Football Fantasy

For the fantasy football guru, drafting is like a field trip to candy land. With their unnatural (and somewhat obscene) wealth of NFL knowledge, they’re licking their chops over all the NFL’s treats: studs, sleepers and rising stars. Their sticky fingers will be busy bagging all the great players new and old, and, with no strategy, the only sucker in the draft will be you.

Exclusive Expert Analysis at Yahoo! Fantasy Football

We know the drill. Draft day can be damn intimidating for the newbie fantasy player who just wants to do well but doesn’t know where to start. This is why prep work is key. And what better prep work is there than researching solid drafting strategies?

Enter Value Based Drafting (VBD) – a strategy the pros use to build their teams by choosing the players with the most fantasy value available during the draft. Understanding VBD will help you avoid the pressure to pick up that middle-ground running back “just because everyone else is doing it” when there’s a huge point advantage to picking up a high scoring wide receiver instead. Remember this, young grasshopper: the object of the game is not to assemble a group of high scoring players with zero regard to position. To win, you must assemble a starting roster that serves to outscore your opposition at as many starting positions as possible. This will not only help you figure out what the order in which you should draft your players is, but understand when it’s ok to deviate from your plan to swipe all the best picks.

Master VBD and dominate your draft. It’s that simple.

The Concept

Lots of people think the objective of fantasy football is to “score lots of points!” A monkey can score points. Scoring lots of points does not mean sure victory. To win, you have to distance yourself ahead your competition. The basic idea behind VBD is outscoring your opponents’ teams at each of the players’ positions instead of simply “scoring lots of points.”

And the best part is this: it doesn’t matter what positions you’re using to outscore the competition. The only thing that matters is that you’re outscoring them. Period.

The Theory

Look at what you’re already doing. You probably choose kickers close to last. Why? Because there are lots of similar ones out there to choose from. Their value, then, is relatively low since you’re unlikely to outscore your opponent by very many points with a kicker. For example, our top ranked kicker is Nate Kaeding (who had 136 fantasy points last year), and he is followed quite closely by Jeff Wilkins (who had 131 points). A whopping five points difference. Clearly, choosing one over the other won’t make a huge difference in your overall standings at the end of the day. One the other side of the dime, top ranked running back LaDainian Tomlinson had 483 fantasy points last year. Second in line is Steven Jackson with 419. That’s a 64 point lead if you get Tomlinson.

In Practice

So, you might be asking yourself, “How can I apply VBD to my everyday existence?” Well, Skippy, we’re glad you asked.

1. Projected Fantasy Points

Going by last year’s fantasy points is a mistake so grave, you’ll wish you never lived to regret it. You’re going to want to base a player’s value on his projected points for 2007. If you’re really keen, you can make up your own projections for each player’s statistics and do the math to get projected points for 2007. If you aren’t so confident, you can use projected stats from one of many reputable fantasy magazines or Web sites out there. Regardless of whether you’re doing the math yourself, or using a fantasy site online, be sure to calculate projected fantasy points using the scoring system set by your commissioner. You will find the scoring system by clicking on the league’s name, and looking under “league rules” (found on the drop down menu at the top of the page).

2. Finding Your Baseline

You need to measure players against their peers to determine how valuable they are. You do this by choosing a “baseline” player. The baseline player will be the lowest scoring starting player at each position. All other players will be better or worse than this guy. To figure out your baseline, you will need two pieces of crucial information: the number of teams in your league, and the number of players at each position you have to start. Usually, there are:

– 12 teams in a league
– 1 starting quarterback
– 2 starting running backs
– 3 wide receivers
– 1 tight end
– 1 point kicker

Your baseline players will be the:

– 12th best Quarterback (Matt Leinart)
– the 24th best running back (Marshawn Lynch)
– the 36th best wide receiver (Santonio Holmes)
– the 12th best tight end (Randy McMichael)
– the 12th best point kicker (Josh Scobee)

3.Better or Worse?

To determine a player’s value, we need to see how much better or worse he is than the baseline player in his position. The best way to do this is to subtract the baseline’s projected fantasy points from all the other players in his position.

Here’s an example using our baseline tight end, Randy McMichael:

If McMichael’s projected fantasy points are 131 for 2007, we subtract 131 from him, and every other tight end on the list to get each tight end’s value. So, McMichael will have a value of zero, and Antonio Gates (with projected fantasy points sitting at 206) will have a value of 75 (206 less 131).

You will notice that everyone who has more projected fantasy points than our McMichael will have positive value and everyone below will have negative value.

4. Order Your Players by Value

Your list is ranking players all right, but it’s still organized by position. We all know players aren’t drafted in order of position. So now, you have to sort your players by their value. Dump them all into a spreadsheet together, and sort their VBD amounts in descending order to see how they all match up against each other. You can see how valuable a player is in terms of the entire league, and their ranking should tell you where that player deserves to be drafted, but this doesn’t mean that you have to take that player there. Crunch all the numbers you want, but remember one crucial thing: a successful General Manager won’t draft a player earlier than his opponents force him to.

Now go kick some ass!