Anatomy of a Start-Up: Draft Prep

mikereardon

anatomy

Editor’s Note: This particular article is submitted by a new Member Corner author, Mike Reardon.  We welcome Mike to the Member Corner and look forward to seeing more of his work in the future! 

This year, I participated in theDynasty Football World Championship (DFWC), put on by FFToolbox.com in partnership with DLF as the primary dynasty content provider. I felt that this contest-style league provided a great opportunity to give a behind-the-scenes look of how at least one dynasty veteran approaches a startup draft in the context of what should be an extremely competitive league.

The league rules can be found here, but the relevant highlights are that this is a 12-team PPR league, with passing touchdowns worth four points, and a starting lineup of QB x 1, RB x 2, WR x 3, TE x 1, PK x 1, DST x 1, and FLEX x 2. The point to note here is that you can start up to four RB’s, five WR’s, or three TE’s, so there’s a lot of flexibility in how you build your roster.

Before I get into the pick-by-pick conversation and analysis, I figured it made sense to do a write-up with the steps I take to prepare for startup drafts. Hopefully some of you find it useful, but at the very least it will provide some context for the discussion of my picks in some later articles.

Step 1: Create Positional Tiers

The first thing I do is rank players within their own position and divide those rankings up into tiers to reflect my belief that a certain group of players all represent relatively the same value. For example, here are the top tiers of my wide receiver rankings:

wr_tiers

I include a column with the ADP (pulled from DLF) just to have an idea of where these players have been going, but it’s important not to rely on that data too heavily as a predictor for your own draft as every league is different. The use of an “A” tier just means that while I think there is a gap between a group of players, I think it’s a relatively small one. They are generally players that have one relatively minor flaw that prevents them from being in the higher tier.

Step 2: Create a Top 50 List

The next step in my startup preparation is to put together a ranking of about 50 players across all positions. The reason for this is because for the first five rounds or so, I will almost always take the best player available without much consideration to the positional needs of my team. I think the quality of players in these early rounds is very high and I don’t like passing on a better player for a weaker one for the sake of filling out a starting lineup. That said, there’s nothing magical about the number 50, so if I put together a list and think there’s an overall drop-off of quality around the early 40’s, for example, I might begin to consider positional needs a little early.

One important characteristic of this top 50 ranking to note is that it will always reflect my philosophical approach to the league. What I mean by this is while this list is a ranking of the 50 “best” players, a very important aspect of the definition of the word “best” is the level of value a player represents in the specific league format for which this list is being created.

For example, I think Aaron Rodgers is one of the best players in the NFL, and among the safest fantasy players you can pick. However, in the case of the DFWC, I did not feel like taking a quarterback early in the draft (meaning inside the first five rounds or so) was an optimal strategy because of the scoring system and lineup requirements. This was expressed in my top 50 ranking by having the Tier 1 quarterbacks ranked among Tier 2 running backs and wide receivers. In a 16-team non-PPR league (which I actually do play in), his position would be much higher on a pre-draft startup ranking for obvious reasons.

This is a critical part of draft preparation, be it for a dynasty league or a re-draft. Everyone knows the mantra about being familiar with your scoring system, but I’m not sure enough people actually incorporate this into the creation of their rankings. In my opinion, rankings should be an expression of your team building philosophy as well as your player evaluations and that philosophy should always be specific to each individual league format.

Step 3: Set Draft Plans

The last pre-draft preparation step I use is to set out any specific draft plans or goals I think are worth pursuing. You might calls these “keys” to the draft. They can be as specific as targeting a particular player, or they can be as broad was emphasizing one position over another. In the case of the DFWC startup, I had the following specific draft plans:

1.) Get Rob Gronkowski

I don’t believe there’s a fantasy player who can offer a bigger positional advantage than (a healthy) Gronkowski, so I decided to make it a priority to have him on my team. Certainly his injuries are a concern, but I believe he’s worth the gamble depending on the price. I’ll discuss him more in the actual draft discussion (spoiler: I got him).

2.) Get the cheapest top tier quarterback I can

If you are comfortable starting your dynasty team with an older quarterback (I am), I believe the top quarterback tier is 11 players deep right now:

11_qbs

Since I already planned on taking a tight end in the first two rounds, I knew I could not afford to pass on running back and wide receiver again by also taking a quarterback early in the draft. At the same time, I didn’t want to get into “Eli Manning territory” for my starting quarterback, so I decided to aim for one of the above players if I could do it at a reasonable draft value price. If all of them were taken in the first five or six rounds, the backup plan was to get Tony Romo.

3.) Emphasize RB early and target WR depth late.

This is simply because I think there’s a lack of depth at that position. It gets very ugly very fast after around the first 15 running backs are gone. Conversely, I believe there is ample depth at the receiver position, so I was confident I could find productive receivers later in the draft.

After I’ve completed these three steps, and put together a nice, clean looking spreadsheet, I’m ready to draft!

To reserve your spot next  in next year’s DFWC, visit Dynastyking.com.

What are some of your successful draft preparation steps?