a hardcore league where everyone is consuming information everywhere. Or if you are in an experts league either. But for most home leagues, this will certainly be the case).
By reading this, you are already ahead of half the people in your home league. Congratulations!
2) Understand your league mates and garner insight from them in league chats
This one appears to be hard. However, it is easier than you think. For starters, it’s not that tough to get the takes and opinions out of your league mates. There is a whole period of the offseason that is dedicated to helping you find out what your league mates think of certain players. It’s called off-season hype and I love it!!!
First of all, you need to get a notebook (or use the margins of this book if you prefer). Make a list of the teams and owners and work out what you know about them. Who do they support? Who are their favorite players? Who do they really hate? Who burned them last year and is therefore on their “do not draft” list (“Chris Godwin and his 4.5 PPR Points in Week 14 cost me my match-up and a chance to get into the playoffs! I’m never drafting him again!” This sort of thing). Once you have this information, then look at their previous drafts. Who did they take every year? What positions do they go for in what round? Do they go QB early? Do they go QB late? Do they go RB/RB? Or do they like a TE in the opening 4/5 rounds?
Fantasy players, for the most part, are creatures of habit. They want their favorite players and they follow what has worked for them in the past. It makes sense. At the end of the day it is all the fun, isn’t it? I always used to tease Stocks about drafting A.J. Green. He is one of his favorite players in fantasy football. I respect that and appreciate it. I loved A.J. Green too; five years ago when he was good and didn’t have the injuries. However, I stopped wanting A.J. Green on any of my rosters two years before anyone else. You couldn’t rely on him. Try and break those habits and safety blankets. It will lead to more success. Remember, it’s more fun if you are winning.
Now, I mentioned off-season hype. This is the best bit. Make sure you have a WhatsApp group or a league chat with everyone. Then, find a bit of news on some players. Off-season hype news is the best kind of news for this. Why? Because it isn’t actually news at all! It’s all fluff. “Justyn Ross looks ‘on fire’ in practice!” I mean, where’s the news in that? What does it actually tell us? Sweet FA!
However, that’s why it’s so good for fantasy football. I don’t want to give my opponents useful, actionable information. I don’t want them to see that so and so has got hurt, unless it serves a wider purpose to me, or it’s months before the draft.
If you play on Sleeper, this insight is even easier to get. It comes via app notification! I don’t even need to look for it. If you don’t play on Sleeper, Rotoworld is also really good for this. So let’s go back to Justyn Ross. I want to see where people are on Ross. He is tearing it up in camp and has Patrick Mahomes throwing him the ball, in an Andy Reid offense. So, I’ll just drop this “news” into the chat and say something like “Ooo Ross looking good.” And that’s it. Don’t oversell it. And then wait for the reactions. Who are the ones citing the breakout? And who are the ones citing he’s a bust because he plays on the Jets? Jot some notes.
You can probably drop this kind of information 2-3 times a week without raising suspicion. So be selective. This is a bit like playing poker and showing your hand. You are showing either a bluff or showing you had the hand. Why do it? You are giving away a tiny bit of information, to gather a lot back and also to paint a narrative that you might be high on a player you are not on, or vice versa. That little bit of information could give you a slight edge in the draft. If you like a player, and you aren’t sure who else likes him, this allows you to potentially see who else is in the market for him.
This is next-level stuff, but it absolutely works. If you aren’t doing this, maybe someone in your league has been. When you thought you were the shark, you were actually the fish. Let’s change that today. Go be a shark!
3) Throw people off your strategy and rankings. Change it up
If you are one of those people who was a fish based on the last point, you need to change it up. Most people going into 2022 drafts when drafting against me kept taking Buccaneers players, Diontae Johnson, and quarterbacks in the 8th/9th round before I could get who they thought I wanted.
I got people taking Diontae Johnson in the 2nd round (too high for me despite my projection), and people taking Godwin/Evans from me (I didn’t have them in my WR1’s so I wasn’t bothered at all). I slept on QB because of the value.
I didn’t go into a draft with a set RB/RB strategy, or married to getting a QB extremely late (I was grabbing Lamar Jackson on the 5/6 turn in some drafts). I let the board do the talking and my rankings and tiers tell me who to draft.
This allowed me to get Keenan Allen in the 5th/6th round, Brandin Cooks in the 8th round, etc. It really allowed me to be flexible with who to take.
I knew my opponents in many drafts. And I knew who was going to take a certain player where. I was able to “snipe” my opponents time and time again by getting a player I wanted, that they also wanted. If I had to take him one round higher to get him, so be it. That’s the benefit of information and mock drafts/actual drafts.
To avoid being the fish, and be a shark, you need to do the work and practice. However, you also need to look at your trends and draft history. Do you always go running back in round 1? If so, are you going to get sniped for “your guy?” Or are you someone who always goes QB late, so people will also wait and thus allow a premium player to fall down the board far lower than they should go (If Kyler Murray is there in the 6th round as everyone is waiting on quarterbacks, you have to ask yourself if he is worth it there. He very well could be).
Do people know your favorite players? I love Mike Evans, but if I don’t get him and get Diontae Johnson instead, I’m not bummed out at all. You can still enjoy fantasy football if you don’t have your favorite players. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Now, for the extra sneaky bit. Start getting tells on others and throw people off your tracks in terms of strategy. And again, off-season hype is perfect for this. “Mike Evans ‘looking explosive’ in camp”. This is a great blurb to share. You took Evans last year. However, you realize Chris Godwin is probably the man to own in that WR room. He isn’t much more expensive in draft capital but is likely to get a much larger target share in this offense. He also still has positive touchdown regression in his future.
So you throw out there “My boy Evans! Look at him go”. Again, don’t over-sell it. This looks completely plausible. You drafted him last year. You talked about him. So people start to get on the hook. Maybe someone is planning to move off their strategy to “snipe” you and get their own back for last year. Excellent! You have your league mates drafting to your tune, forcing them into potential mistakes, and you can get the guy you really want at a cheaper price. Thanks!
I’ve been doing this for years. Somehow, after this article comes out, I am not going to be able to do it much anymore. Or everyone will be far more cynical. Either way, that’s ok. It adds to the strategy. Who wants to just leave the excitement for Draft Day? Why not have fun with the strategy weeks, and months before the draft?
If you love poker, these strategic pieces will really appeal to you. Start messing with your league mates, give away false tells, and get their tells. If you nail this, you can really ruin someone’s draft, cause them to make mistake after mistake, and laud it over them for years! Who wouldn’t want to do that?
4) Follow NFL Beat-Writers on Twitter
I talk about this a lot. However, I find people still don’t do it or know how to do it. NFL beat-writers attend every practice (if team specific, which is the best kind), attend every presser, and know the inside track when it comes to what is “Coach Speak” and what is true news.
So, how do you find out who to follow? Well, if you search The Athletic and look at the beat writer of every team and then follow them on X. This is the single best way to get information about all 32 teams. Want to know who is getting the carries during practice at running back? The Athletic beat writer will know. Want to know who is winning the QB competition? The Athletic beat writer will know.
They are also amazing at answering questions via tweets. Want to know an injury prognosis? Send them a tweet. If they know, they will reply and share. Greg Auman, the Athletic beat writer for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is especially good at this.
I can guarantee you that very few people are doing this in your league. However, these 32 people (sometimes more if more than one covers a team) have the answers to about 80% of your questions. Is it really that much of a shock about James Robinson getting the job and excelling? Not if you followed the beat reporter.
At the end of the day, making good decisions is about having good information. These people have almost all the information you need from a team perspective and they want to get the information no one can. That is their job.
I cannot stress the edge doing this will give you. This could be the difference between taking a James Conner or James Robinson with your last pick in the draft instead of a kicker and ending up winning the league as a result.
5) Do rankings and tiers, don’t rely on others
This is another one I have talked about at length. Nobody is expecting you to be an expert and project the future. Nor is anyone expecting you to become a fantasy football analyst.
The very simple way to do this, away from doing your own projections, which requires a lot more work, is to narrow down the analysts you like and look at their rankings.
You have read this article. Therefore you must trust our analysis. Thank you very much! I love and appreciate you for it. However, you should not just use our rankings and tiers. You need to look at other people you trust.
Get a list of 4-6 people in the fantasy football industry you really love and look at their rankings and tiers side by side. Now, start to look at the players who are consistent in a spot. However, also look at the big discrepancies. These are the players who perhaps don’t have a solidified consensus.
You can also look at FantasyPros and their expert consensus rankings. My rankings are part of this group. They take all the experts and throw together a consensus. However, many people draft off these so don’t use these exclusively otherwise everyone will do the same thing and you lose your edge.
The really clever thing to do now is to take the compiled expert rankings you have made and look at the consensus between them. Then you look to see if you agree or disagree based on your research. “I think Cam Akers is too high, so I am going to move him down below Miles Sanders“. It’s your rankings. You aren’t wrong if they are yours and you are happy.
Once you have done this, do you know what you have created? Your very own rankings. They are personal to you and unique. There will be similarities. However, there will also be some unique differences.
Now, you need to look at their points from last year, and their probable points from this year, and design some tiers. That way, you can make snap decisions about where the value in the draft is.
Now you have this, do some mock drafts. See if you are happy with the results. Do you like your team? If not, then change your rankings. You will find that doing mock drafts is testing your rankings to see if it produces a reaction, an overpay, etc. This last point is extremely important as it makes your rankings battle-hardened and you have tested them to ensure you are happy.
Now, you may have noticed these first five points are actually done before the draft. As I mentioned, the prep allows you to ensure you carry an edge and get a desirable outcome into your fantasy draft. However, you can still influence the draft, at your draft.
So here are numbers 6-10 that are reserved for Draft Day.
6) Throw people off their game either right before or during the draft
This one is much harder if you have never met the people you draft against and have never drafted with them before because you might not have the important information you need. However, if you play in a regular home league, have managed to get some great information out of people before the draft or, if you have drafted with these people before, it’s time to be the master of disruption once again.
I have gone to great lengths with this. When I have done live drafts in the past, I’ve retold stories of extreme failures of league mates. I’ve started exaggerated rumors about a player before the draft that could be construed as true. I’ve had coasters made of a really bad pick from the draft before and put them on the table for people to enjoy. I’ve made videos, I’ve shown previous draft boards.
This is all to get in the heads of those you are drafting against. Draft Day is amazing. It’s great fun to catch up and enjoy being with friends and sharing stories. Keep in mind, it is also about winning a war! That is probably your goal because you have bought this book. So it is time for the Fergie/Mourinho (look up Premier League Football Managers for this one) mind games.
Here are some tips that will help:
- Talk about historically bad picks. “Hey, remember you picked David Johnson 1st in 2017 and he went down in the 1st Quarter of the first game, never to return. And now all these running backs with the first pick getting injured. Didn’t you come last that year?” “Ha, remember when you drafted Lev’ Bell three days after he had opted out for the season? That was funny!” Stuff like that.
- Have your team name reference something about someone else, that causes a funny/embarrassing reaction. I once called one of my teams the Red Wine Disaster Wearers after a friend of mine had red wine poured over him chatting up a girl in a bar. Someone asked me what inspired my name, and so I told the story. My mate was so flustered with his first pick that he ended up attempting to take Antonio Brown, who had gone, and instead took the first name he could think of, T.Y Hilton. Who, whilst not a disaster, was a massive reach for a player who ended up WR24.
- Bring props. I told you about my coasters, but do t-shirts, printouts, bunting etc… I’ve heard about hundreds of stories of people messing with other players by bringing all sorts to the draft. The best one I’ve heard of for a long time is some people drafting in a pub and they drafted on a big projector screen visible to the whole pub. The league was going to make a day of it so they decided to use the projector and then spend the rest of the day in the pub. One fantasy owner got on the phone with the league champion’s mother and managed to get about 150 different baby and toddler photos of the league champion. They then split the screen in two, running the draft on one side of the screen and running the baby pictures on the other half of the screen. So, how did the league owner manage to stop the pictures from being run for 4 hours straight? He agreed to take a kicker in Round 1. Truly brilliant!
- Do a running commentary of picks, and get others to join. This is truly great if you want to plant seeds of doubt in people.
In truth, there are many creative ways to get at people during the draft and on Draft Day. Share some of your favorites with me.
7) Be very fluid in your draft. Don’t have a defined strategy
I talked about this in the 2020 Fantasy Football Playbook a lot and on the podcast. Don’t shoehorn yourself into a strategy. It will leave you with limited options, open to others working out your strategy, and means you are likely to be disappointed in your draft. By allowing the draft to come to you, you can control the board, get excellent value in draft picks, and have a strong and deep roster.
8) Don’t bring your notes/be engrossed in your notes during the draft
This one is absolutely massive for me. I see a lot of people (and I did this years ago) bring cheat sheets, iPads, laptops, magazines, and handwritten notes to the draft. This is giving the league a massive tell one way or the other and it also gives away a significant advantage.
First off, you are bringing the notes to the draft either because you cannot remember them/haven’t really prepared. This is bad because it shows the other owners that you are not prepared and they will take advantage. Or, best case scenario, you are showing off because you are so well prepared. Again, this tells the rest of the league that you know your stuff and are more ready than ever before. Thus, giving away your advantage.
The other point is you cannot see what everyone else is doing/how they are reacting to the draft in progress. Having your rankings on your phone and checking it on your phone on your pick isn’t the end of the world. It’s your pick. And 200 names is a lot to remember the order of. However, do not be thinking about your pick when it isn’t your pick. Watch the board, and look at the trends. Look at what the other teams are doing. Look at their reaction to each pick. Who is bummed they missed out on Derrick Henry in Round 2? That means they probably want a running back next. That is valuable information. Being buried in your notes and missing that is giving away an advantage to everyone else, as they all saw it and you didn’t. Watch the draft, watch the players. Pick up the tells. Fantasy football is a lot like poker in that regard.
9) Do not go on tilt
This should really be covered if you follow point 7. If you miss a player you want, don’t react. Just move on. There are plenty of players.
Do not go on tilt. For those of you not familiar with the term, it essentially means do not panic and go and chase the draft. You missed out on a running back, and so instead of drafting the best player on the board, who might be a wide receiver, you panic and take a running back who is nowhere near as good and you end up over-drafting. All because you are set on one player and therefore one position. This is a criminal move and one that will end your league season before it starts if you let your tilting get out of hand. You should be the one to make other players tilt. If you have done the work, followed these steps, and laid the groundwork, it will be the tilting, not you.
If, however, you feel like you are panicking and you don’t know what to do next, do the next best thing. Refer back to your rankings. I know I said don’t look until it’s your pick, but if you are tilting and you are floundering, regroup. Take a time out, refer to your rankings, get familiar with where you are, and relax.
Yes, you will miss a few picks and give away some tells. However, if you do not get back on the path of value-based drafting, you will lose this draft anyway. So it’s better to give up a few minor tells that might or might not happen, so you can execute and nail your draft. However, if you have done the work, done the mock drafts, and followed this guide, you won’t tilt. You will be fine.
10) Have fun
This sounds like a cop-out, doesn’t it? I swear to you it isn’t. Do you know the amount of people who go to such great lengths to win the draft that they get so fed up by the end of the process and don’t enjoy it?
Winning is fun, but being with friends, especially after the year we have had, and doing something you all love to do, together, is special.
We all take so many things for granted but not being able to do a live draft in 2020 and 2021 really was horrible. This means when you do get to draft together, don’t take it for granted and have it be special.
Also, you make better decisions when you are relaxed and having fun. If you can live in the moment, do your prep work, have fun making your picks, and winding up your friends. I promise you will draft better. You just will.
If you are stressed about it, worrying about every pick because you have not made the playoffs in 8 years, then you are probably going to miss out again this year.
Draft Day comes once a year. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Most importantly, smash it. If you do the work beforehand, you will be halfway there. You still need to navigate the season, injuries, and all those other challenges. However, at least you will be on the front foot and not the back foot this year when Week 1 rolls around.
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Adam Murfet is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Murf, check out his archive and follow him @Murf_NFL.