Helping You Crush Your 2018 Fantasy Football League

You aren’t alone. We all love playing fantasy football, and we can’t wait for the 2018 NFL season to start. My fiancée might not be as amped up about me sitting around the couch all afternoon on Sundays, but hey, she’ll get over it!

We all know it’s time for the best part of the fantasy season – the night you get to pick your team!

Has your league had its draft yet? Are you completely prepared for all the curveballs that are going to be thrown your way?

Just relax, and just be happy that you landed on this page. As a veteran of fantasy football for over 15 years and as someone who studies the game religiously, I believe I have advice to offer that can help you make a push towards winning your league title this season.

Forget about being the laughing stock in your office league anymore. I am going to show you things and point out specifics that will open your eyes to having a successful season.

I’ll give you the recipe to crush your competition, but it’ll still be up to you to go out and execute the things I mention.

Believe me, we all want to win our leagues. Whether it’s for a chunky first-place prize or just the simple pride of knowing you “won your league,” everyone is passionate about fantasy football for different reasons. What we all share is that same burning desire to wind up at the top!

Everything I talk about during this blog is centered around one common theme.

Preparation.

I’m going to go over a few different pieces of advice that, when followed, can give you a big leg up on your competition. While each tip is going to revolve around different intricacies within the game of fantasy football, they each revolve around you being more prepared than the rest of your league-mates.

Please don’t be the person who isn’t fully prepped when your draft begins. And please – pretty please – don’t be the guy or girl who skips their draft altogether and lets the computer auto-pick your entire roster.

I’ll be highlighting what I mean when I refer to “a coordinated roster” in a segment below, but I want to start with some even more basic tips.

Follow along below, and I’ll make sure you are the most prepared person in your league when that timer starts ticking and you hear those famous words, “YOU ARE ON THE CLOCK.”

I am in a unique league where the commissioner requires players to have exactly one backup per position – no ifs, ands, or buts. That means no stashing three quarterbacks and six running backs on your bench and only rostering a single kicker.

I have grown to really enjoy this philosophy, and as the years have progressed, I’ve realized how much better and well-rounded it makes the league as a whole. I’m not saying you have to adjust your league settings and match our roster construction identically, but it is definitely something to consider in the future.

Because it’s so important that I support my starters with adequate backups, I must keep my positional rankings handy and by my side at all times during the draft.

I take it a step further and like to cross off the players’ names as they get selected so that I don’t get confused as to who has been taken and who is still available.

There’s no need to spend the time creating rankings yourself, as plenty of reputable sites have sufficient rankings for you and me to benefit from. I took the time and created my own fantasy football rankings for each position based on what I have seen and read so far, so feel free to use those as you wish.

Glance at my 2018 fantasy football running back rankings as an example, and even print it out to have nearby during your draft.

The key for the specific point I am making isn’t so much as to whose rankings you are using and how much time was spent generating them.

The object of keeping your rankings handy is to keep track of who’s still out there. It will help you keep a record of how many quarterbacks have been selected and how many more viable starting running backs are left.

Obviously, you want to focus on the players you are drafting, but paying attention to how others are constructing their roster can also give you an edge. I’ll elaborate more on that below.

I’ll give you the easiest example. Let’s say I have the 11^th pick in a snake-style draft. That means every time I draft a player, another league member gets back-to-back picks before I pick again.

By paying close attention to how the individual drafting at #12 is constructing his or her roster, I can then make better and more efficient decisions when it’s my turn to pick.

Follow along.

Let’s say I draft Melvin Gordon with the 11^th pick in the draft. And say the next person goes with DeAndre Hopkins and Odell Beckham Jr. with the 12^th and 13^th picks.

Now I take Julio Jones with the 14^th pick and wait until I’m on the clock in round three to select another player.

Let’s now say that when it’s up to me to make my third selection, I am debating between Doug Baldwin and Derrick Henry. I already have one stud RB and one stud WR, so I could go with either guy here, right?

WRONG!

By knowing that the person picking next already has chosen Hopkins and Beckham, I can virtually eliminate the possibility of him/her taking a WR with his/her third pick. So in this case, I would draft Derrick Henry, because I know after two more picks, I can go ahead and grab Baldwin.

If I were to take Baldwin first, I run the risk of missing out on Henry, given the fact that in all likelihood the player after me will be selecting at least one RB, if not two consecutively.

It’s a simple point, really. Just by paying a little attention to the teams drafting around you, you can lessen the chances of missing out on a player you are trying to target.

This is a biggie, especially in a league like mine when you are restricted to having one backup per position. For example, each team in our league starts exactly three wide receivers each week and is only allowed one backup, for a total of four WRs. This means I can’t afford to draft two receivers who share the same bye week.

While some of you may find that as “annoying,” it actually makes you think and strategize more on draft night, thus adding more skill into a game that we all know has so much variance.

Bye weeks really are a key consideration, no matter how many players you can draft. For example, say you land Todd Gurley as your starting running back.

You’ll need a replacement in Week 12 when the Rams are on a bye, but you’ll want to steer clear of any of the Packers RBs.

By looking ahead at the schedule, you’d see that the Packers are on the road facing a stout Vikings run defense that poses a terrible matchup for anyone running the ball in Green Bay.

This is just an example, but the point is this: before you draft your backups, look ahead and see who they are playing in the specific week you plan on rolling them out. This isn’t rocket science, folks. It’s called simple planning.

The final tip I want to bring up sort of has to do with the last point I was discussing above. Just like you need to be scoping out the future matchups on the schedule for your backups, you need to do the same thing when deciding who to start on defense each week.

If you wind up with the Jaguars, the Eagles, or the Rams, then I’d say to just go ahead and leave them in the starting defensive slot all year long (other than during their bye week, obviously).

But aside from those three units, I’d be looking at which defensive group is facing the most turnover-prone team, and snag them off the waivers.

I’m talking about the teams that are projected to be losing, and therefore will be forced to drop back and chuck the ball up during the second half.

Creating scoring opportunities on defense comes via being active and getting after the quarterback. The defenses that are in the best position to do that are the ones most likely to put up points and help us win our weekly matchups.

Blog Source: Gambling Sites | Helping You Crush Your 2018 Fantasy Football League