It’s a lot of fun putting together a fantasy team. If you do the right amount of preparation and research, you can learn enough to put together a championship contender with nothing more than your fingers and a touchscreen phone.
That’s a scenario the best fiction writers of the last several decades would have found too unbelievable not that long ago. But that’s everyday life these days. We stream music and podcasts wirelessly to our ears from our touchscreen handheld supercomputers. The future is now, and while it comes with its challenges, there are plenty of bonuses as well.
Don’t mess up the future of your fantasy team by taking the wrong players. The best players aren’t the best because they get super lucky every year. While luck absolutely plays a large part in the success of any fantasy roster, there is plenty to be said about choosing the right players based on past success, current projections, and, sure, some luck.
First and foremost, even if you have been playing for years, please learn the scoring rules and roster spots in your league. Even if you swear by standard settings, make sure no changes you aren’t familiar with will be in effect. I have been running the same league for years, and every draft without fail, we get that token question in the 5th round, “wait, we are a PPR league? Is that for all players? Anyone want to trade for my 2nd round running back who never plays on third down?”
And when checking out suggestions and rankings, make sure you know where those players are ranked in your league. For our discussion today, we are using Yahoo rankings and projections.
To kick off your draft, make sure you get weekly studs for your top players. You should never get cute or take a swing on a maybe in the first or second round. If you were constructing a building, these rounds would be your foundation. Sure, a player in a later round or off the waiver wire may blow up and save your season, but you can’t count on that. More than likely, your team will collapse and miss the playoffs if you don’t give them the right players to build around.
Next, don’t be a homer. If you are competing to win, you will likely have players from many teams, not just your favorite team. No player in a Seattle uniform will be drafted before the third or fourth round, most likely, so you can forget building your team around Seahawks players.
If you want to invest in former local college players, there are some choices, but most of them are mid to late round players—if they get drafted at all. Tampa Bay and former U of O running back Bucky Irving is projected to go in the second round, and he’s the highest-rated player from either Oregon school right now.
QBs Bo Nix and Justin Herbert would be great additions to any team, but they will be available in the middle of the draft, so don’t chase them ahead of the top five at the position. On the other hand, if Herbert gets to 88MPH and goes back in time with WR Keenan Allen, you’re going to see some serious stuff. The same goes for Trevor Lawrence, who is set to pair with Travis Hunter and Brian Thomas Jr., along with a new playcaller who should help their offense get on track. If things go well there, he could have a career year in Jacksonville. But you can’t count on any of that; that’s why it’s called speculation and not facts.
Once the elite QBs are gone (and they will likely be gone by the 5th round), you can wait a while to find yours, but don’t miss out if there are a lot of people taking QBs at once. If that happens, you have two choices: focus on other positions being ignored for the moment, or fall in with the run and get your QB.
WR Troy Franklin and TE Juwan Johnson will be very late picks or waiver adds, so don’t worry about them, but they are out there if you need a Ducks player on your team.
QB Dillon Gabriel has to battle four other players in a battle royale to the death to take the starting spot in Cleveland, so don’t worry about drafting him this season.
The Beavers have only a few skill players worth looking at, and none of them will be going early. TE Luke Musgrave has an unusual blend of speed and size, but tends to get lost more than defenders lose him, and he likes to stop short on his routes for some reason. If he can harness his talent into production, he will be worth a high pick, but right now, you can get him in the later rounds or add him after the draft for nothing. WR Brandin Cooks was once a premier name in the game of fantasy, but now he’s a guy you keep on the bench or leave on the waiver wire until you need a bye week fill-in player or someone gets hurt. RB Damien Martinez is currently on Seattle’s roster, but he may not make the team. Even if he does, he would be third or fourth in line for playing time when the regular season kicks off in a couple of weeks.
Seattle has a few star players worth targeting in the draft. Jaxson Smith-Njigba should be the primary target in the Seahawks’ new offense. Still, we will have to wait and see how much new OC Klint Kubiak calls passing plays and if the reworked offensive line can give new QB Sam Darnold time to throw in a similar but not the same system he ran in Minnesota last season. JSN is currently going in the 3rd or 4th round, and if he has anything close to the season he had last year, he would be worth that high of a pick for sure. Without Tyler Lockett or Noah Fant on the team, there aren’t many guys fighting for targets yet, but former Rams WR Cooper Kupp is out to prove he has something left in the tank after running out his welcome in LA and having a lot of issues getting away from defenders. Rookie TE Elijah Arroyo could make an immediate impact, although rookies rarely do at that spot, given the learning curve to the pro level, but there are exceptions.
Kenneth Walker III is currently projected as a fourth or 5th round pick, but if the offense features him as heavily as expected, he should outplay that projection very quickly. Assuming he stays healthy, which is sometimes a challenge for K9. But it’s a challenge for many players. This is a rough game and eventually everyone has to take a break to get better.
After Walker, you can get Darnold in the later rounds and maybe even after the draft as a waiver pickup. If Darnold plays at the level he did last year, he could easily be a top 10 QB in fantasy, but his late-season slump derailed a lot of championship hopes, so be careful who you put your hopes in.
The most points per week will come from your best players, so don’t worry too much about their position, but make sure you have a spot for them every week. If you have five good running backs but only two RB spots and one flex spot, why do you need the other two? You can stockpile them on your bench and hope someone else needs to make a trade, but more than likely, you will be leaving yourself light or no depth at other spots. Just because you get extra credit for receptions doesn’t mean your entire bench needs to be receivers and tight ends either, you want to make sure you can fill your two RB spots with quality players, not just anybody in a jersey who happens to run holding a football for a living. There are plenty of guys, but not as many good players when you need them.
If you have two RB spots, two WR spots, and a flex spot, that means each week you can start a maximum of 3 RBs or 3 WRs. So, don’t draft too many of either spot and ignore the other. Drafting is about preparing and then executing that preparation. You can’t do that if your lineup doesn’t look right.
You will hear plenty about zero RB, hero RB, and standard draft strategies. If you talk to enough people, you’ll find someone who’s had massive success or failure with one and swears by another. Make sure your strategy aligns with your goals. If your goal is to be the highest scoring regular season team, that’s great, but that team doesn’t always win every week, and depending on how your league is set up, that could strangely leave you as one of the odd teams out come playoff time. Playing in the playoffs is also essential. If you get a bye week as one of the top seeds, it’s an extra incentive to put your best team on the field every single week.
Make sure to keep an eye on the players you target and their bye weeks. You can survive a week with fill-in players, but it will be challenging, depending on how many bench spots you have. You never want to have to decide which good player to cut because you’ve added too many guys who take the same week off. And you also don’t want to have to risk losing a week because you can’t field a team.
Above all, make sure you set your lineup every week and get injured players in IR spots or off your team. Nothing irritates people more than seeing the same players in a lineup every week who aren’t playing or are injured. They don’t seem to mind an easy win when it’s their turn, but they will complain to the league runner if that person helps someone win they dislike, or if it’s how a playoff spot is clinched.
Have fun, do your best, and win at all costs. Fantasy is a good way to spend your spare time, and it has helped people who had limited interest in football find a strange addiction to the sport – especially if they have access to the RedZone channel.
Whatever you do, make sure you come prepared and pick players that give you the best chance to win. Making a goofy pick might seem funny at the time, but you will have that player on your roster the rest of the season, and while most folks can handle a little good fun at their expense for a while, six months is a long time. Just think about that. If you are planning to draft a kicker or a defense in the second round, let me save you some time – don’t.
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