No strategy is the best strategy

Last week we talked about creating your rankings using all those 2003 Fantasy Football Projections out there and your own leagues scoring system.

This week we get into how to use them in your draft.

There are about a thousand different ways to draft a fantasy football team and there are more then a million people out there telling us that their way of doing it is the best.

Some, actually the majority, will tell you that drafting your two Running Backs (RB) first is the best approach.

Others will tell your draft order should be as follows: the best available RB, then best available Quarterback (QB), and then best available Wide Receiver (WR).

And a chosen few will say draft the best available player for the first three to four rounds then fill the holes in your roster.

Which is truly the best method of drafting a moneymaking, league winning fantasy football team? The answer: None of them.

That's right, none of them.

People, you need to relax and take a long hard look at what it takes to win at fantasy football.

It's really simple when you think about it, it takes points.

Draft day is the most important day of your fantasy football season so to me it never made sense to limit or constrict your point of view.

What you do on draft day could make or brake your whole season so do yourself a favor and do your own homework instead of buying into someone else's drafting strategy.

Remember, don't let emotion cloud logic.

Sure it may be easier just to follow some standard drafting strategy but in the end it doesn't matter if its a RB, QB, or WR as long as you are drafting the player that you believe will get you most points.

I mean why draft the No. 5 or No. 6 RB when the No. 1 or No. 2 WR is still available?

Don't get stuck in some draft strategy that lets more valuable players slip through the cracks and onto someone else's roster.

Hogwash you say. Let me prove it to you.

Last season, my business partner and I won our high stakes fantasy league and you know who our first pick of the draft was? Terrell Owens.

That's right with the 5th pick in the draft we grabbed a WR. Guess who our second pick was (16th pick overall)? Marvin Harrison.

That's right another WR. Why WRs you ask? Easy, our scoring system at the time favored WRs.

The fact that there were more ways for a WR to score in this league was overlooked by almost all the other owners so while they were scrambling to get top 10 RBs and QBs we strolled in and picked up the two best WRs of the season.

It's all about doing your homework kids, know your scoring system backwards and forwards and see if it favors one position over the others.

Oh, and if your thinking that we ended up with bottom barrel RBs and QBs then think again.

Ricky Williams and Travis Henry in the backfield and Brad Johnson and Trent Green taking snaps isn't a bad draft at all.

See, its not about drafting the best player.

It's about drafting the RIGHT player.

Now there will be other factors that need to be recognized.

Well one of those factors, and in my opinion the biggest, which will affect your draft strategy, is the quality player availability.

Knowing how many high-quality players there are at each position is almost as important as knowing who they are.

I call this the drop-off point. This is the line where we go from top tier to good, good to average, average to so-so, and so-so to I am screwed.

But, how do I tier my rankings you ask.

Well grasshopper, listen and learn!

It's a simple two-step process.

First, we figure out the drop-off point.

This is done by taking the rankings that we completed last week (this process was explained in last weeks article The Power of Projections) and looking at the Total Points (TP) scored by each player and how they relate to each other.

Here is an example;

Scoring Summary

Name PASS TD RUSH TD INT TP TPG

Michael Vick 3319 21 795 8 10 325 20

Donovan McNabb 3596 25 591 6 11 321 20

Daunte Culpepper 3796 23 524 7 16 304 19 Rich Gannon 4125 25 176 2 9 280 18

Jeff Garcia 3708 26 312 3 11 276 17

Peyton Manning 4153 28 134 2 16 270 17

Aaron Brooks 3752 26 286 2 15 265 17

Steve McNair 3353 21 373 3 13 248 16

Kurt Warner 3927 28 50 0 16 243 15

Matt Hasselbeck 3668 23 207 1 12 240 15

Ok, we can see that Vick leads the QBs in Total Points scored in our rankings.

So what we need to do is figure out how everyone else's points compare to the person just above them in our rankings.

So create another column called Drop-off Point (DOP) and minus McNabb's points from Vick's to get McNabb's Drop-off point, then Culpepper's from McNabb's to get Culpepper's and then so on and so on down the line.

That would give you something like this;

Scoring Summary

Name PASS TD RUSH TD INT TP TPG DOP

Michael Vick 3319 21 795 8 10 325 20 0

Donovan McNabb 3596 25 591 6 11 321 20 -4

Daunte Culpepper 3796 23 524 7 16 304 19 -17 Rich Gannon 4125 25 176 2 9 280 18 -24

Jeff Garcia 3708 26 312 3 11 276 17 -4

Peyton Manning 4153 28 134 2 16 270 17 -6

Aaron Brooks 3752 26 286 2 15 265 17 -5

Steve McNair 3353 21 373 3 13 248 16 -17

Kurt Warner 3927 28 50 0 16 243 15 -5

Matt Hasselbeck 3668 23 207 1 12 240 15 -3

We see that according to our rankings and projections McNabb will score four points less then Vick, which is relatively close right?

Then we see that Culpepper will score 17 points less then McNabb, which is a pretty large drop right?

Wait, we see that Gannon is going to score 24 points less then Culpepper!

Could this be our first Tier Marker?

Well, look at how Garcia compares to Gannon, only four points less then Gannon.

So that is it Culpepper is the last QB in our first tier and Gannon is the first QB in our second tier. See how it works?

By looking at these point comparisons we can actually see our QBs grouping together and we can also see where the next major drop-off point is.

You can see that from Gannon to Brooks there is relatively no difference in point production but when you get to McNair you see a Drop-Off Point with -17.

Make sense? Congratulations, you have tiered your rankings!

Now imagine that its the 3rd round and you drafted RB and WR in rounds one and two.

You see that all your first tier QBs are gone but the majority of your second tier QBs are still available.

You also notice that one of first tier RBs is still available!

Are you going to panic and grab the first QB in your second tier to fill a roster spot or grab the last RB in your first tier?

Well with your tiered rankings in front of you, you would obviously grab that RB because you know that you can wait on that QB till next round and lose very little point value.

This is the value of tiered rankings. Use this knowledge wisely grasshopper and your fantasy team will go far!