Fantasy Football Draft Rules

This is Fantasy Football week at Sportscolumn.com. I just got back from a weekend in Vegas for my first live Fantasy Football draft and I’m all fired up. We’ve had this fantasy football league for about 7 years now but this year we decided to step it up and have a live draft in Las Vegas. I tell you what, there is nothing more fun than talking trash during a draft when most of the participants have been drinking for the last 12 hours.

All this week, I will be publishing fantasy football related columns including a recap of my draft but today, I am giving you my updated Rules of the Fantasy Draft. Stick to these drafting axioms and you will come out on top.#10 – Go with your gut feeling. Unless that player is on the team you root for –then your gut is misleading you. However, you can always count on the other owners to overvalue players from their own NFL teams.

#9 – Some moron will always draft a player from your team way too high because they will think you would be willing to give up a lot more than that player is actually worth in a trade. There is nothing you can do about it. Just let it go.

A perfect example for me is Owens. I love T.O. and think he’s going to have a monster year. However, in most mock drafts, he’s going late second round to early third round. I can guarantee you that a particular fool in my draft will select him in the early second. This forces me to either take Owens with my first pick (#4 overall, which clearly I won’t do) or he’s gone.

This bit me in the ass a couple of years ago when I drafted Tim Brown thinking I could trade him to a mildly retarded Raiders fan in my league. Didn’t happen. I was stuck with that whiny old man for the whole season.

#8 – If you think you’ve got a sleeper with your next pick, it is almost for certain that the person in front of you will take him. And if not, and you do get that player, it means he will have a terrible year. There’s so much information out there that any league owner worth his salt will have found out about the sleepers. The real sleepers are the ones NO ONE predicted and come out of the blue. If you tell me you knew Jon Kitna would have a monster top comeback player type year in 2003-2004, you are full of crap.

#7 – Whenever possible, make fun of a draft pick or invent an injury. Try to make it as plausible as possible by having it be a player known to be “injury prone”. Let’s say someone drafts Steve McNair, say something like “oh, I thought he chipped a verterbrae in practice.” Always worth the moment of sheer panic.

#6 – Save this one up. You can use it once. Someone will actually make a good pick in the middle rounds. Say “Wow! Great Pick!” And then pause a second to let him bask in the compliment. Just as he’s feeling good about himself, say, “too bad it’s your first one of the draft”.

#5 – Save yourself the aggravation and do not draft someone from your most hated team. My blacklist this year is anyone from the Giants.

Philly vs NY. Eagles up by 4. My fantasy football team down by 5. If I had Shockey on my FF team, I’d have to root for him to score. Why in holy hell would I do this? Remember, NFL rooting loyalties by far outweigh FF rooting interests. Don’t put yourself into this position. Just stay away or the football gods will punish your team.

#4 – Avoid the great player from a bottom dwelling team. This fear so overwhelms me that I even think picking LaDanian Tomlinson is a risk. (Clearly, if you have the top 3 picks, you have to take LT because he’s so damn good.) I’m glad that I’m picking #4 this year so I don’t have to even consider it. It drives me nuts when a great player never gets to score because the QB sucks or the O-line gives him no room to run or maybe they never get on the field because the opponents dominate time of possession in every game.

#3 – There is someone in your league who isn’t quite up to speed. This is the guy who remembers great seasons from 3 or 4 years ago and thinks those players are still good. We had a guy in our league who could be counted on to draft Emmitt Smith. My advice to you is not to mention it. Let him keep thinking that those players are still good and he’ll have a team loaded with Emmitt, Bettis, Brunnell, and Rod Smith.

#2 – This is the most important advice I can give you. Ignore all the mock drafts results you find online. They are done by rational people. Your draft will be done by people who have too many rooting interests and biases. Everyone in your draft (including you) thinks they know football but they don’t. Therefore, don’t ever listen to anyone else about who and how they’re drafting. They are most likely wrong.

#1 – Never ever ever mention any names during the drafting process until after they’re drafted. Even in jest. Let’s say you joke about a retired player. You might have just inadvertently alerted someone who was ready to take him that he no longer plays.

There you have it. My top 10 rules for your draft. Your draft is the most important part of your season so don’t screw it up!