Tip- Build a template — Fantasy Football Sleepers and Busts

It’s almost the start of the NFL season, and many fantasy football owners prepare by participating in mock drafts. Leagues that use common scoring settings will not benefit much from this article, but in formats with unique scoring, such as the Scott Fish Bowl, it can be a big help. Most owners tend to rely solely on the data from mock drafts to prepare for the real thing. There’s one problem with that line of thinking. Most owners who participate in those mocks don’t care and lie. They may indeed take the same position in the the fourth round as they did in their mocks, but it could be a different player. Why should they reveal who they like in a meaningless mock draft? In addition, they’re not invested in the outcome. Most owners give up halfway through the draft, choosing to let the computer autodraft their team in the later rounds, which skews the ADP (average draft position) data. This can be misleading and cost owners’ dearly who rely too much on those mocks. Instead, a better alternative is to build a template. Here’s how to do that.

First, if possible, look up the ADP data taken from real drafts from the same scoring format on whichever site you’re drafting from. However, if this isn’t available, you’ll have to make your own. Here’s how to do that. Go through several real drafts and write down the total number of players taken from each position after each round. For example, in the 2019 Scott Fish Bowl there were 1,200 teams equating to 100 drafts. I don’t have time to go through all one hundred. If you do- great! I did three or four. After you find a draft start counting how many players at each position were selected after each round (not who was selected, but how many). For example, in several of the 2019 Scott Fish Bowl Drafts, after two rounds there were 4 QBs, 12 RBs, 6 WRs, and 2 TEs taken. After three rounds there were 8 QBs, 16 RBs, 9 WRs, and 3 TEs taken. Do that for every round. Okay, now repeat this process for a few drafts. The more drafts you do this for, the more accurate your template will be because you’ll have a bigger sample size. Good- your template is done. Now that you’ve built your template, the next step is to go to your rankings and plug them into the template you’ve just created. Remember algebra in high school? It’s the same concept. In algebra you plug the numbers into the formula (commonly referred to as plug and chug). Here you plug the players according to how you rank them by position. For example, if Carson Wentz is my 8th ranked QB- I’ll probably have to grab him no later than round three since, according to my template, 8 QBs are typically picked after three rounds. After each round look and see what kind of choices you’ll have. Which players will be gone? Which players are still available? Who do you like in each round given the most likely choices you’ll be facing? The next step, look and see if you find any patterns. When are the positional runs happening at QB, RB, WR, and TE? This indicates how long you can wait on players you like and from there you can formulate your draft strategy. It’s not an exact science, but it’s more reliable than looking at ADP data from mock drafts and basing your draft strategy on a particular player being available in a certain round when owners have no stake. This gives you a ballpark figure of what to expect so you aren’t at the back end of a run at a position.

So the next time you’re in a league with a unique scoring format like The Scott Fish Bowl, don’t fret. Instead build a template and then plug & chug your rankings into it. Then maybe, with a lot of hard work, you might be good enough to draft against the pros like me.