Fantasy Football Draft Mistakes And How To Avoid Them
I remember it like it was yesterday. In August of 2012, one of my home leagues was holding a draft at a local bar. The beer was flowing, and the draft was rolling. The first two rounds went as expected. Then, not even halfway through the third round, one of the guys selected Devin Hester. A brief moment of shocked silence was quickly broken by hysterical laughter and heckling. The heckling continued until the poor guy finally left the league a few years later. To this day, a draft does not go by that the Hester pick is not mentioned. While most fantasy football-ers avoid mistakes that blatant, every one of us has at least one bad draft habit. I will break down some of the most common bad habits and how to conquer them.
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Valuing Players
Reaching
Reaching is the most common of the fantasy football draft mistakes. While I am a proponent of taking “my guys,” even if I have to earlier than my draft sheet suggests, limits have to be set on how early. Nobody wants to be the guy that takes Devin Hester in the third round. To avoid reaching, do not go up more than one round for a player until all positions and sufficient depth are filled. *Expert advice: A reach is obvious when other owners take more than 5 seconds to mark a pick off of a draft list. On the flip side, owners will miss out on targeted players by being too cautious. If a targeted player is in decent range, pull the trigger. After the tenth round, all players are fair game.
Drafting Based on ADP
Knowing a player’s average draft position is a valuable tool when putting together a draft board. ADP shows where a player is drafted on average, and it varies depending on the source. Drafting by an ADP list can cause owners to miss out on talent either by taking a player when higher value players are still on the draft board or by expecting a player to still be there by the next pick. Example: On my draft list for a 12-team PPR redraft league, I have Patrick Mahomes as my 29th ranked player (3.05). Mahomes has an ADP of 2.07 in ESPN leagues, but he has an ADP of 3.12 in RealTime Fantasy Sports leagues. If I took him at ESPN’s ADP, I would miss out on higher valued players. However, if I was drafting by RT Sports’ ADP, there is a high probability he would be off the board by 3.12.
This draft habit is easily fixed by making a draft sheet combining rankings and ADP. First, set your rankings (create custom rankings or use our set by clicking here). Then adjust your rankings with your ADP list. *Expert advice: Find an ADP list with similar league settings on your host website.
Overvaluing Players
As owners progress in their fantasy knowledge, overvaluing quickly becomes a bad habit. Dynasty owners that study rookies will place a higher value on them based on their potential. Owners searching for sleepers tend to fall in love with the upside of a player setting up a significant reach. They should bump a player’s position on their draft board if they see something special. Then use ADP to make sure they don’t bump the sleeper too high causing them to miss out on better value. *Expert advice: Pay attention to how league mates value players and adjust draft sheet accordingly.
Strategy
Need Based Drafting
Drafting to fill all starting roster spots and rushing to handcuff starters is need based drafting. Filling all starting roster spots first leads me to deduce there were reaches at the quarterback, tight end, kicker, and defense positions. That owner left an abundance of value on the board. When an owner focuses on handcuffing starters too early, he leaves potential starters on the board. I do not even look at my roster until the fifth or sixth round. Up until that point, I want the best player available. Between rounds six and seven I start filling out my starting positions, but I always leave defense and kicker spots empty until the very end. Owners should only be handcuffing running backs that have a decent replacement option. *Expert advice: Defenses and kickers do not have to be drafted and can be switched weekly with a little waiver wire savvy.
Example: I drafted Christian McCaffrey and Melvin Gordon. I am handcuffing Gordon with Austin Ekeler and/or Justin Jackson. Both are backs capable of filling in and producing fantasy points. I am not handcuffing McCaffrey because I do not believe Cameron Artis-Payne or any of the other Carolina running backs can be fantasy relevant at this point.
Being Inflexible
When an owner works hard on their draft sheet and deriving their draft strategy, they want to stick with it. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that drafts never go like the 20 mock drafts I ran to prepare. There is always one person that picks Devin Hester in the third leaving a player on the board that should be long gone. At that point, owners need to be flexible enough to pick up values when they fall. An owner planning on taking a tight end after the seventh round might be surprised to see Travis Kelce still on the board in the fourth round. The owner would be wise to break strategy to pick up that value. *Expert advice: Think of draft strategy more as draft theory.
Panicking
Whether it be a fourth round run on quarterbacks or every owner taking a running back in the first round, a draft going off kilter can cause even the most prepared owners to panic. In the midst of chaos, owners end up throwing well-prepared draft strategies out the window. They end up taking Kenyan Drake in the second round, and Derek Carr in the fifth round. Then, when the dust settles and the draft is over, they are left wondering where it all went wrong. The best way owners can avoid being a victim of mayhem is to expect the unexpected and R-E-L-A-X. Jotting down a plan to handle different runs is a helpful tool. Owners should decide the earliest they will take positions like quarterback and tight end and not succumb to the run if it is before that time. *Expert advice: Positional runs are a great time to grab value players if the owner can afford to wait out the run.
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Drinking While Drafting
This is where I should put some warning about drinking and drafting. However, I will skip that simply because I like to party. Owners that like to party should make sure their draft sheets are solid and rely heavily on them. *Expert advice: Play in a league with a physical draft party. Drink (if that is your thing), eat, talk trash, and have fun. Remember fantasy football is a game. Winning a championship is great. Letting the quest for one steal the joy from the game sucks.
