Pre-draft rankings

My fellow coaches,

The draft is less than a week away and while I'm sure most of you are just kicking back waiting for the online draft to allocate you a team, a few Coaches are agonising over their pre-draft ranking: coaches like me.

Firstly, the draft will determine a draft order - coaches will be assigned position 1 to 10. Position 1 gets first pick in the first round. To make things... not necessarily fair, but more fair, in Round 2, position 10 will pick first, through to position 1 picking tenth. And it will keep snaking on and on until the teams are filled.

The online draft will allocate the highest ranking player in its ranking list. Currently, the top ten is:
RB Adrian Peterson
RB LeSean McCoy
RB Jamaal Charles
RB Matt Forte
RB Marshawn Lynch
RB Eddie Lacy
WR Calvin Johnson
QB Peyton Manning
TE Jimmy Graham
RB Arian Foster

The Coach who scores Pick 1 would be allocated AP and the coach left with Pick 10 is allocated Arian Foster. Do you want Foster? He was amazing in 2012, got injured in 2013 and has question marks on his game time for this season. A risk at pick 10?

How does the online draft pre-rank the players? Some arcane formula based on previous years scores, age, position and a projection for the coming season. Is it any good? Probably. But does it suit your style?

The long established wisdom is you take Running Back early, try to get a stud Wide Receiver and then a good QB and TE. This is because there are a few stud RBs that are more likely to put up high numbers than the large assortment of moderate to good WRs and QBs. There are easily 10-12 QBs that can fit in any team and post good numbers week in and week out. And you can only start 1. But you can start up to 3 RBs. So you need good ones.

But the NFL has changed over the last few years - stud runnings backs are becoming rarer because a teams are using 2 or 3 running backs in a game, spreading the precious fantasy points among the committee. For example, LeVeon Bell, RB for Pittsburgh Steelers, is set to do a bit of running in the open field this year. For a RB, 10 yards gained = 1 fantasy point. But the Steelers are set to use LaGarret Blount when the get close to the endzone, so its likely that Blount will score the TD. 1 TD = 6 points. In the old days, Bell would pick up, say, 30 yards rushing and the TD on the drive for 9 fantasy points. Now, Bell gets 3 and Blount gets 6 and neither are overly useful for the poor fantasy coach that has either Bell or Blount.

But that is just a projection of 2014. Maybe Bell gets all the carries and all the TDs. Or maybe Blount does.

So maybe coaches want to over-rule the online draft system and go for their own system. Maybe taking Peyton Manning in Round 1 is the way to go. Or maybe WR mega-stud Calvin Johnson. Or TE Jimmy Graham.

You can change your own draft order  by opening up the Fantasy site, going to your team and clicking on the Pre-Draft Ranking link. Click on Edit Overall pre-rank and you can create your own ranks, and also set a list of players you do not want drafted under any condition.

You don't have to pre-rank all 1,000 players, just select your preferred players and after those are used the online draft will revert back to the pre-determined draft order.

Team Doof is working against established Fantasy Theory this year and is not following the standard RB in the first round expectation. Will it work? Of course it will: Team Doof are gonna be World Champions this year!

Feel like dabbling in Fantasy Theory, see what the 'experts' are advising:
Draft Strategies: QBs
Draft Strategies: WRs
Draft Strategies: RBs
Draft Strategies: TEs
Need to know before drafting
Player Draft breakdown