Saturday, October 6, 2007

Start your fantasy football strategy now

Now that the draft has got you semi-focused on the upcoming nfl season, its a good idea to try and stay focused with fantasy football season just months away (ok, over 4 months, which is going to seem like an eternity). So most of the sites offer these fantasy football pros who will provide you with all of the useless trivia they think will prepare you for YOUR draft.

Only YOU know your league and its scoring system. That is the key and will separate your team from a mediocre season to a championship. My advice to you is get all of the relevant 2006 data into an excel spreadsheet and do a quick and dirty ranking using YOUR league's scoring system. The very basics will do, (pass/rec/rush yards, tds). The results might surprise you. Ok we all know that Tomlinson is a runaway #1 no matter what scoring system you use. As for the other selections, you may be able to pick out an undervalued running back because your league gives pretty good points for receiving yards. Although you can't ignore the TDs category, one can argue that yards is a more consistent measure and more likely to be repeated.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

The other main point is the dropoff. By ranking the players according to your league's scoring system, you'll get a much better perspective as to the dropoff in points between running back #5 and #10...and as we know will be much higher than a dropoff in receivers.

As last season has taught us, you can no longer ignore defenses. Many pros state that kickers and defenses should be picked last. If my team didn't have Baltimore's defense last year I'd probably have a losing record.

OK, and back to the draft. Its conceivable that there will be about five rookie players that will have an impact on offense this year. Not much to play with compared with last season, but pay attention to the other positions as well...improved defenses such as Miami's may provide some argument for those who were disappointed with Ronnie Brown's game to reconsider now that the offense should be on the field more.

Don't listen to the pros. They don't know your league and besides, fantasy football is much more fun when you craft your own strategy and opinions on players and make it your season.

No comments: