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NFL Mock Draft 2009 Draft of 2009 Lacks Star Power NFL Draft 2009: Getting Started Super Bowl Well Worth Tuning In For
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Prospects On Center Stage NBA Preview 2008/09: Final Call
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2008 Fantasy Preview: Value Based Drafting By Ric Atkinson Let me start out by saying the following: This article is not fluffy reading for the casual fantasy player. This is valuable information for hardcore fantasy football owners. If you live, eat, and breathe fantasy football, then this is an article for you. With that out of the way, let’s get on with giving you a big leg up on the rest of your league. Drafting wisely is the most import thing a fantasy owner can do to insure a winning team. You never have to recover from getting off to a strong start. So taking the time to prepare a good drafting strategy is time well spent. Knowing which players are the best producers of fantasy football points is of course a great place to start. But it is just that, a place to start. You can find hundreds of websites and dozens of fantasy football magazines that rate the players by position. That’s very valuable information. But it isn’t everything you need. To really have a great draft you need a plan. That is where “Value Based Drafting” comes into play. What is Value Based Drafting (or VBD for short)? Simply put, it is drafting with this one principle in mind: The value of a player is determined not by the number of points he scores, but by how much he outscores his peers at his particular position. When you draft a team, you are not trying to draft a team made up of the guys who will score the most total FF points every week. If that was your goal you would draft a team of nothing but Quarterbacks and Running Backs. You would also lose every week. Your real goal is to draft a team that will outscore your opponents team each week. You need points from every position to win consistently. VBD will help make that happen for you. Here is a three-step procedure to VBD: Step 1: Based on the scoring system used by your league, project how many fantasy football points you expect key players will score in the coming year. What’s a “Key” player? Here’s my rule of thumb: Top 20 quarterbacks, Top 20 running backs, Top 40 receivers, Top 15 tight ends, Top 10 kickers, and Top 10 defenses. Here on Sportsoverload.com, in our fantasy previews we have provided you with our projections for most of the significant players. You can use our projections, or fine tune them with your own projections. Then plug those projections into your leagues scoring system. Step 2: Determine each players “Relative Value” (RV for short) as compared to the average (or baseline) player at their position. Personally, I set the baseline to judge RV by the “worst starter” method. That is where I take the player who I think should be the worst starter at each position in my league and give him a relative value of zero. For instance, in a 10 team league that starts one quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, one tight end, one kicker, and one defense, the worst starters would be the 10th ranked QB, the 20th ranked RB, the 20th ranked WR, the 10th ranked TE, the 10th ranked K, and the 10th ranked D/ST. I would then take my projected FF points for each player and subtract them from my projected FF points for the worst starter at their position to get their “RV”. For example if I projected the top ranked QB to score 300 points, and the 10th ranked QB to score 200 points, and the 15th ranked QB to score 150 points, the top ranked QB would have an RV of +100, the 10th ranked QB an RV of 0 (he is our baseline) and the 15th ranked QB would have a relative value of -50. Step 3: So far we have only ranked players in relation to other players at their position. Unfortunately that’s not how drafts work in the real world. You need to know how all the different players are valued not just among their position peers but among each other. We do that by sorting their RV numbers. Rank all of the players regardless of their position from top to bottom via their RVs. You now have your Value Based Drafting cheat sheet. Depending on your league, don't be shocked to see some players sort out much higher than "conventional wisdom" says. You'll most likely find that your kickers all have RVs fairly low and fairly close together. This reinforces what you already know. Even though they score a ton, they're all just about the same and you can afford to wait and snag a good one later. You'll probably be surprised when you look at the other positions. QB's are probably deeper than you think You’ll also see that a few of the TEs have much higher RV than you would have thought. So now you have all the players ranked by their RV number, which means they're ranked by their value. A key point is to understand what the list is telling you. It's ranking the players by their value, or where they deserve to be drafted. This is not necessarily the order in which you should draft them. You may well have a Jason Witten or Antonio Gates show up in your top 10 overall players if your league has a mandatory TE because they outscore the other tight ends by such a margin. But that's too early to actually draft them. Take another player there and get those guys much later. The owner who wins will be the owner who gets the best value for his picks. Witten or Gates in the first round is not a real value. Witten or Gates in the 4th round is great value. Bottom line is don't draft a player any earlier than your fellow owners force you to. While it is wonderful you have a hunch a certain player will break out and have a great year, you only hurt yourself taking him 2 or 3 rounds early. Even if you like a guy ranked 35th better than a guy ranked 22nd, taking the 35th best player a round early when you can get him in the next round is silly. Take a good player that is available then snag your guy in the next couple of rounds. The important goal is to trying to separate yourself from your opponent. An example is having the top tight end who outscores your opponents tight end every week, instead of having another middle of the pack RB or WR. You can also look at where the drop offs are at other positions as well. At QB, Brady and Manning are the top tier. Romo, Brees, and Palmer are the second tier. Roethlisberger, Hasselbeck, and Anderson are the third tier. After that, it drops off a bit as McNabb, Bulger, and Cutler are up next. It isn’t as simple as taking the 8th ranked QB instead of the 9th ranked QB, because there is a substantial drop off in the points that can make a difference. However, you could pass on the 3rd ranked QB and take the 5th ranked QB a round later, without a huge drop off. You could put that draft pick towards value somewhere else. **The one disclaimer to this is if you are at an akward draft position in relation to where your guy is ranked. If you are in a 10-team league and have picks 7, 14, 27, 34, 47, and so forth and the guy you really want is ranked 42nd, you might have to take him at 34 because he probably won't slip down to 47 when you pick again. This can get really tricky if you have the first or last pick in your draft, because you go so long between picks. There you have it, Value Based Drafting in a nutshell. Remember the object of fantasy football is not to score a ton of points, but to outscore the opponent. You must fill a roster with a specified number of players at specified positions. The surest way to outscore your opponent is to build a team of players that outscore their peers. The players who most distance themselves from the other players at their respective positions are therefore the most valuable. July 31, 2008 |
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Be Careful What You Wish For
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| NCAA Basketball | |
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Jumpology: My Bracket Jumpology: Scouting The Heavyweights Jumpology: Reviewing The Bracket
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