Now that free agency has started and we all know that the NFL season will be starting on time, you're no doubt knees-deep in your fantasy draft preparation. All the hours of research, checking team blogs, reading fantasy insight and analysis, watching pre-season games and listening to podcasts will all come to fruition in just a few more weeks when you sit down with your league mates and draft. Don't let all that legwork you did go to waste though – you still need to keep track of everything going on during your draft too. Take a look at the cheat sheets I've created for your viewing pleasure below, and use them wisely on draft day.
I know that a lot of draft software keeps track of this for you, but I've always found it more convenient and useful to manually track each team's draft picks so that I know what each team has and needs. Print out the attached sheet and label each team before the draft starts. As the draft goes on, fill in each team's selection. Knowing what each team drafting ahead of you has and needs can help you with your own selections. Notice that quarterbacks are going early in the draft? Then adjust the value of the players remaining! If there's a quarterback you're targeting you'll be better prepared to take him a round early, or scrap him all together and focus on a different position or player. Or, say it's the end of round four and you're deciding between Peyton Manning and Felix Jones. If you check the cheat sheet and see that all the teams drafting after you have quarterbacks, but don't have RB2's, you know you should take Jones now, and then wait for your next pick to take Manning. Having this type of information at your finger tips is invaluable, and is worth the extra five seconds it takes to fill in a player's name in a column.
The sheet is editable, so you can adjust it to fit your league specifications.
I've already written about the virtues of organizing players into tiers, and this cheat sheet will help you do so on draft day. Again, it's in an editable format so you should make the necessary changes to chart to meet your rankings. The attached sheet is not completely updated to account for free agency, so that's important to consider when you're moving players around.
As the draft is going on, cross players off your list so you know they're no longer available. Also, when there's just one or two players left in a tier, highlight their names to remind you they're still available – it would be a shame to put all that work into ranking players, then not notice there's one player left in your fifth tier and draft one from the seventh.
Auction drafts are the ultimate fantasy experience for me. You have to be involved in every single selection and have the opportunity to engage in gamesmanship with your friends and league mates. If you're not familiar with auction drafts, check out Alex Migilio's pieces on auction drafts here and here.
This sheet is in Excel format and is divided into five different columns: one for position, one for the number of auction dollars you project to spend on a position, one for the number of dollars you actually spent, one for the difference between the second and third columns and lastly, one for targets you have at a given position.
Each auction draft is it's own individual market, and the ideas of fantasy owners has a much greater impact on how much an individual player goes for than the projected value for that specific player. Use the auction values you see as a guide, then budget how much money you'd like to spend, or think you might spend on each position. If you fill out the projected dollar amount column for each position on the attached sheet, it will add up the numbers you input in the bottom of the column to help you adjust (note: typically, the auction budget for leagues is $200).
As the draft progresses fill in the actual value column and do some quick math to get the value in the difference column. This way you know if you have more or less money than originally expected to spend on other positions. I also cross off my targets as they come off the board so I know when its time to go above my budget.
Last year, for example, I targeted two elite wide receivers. I won Andre Johnson early on for about $50, but each of my other targets went above what I wanted to spend. My last elite receiver on the board was Miles Austin and I wasn't keen on having a third or fourth tier wide receiver as my WR2, so I knew that I had to spend what it cost to get him, spending $40 on 2009's breakout player. If I wasn't keeping track of who was on and off the board I might have let Austin go for less money, but then would have had to spend money on lesser players that I didn't think were as valuable.
Depth Charts
The final cheat sheet you need at your disposal is the offensive (and defensive if you do IDP) depth charts for each NFL team. This is especially important as you go late into the draft and a lot of familiar or hyped-up names are off the board. Players high on the depth chart are more likely to find the field and get touches – the most important factor in determining fantasy success. If it's round 10 and you need an RB3, you can check the depth charts and see that the starting running back in Washington (it could be Ryan Torain, Roy Helu or Tim Hightower) is still on the board – he's the obvious choice because he's guaranteed to get carries early in the season. It will also help you in avoiding players you've heard of, but will have to climb quite a ways to see the field. It's your own fault if you draft Lance Ball, forgetting that the Broncos signed Willis McGahee to back-up Knowshon Moreno.
The best depth charts I've seen are right here at PFF, created by our very own Mike Clay.
I hope you use all these sheets at your fantasy drafts later this month and of course, Happy Drafting.
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