Top Fantasy Football Tips

Since virtually all Fantasy Football (FFL) leagues are held on the web, this article is directed at the various websites that offer FFL. We will divide the article into different sections, so if you are a Rookieor a Sfacilitated vet, you can go straight to the parts you need the most.

Rookies

1) Join a private or public league: A private league is a league generally established by a Experienced vet and they send invitations to the people they want in the league. A public league is open to anyone who joins. You can find them on Yahoo, ESPN, CBSSports, and around a million other sites.

2) Is this a Head-to-Head or Total Points league? – Head to Head means that you play against another team in your league each week and whoever has the most points for that match wins. Then you will have playoffs and even a championship game. A Total Points league simply calculates the total number of points that all of its players accumulate during the season and the team that has the most points at the end of the season wins the league championship. (Face to face is a lot more fun. You can talk serious trash every week).

3) Look at the scoring rules – this is very important, as the scoring in your league can be very different than the next. One league may have a TD pass as 6 points, while another only 4. Some leagues award 1 point for every catch they make a WR / RB & TE, while others only allow yards and TDs.

4) Pre-rank your players – Each league will have a draft before the season begins. Once you’ve reviewed the scoring rules and determined which players and positions will be the most valuable in your league, you’ll need to pre-rank your players before the draft begins, preferably a few weeks in advance. Most websites actually pre-rank them for you and will allow you to modify the list to your personal settings.

5) Draft Time – After all your hard work and research, it’s time for some guys to join your team. If you’ve seeded your players correctly, you should have mostly QBs and RBs in the early rounds, then followed by RBs, TEs, Defense / Special Teams, and finally, Kickers. Be sure to check to see if a player was injured during the preseason, is in a contract dispute, or is suspended. Players who will only miss a week or two will be fine, but don’t waste a draft pick on a guy who got injured in a preseason game and will miss the entire year.

6) Week 1 – All the guys you thought were going to have great years had a horrible first week and a running back you’ve never heard of gets 200 yards and 3 TDs. Don’t worry, it happens every year. If you picked guys who’ve produced in the past, they’ll likely have another good year, but if there’s a guy who comes out of nowhere and dominates in the first regular-season NFL game of his life, don’t. he’s afraid to drop a guy and pick him up if he needs him in that position. Ask anyone in the last 5 years about Marques Colston, Eddie Royal, Willie Parker or “the other” Steve Smith.

7) The rest of the season: evaluate the production capacity of your team. Don’t stick with a guy just because you like him. If you remove him from your FFL team, I’m sure he will survive. Good luck!

Experienced vets

So, have you been playing FFL for how long? Emmitt Smith was a rookie on my first FFL team. Since no website kept track of these things, you would have to get the Monday and Tuesday morning newspaper to check box scores, then manually calculate all pass, catch, run, defense, and kick statistics for each team in my league and determine a winner each week. After 20 years of FFL, these are some of the things I have learned:

1) Write up some second string guys. I have been a commissioner of a goalkeeping league for the past few years. The first year, he was really weak @ RB towards the end of the draft. I looked at the depth charts to see which first rope RBs would likely get injured first. I looked at these three guys: Ahmad Green (Houston), Lendell White (Tennessee) and Willis McGahee (Baltimore) and decided to recruit their backups. The three backups were Steve Slaton, Chris Johnson and Ray Rice. I need to say more.

2) Guardian leagues are overrated. Soccer is a violent sport, boys get injured all the time. My caregivers rarely stay the same year after year. The “new guy” last year, he had no goalkeepers and finished third in our league.

3) Don’t underestimate top-tier ETs. Most head-to-head leagues have between 10 and 12 teams. That means every FFL team will likely have a top-tier QB & RB. In 2009, 10 QBs threw more than 4,000 yards and 18 QBs had more than 20 TD passes. 15 RBs ran for more than 1,000 yards and 12 RBs had more than 10 touchdowns on the ground. 20 WR had more than 1,000 receiving yards, but only three TEs had more than 1,000 yards. You can land one of the TE “The Big 3” and still get a 1,000-yard receiver in the next round or two. Hitting one of the “Big 3” Tight Ends is like hitting a fourth receiver out of 1,000. The value of TE’s fanaticism really drops after the “big 3” are off the table.

4) Don’t overestimate the WRs. Unless you’re in a receiving points league, don’t waste a top pick on a WR. Even if you’re in a receiving points league, look for an RB who gets thrown long before picking a WR. They can have very high and low games.

5) Don’t underestimate Defense & Kickers. The best defenders and kickers can generally top 10-15 in scoring in many leagues. Not bad, considering that no one usually picks them until hundreds of other players have already been chosen.

Thanks for reading our article. If you have any suggestions, feel free to email us at: [email protected]

www.brooksmemorabilia.com