Blast from the Past

Good day, Gents!

Since I am out of the league this year, yet will still be keeping an eye on how ya'll are doing...I thought I would reveal my secrets to my draft method a year prior. Now, I had a horrible fantasy season last year, I'll admit. But when I go back and look at how I drafted, I am still quite pleased. And since you gentlemen are at the point of the draft, this piece is necessary. I will put this website link here:

http://fftoday.com/stats/playerstats.php?Season=2013&GameWeek=&PosID=10&LeagueID=143908

Okay, so the cat is out of the bag! Well, sort of. Let me explain my top secret. My secret to the draft and my personal player rankings was simply based on statistics because stats are the only evidence of all things "fantasy points": past, present, and even potential future. I spent hours upon hours making my own rankings list based upon the following variables as a part of the stats:

1) If they have been consistently productive in the top 5 in the past 5 years, they jump to my #1 guy. Same can be said about the top 10-15 in the past 5 years for the runners up. If they have been consistent at all but are in the top 20, they jump to my top 10. Consistency is more dependable then potential explosiveness.

2) If this year is a transition year for any of the top 20 guys on the stats sheet from the past 5 seasons, they automatically drop from the top ranked list due to the new environment and unknown possibilities that most likely cause a drop in their fantasy production.

3) If they were injured at all during the past 5 seasons, no matter the fantasy production they drop out of the top list because they have been inconsistent & are most likely going to continue to get injured and be inconsistent. Consistency in fantasy football is the key in getting the most out of your guys.

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BONUS DRAFT SECRETS:

+1) Don't waste draft picks #1-13 on a kicker or a defense. The stats consistently vary too much during the course of the season and you are probably going to grab a better defense and kicker off waivers during the season anyways. Save the kicker and defense for your very last picks (14, 15). Or, heck! Don't even draft them & wait until the season starts to pick them off of waivers.

+2) Don't trust NFL.com's fantasy advice on waiting for a QB, RB, WR, or TE to drop, especially the QB. If you can get a top 3 QB, don't feel ashamed to use your #1 pick on them. This is a passing league and QB's compared to all other positions usually start every game of the season compared to most RBs (whom are supposedly the most coveted position in fantasy), even the top RBs usually miss a game or two during the course of the season. And the top QB's usually have a great week every week. I took NFL.com's advice in a way last season by trading away my top 2 picks for mid-round picks. If you can do this, it turns out to be a GREAT strategy because fantasy is all about the top 2 guys at each position. After that, they're all interchangeable stats-wise and everything is unpredictable. You have a 10%-20% chance of getting the #1 or #2 picks of the first round to select those guys & in a snake draft if you are that #1 or #2 guy, you better make your first pick count because most of the players you want to select are going to be picked by others. So, in essence I followed the advice and waited for a decent-quality QB with a lot of upside to fall to me in the mid rounds. I selected Andrew Luck & had an average year at QB. If I could've changed one thing about my draft last season, it would've been that I selected a better, more consistent QB stats-wise with my first pick (which would've been round 3 due to my trade but due to the average advice of waiting on QBs, a lot of better QBs stats-wise were still on the table).

BONUS, BONUS DRAFT SECRET:

++1) Anything playoffs or Super Bowl doesn't matter come the regular season, I don't care what anybody says. Don't use it to beef up a player's reputation for fantasy and certainly don't use super bowl rings as an excuse to draft the individual players. Fantasy only counts during the regular season. If certain players aren't as great during the season but are great in the post-season...just stick to how they did in the regular season. Also, any team that has high-octane offenses i.e. Broncos, Packers, Saints, Patriots...again, doesn't matter what they did in the post-season. If they put up big numbers in the regular seasons for the past 5 seasons, practically any player you draft from those teams will do well for you.







That's it! What some of you already knew & some of you never knew was that I spent over 100 hours on draft prep last summer. So, although the above suggestions and advice may be shrugged off as just another past player's individual, personal opinions...these opinions have some experience and time behind them. Take care & good luck to all of you! And hopefully come Labor Day weekend, I will see some of you.


- Jonathan Brassington (JB/Prophets & Kings)