2007 Fantasy Football Draft Manifesto

It's my favorite time of year again, the start of football season and fantasy football drafts. To help you with your draft, I’ve come up with my own draft manifesto. Before we get started though, I would like to thank Chris, one of my buddies from high school, for designing the header image above. Ok let’s get started. Here’s my list of suggestions for you to follow to have a successful draft:

1) Is this your first fantasy football draft? If so, you have a lot of work to do. Get started by reading this article, which is basically a fantasy football article for dummies.

2) Come to your draft prepared. This doesn’t mean you have to watch every single preseason game, do 50 mock drafts, or spend weeks researching (although doing all these things could only help), but you should be prepared to spend at least a couple of hours doing some research. At the very minimum, you should print out a few rankings sheets and take them with you to the draft. Under no circumstance should you draft empty-handed. I recommend one master ranking sheet for all the players, but also rankings sheets for every position. There are tons of these types of lists out on the Web so you should go with whichever ones you agree with the most. Here are a few lists I trust:

http://games.espn.go.com/ffl/tools/projections-If you have an ESPN Insider membership, the rankings don’t get much better than these.
http://football.about.com/cs/cheatsheets/a/bl_cheat.htm
http://www.fftoolbox.com/football/2007/cheatsheets.cfm
http://www.fantasysportscentral.com/football/cheatsheet.asp
http://sports.yahoo.com/fantasy/nfl/news?slug=bf-bigboard-football
http://mvn.com/nfl-fantasy/2007/08/06/2007-fantasy-football-cheat-sheet-released/
http://nflfreaks.com/Fantasy_Football_Features/Draft_Central/Cheat_Sheets/index.htm

3) Familiarize yourself with your league’s scoring system. Some leagues count touchdown passes as 4 points, others 6 points. Some leagues count 25 passing yards as a point, others do 50 for a point. These numbers matter and should guide your decision making process during the draft.

4) The first two rounds: Why you have to go RB-RB
Because such a large number of teams are employing running back by committee, it is darn right essential you snag a few quality running backs early on in the draft. Unless you land the first pick in your draft and have the luxury of selecting LT, you almost have to go running back, running back with your first two picks. If you’re drafting at the end of the round and you think you might be able to get a solid running back early on in following round, you can go ahead and take a Marvin Harrison or Steve Smith. But besides that scenario, you really should go RB-RB.

5) If a tier 1 quarterback (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Carson Palmer, or Drew Brees) is available when you pick in the third round, go ahead and select one of them. Why? Fantasy football is all about doing things with the ball, and no one has the ball more than the quarterback. If you have a great quarterback, you are assured of having a solid output every week in one of fantasy’s most important positions. I’m against taking Peyton in the first round, I just won’t do it. But if any of these guys are available when you pick in the third round, you can rest assured you’ve made a great pick.

6) If you are picking in the third round and all the tier 1 quarterbacks are off the draft board, don’t take another quarterback until late in the draft. The difference between a tier 1 and tier 2 quarterback will be substantial, but the difference between the rest of the quarterbacks is minimal. Let everyone else waste picks on quarterbacks and you can select two solid QB’s late in the draft after everyone has already selected their starter (I used this strategy in my draft last week and landed up with Eli Manning and Trent Green).

7) If I go RB-RB and all the tier 1 quarterbacks are off the board, what should I do? There are three answers to this question. You should either a) take Antonio Gates if he's still on the board, b) take the highest rated wide receiver available, or c) select another running back if you think you’re getting a great value.

8) Don’t go through your draft filling out your roster starter by starter, look for the best value. I had a draft a week or so ago and almost everyone in the league was focused on filling out their starting lineup. Instead, I new that some great running backs had fallen and I ended up taking Willie Parker, Cedric Benson, Ahman Green, Marion Barber III, and DeAngelo Williams, before I filled out a lot of my roster. Not all of these guys will have great years but I’m betting at least 2 of them will. And if any one of these flyers becomes a superstar, I'll have some serious trade bait to maybe make a deal for a tier 1 wide receiver or quarterback.

9) Don't take a kicker until the last round. The difference between the top 12 kickers is negligible, and there are always unknown guys before the season who come up with huge years (i.e. Neil Rackers, Robbie Gould).

10) Don't reach for a defense. Drafting a defense high is one of the worst mistakes you can make. Just don’t do it. My personal philosophy is not to take a defense until the last 3 or so rounds. You can always pickup a hot defense or select one that's going up against a terrible offense (aka the Raiders).

11) Draft based on tiers. Players expected to have roughly the same statistical output can be grouped into tiers. Different tiers represent a significant expected difference in statistical output. So if you are drafting and you have to make a tough decision between a running back and a wide receiver, look at what tier the two players are in and you can make your decision based on how many other players of the same tier are available at each position. Here are my tier rankings for the skill positions (if you’d like to use these at your draft you can also view them here, or just pop me an email and I’ll send you a PDF version of the rankings that you can print out):

The Scrapper's Running Back Tier Rankings

Tier 1- LaDainian Tomlinson
Tier 2- Larry Johnson, Steven Jackson, Shaun Alexander, Frank Gore
Tier 3- Joseph Addai, Rudi Johnson, Willie Parker, Brian Westbrook, Laurence Maroney, Travis Henry
Tier 4- Willis McGahee, Reggie Bush, Cedric Benson, Ronnie Brown
Tier 5- Clinton Portis, Edgerrin James, Thomas Jones, Brandon Jacobs
Tier 6- Ahman Green, Carnell Williams, Marshawn Lynch, Maurice Jones-Drew, Deuce McAllister
Tier 7- Marion Barber III, DeAngelo Williams, Jerious Norwood, Adrian Peterson, Jamal Lewis
Tier 8- Tatum Bell, Chester Taylor, Warrick Dunn, LenDale White, Fred Taylor, Julius Jones, Brandan Jackson, Deshaun Foster
Tier 9- Kevin Jones, Ladell Betts, Lamont Jordan, Dominic Rhodes
Tier 10- Chris Henry, Mike Bell, Leon Washington, Vernard Morency

The Scrapper's Wide Receiver Tier Rankings

Tier 1- Steve Smith, Marvin Harrison
Tier 2- Chad Johnson, Terrell Owens, Torry Holt, Larry Fitzgerald, Reggie Wayne, Roy Williams
Tier 3- Donald Driver, Javon Walker, Anquan Boldon, Lee Evans, Randy Moss
Tier 4- Marques Colston, TJ Housmandzadeh, Plaxico Burress, Andre Johnson, Hines Ward
Tier 5- Darrell Jackson, Laveraneus Coles, Deion Branch, Santana Moss
Tier 6- Reggie Brown, Joey Galloway, Chris Chambers, Donte Stallworth, Terry Glenn, Calvin Johnson,
Tier 7- Braylon Edwards, Mark Clayton, Jerricho Cotchery, Bernard Berrian
Tier 8- Kevin Curtis, Jerry Porter, Santonio Holmes, Greg Jennings, Vincent Jackson, Muhsin Muhammad, DJ Hackett,
Tier 9- Matt Jones, Mike Furrey, Drew Bennett, Brandon Jones, Ronald Curry, Devery Henderson,
Tier 10- Marty Booker, Reggie Williams, Derrick Mason, Bobby Wade, Anthony Gonzales, Dwayne Jarrett, Dwayne Bower, Ashley Lelie

The Scrapper's Quarterback Tier Ratings

Tier 1- Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Carson Palmer, Drew Brees
Tier 2- Marc Bulger, Donovan McNabb, Matt Hasselback
Tier 3- Jon Kitna, Phillip Rivers, Tony Romo, Matt Leinart
Tier 4- Eli Manning, Vince Young, Ben Roethilsberger
Tier 5- Brett Favre, Jay Cutler, Alex Smith, Jake Delhomme, Trent Green Tier 6- Chad Pennington, Rex Grossman, Steve McNair, J.P. Losman, Matt Schaub
Tier 7- Jeff Garcia, Byron Leftwich, Jason Campbell
Tier 8- Joey Harrington, Damon Huard, Josh McCown, Charlie Frye, Tavaris Jackson
Tier 9- Brady Quinn, Derek Anderson, John Beck, Jamarcus Russell, Brodie Croyle, David Garrard, Chris Simms

The Scrapper's Tight End Tier Rankings

Tier 1- Antonio Gates
Tier 2- Tony Gonzales, Jeremy Shockey, Todd Heap, Alge Crumpler, Chris Cooley
Tier 3- LJ Smith, Vernon Davis, Kellen Winslow, Ben Watson, Jason Witten, Dallas Clark
Tier 4- Heath Miller, Daniel Graham, Randy McMichael
Tier 5- Desmond Clark, Greg Olsen, Eric Johnson, Owen Daniels, Mercedes Lewis, Marcus Pollard
Tier 6- Bo Scaife, Ben Troupe, Chris Backer, Jerramy Stevens, David Martin, Visanthe Shiancoe

Back to the list…

12) Know your friends tendencies. My roommate Chris is a huge Bucs fan and always reaches for Bucs players. If Cadillac falls to me in our draft and I’m picking in front of him, I might make him give me a pick later in the draft or just take Cadillac myself so I can ransom him off later in the season.

13) Talk smack. This one suggestion has made me perhaps the most annoying 2-time defending fantasy football champion in history (I'm pretty proud). Make sure your team name is either about winning (“The Champ is Here” is a good one but I think I’m personally going to go with “3-peat” this year) or making fun of someone else (I’d like to give examples but none of them are really appropriate. I’m sure you can come up with a good team name, just use your imagination). Also, during the draft it’s always a good idea for you to criticize other people’s draft picks. I’m going to take my title belt (One of my friends gave me a wrestling title belt) to the draft, and mention that I’m the 2-time defending champ at least a 100 times. Whatever you do, make sure you get under their skin.

14) Have fun. It’s called “fantasy football” for a reason, so enjoy yourself. My greatest memories of playing fantasy football aren’t related to how well my team did (well that’s kind of a lie), but about having good times at drafts and ripping on people on the message board.

Alright Scrapper Nation. You have everything you need to have a great draft and challenge for a championship. Feel free to post any questions you may have and I’ll be sure to respond promptly.