Drafting
There are a few different ways to draft players onto your team. These include auto-pick drafts, live online drafts, live real-life drafts, and auction drafts. It is up to you and your schedule to determine which one of these routes you go with. But you need to make sure you know what type of draft you are getting into so that you are not surprised or disappointed when the draft occurs.
Auto-pick Draft
In an auto-pick league, you sign up for your league, and before the draft occurs, you pre-rank your players. What this means is that you go through the list of all players in the draft, and then pick in which order you would like to have them selected. The higher you rank a player, the earlier he will be selected on your team. If your highest ranked player is available when it’s your turn to draft, your team will select that player. So, whoever the highest ranked player you have that is still available, come your turn, will be drafted onto your team.
This type of drafting is not very effective, and is basically a crapshoot, for lack of a better word. You can end up with a very strong team, or a dud team. Since you can’t select somebody you want at a specific point in time, your team may end up drafting a certain player or a certain position you do not want or need. So your roster could potentially be full of players who you can’t play or don’t want to play.
There are just too many problems with this type of draft that it really isn’t important enough to go into too much detail. The only benefit of this type of draft is that everyone is in the same situation, so you could end up with a solid team. It is also good for casual players who don’t want to, or don’t have the time to, sit through an entire draft. (Drafts can take up to a few hours.)
So if you are in a situation where you cannot draft for yourself, you can choose an auto-pick league. It comes with its drawbacks, but it will still get you into a league. And hey…you may end up with a great team.
Live Online Draft
Live drafts are just as they seem; they are live, happening real time. You can choose to do an online draft, where the website will load up a draft application, and allow you and the other owners to select players that are available as your turn comes. There can be up to a few minutes in between picks, and if you take too long, the computer will automatically select the highest ranked player for your team.
Live drafts are obviously the way to go if you want to choose your own team, at your discretion. They are one the most fun and entertaining aspects of fantasy football itself. (Many people partake in multiple drafts, either to help themselves for their really important drafts later on, or just to have multiple teams to check.)
You also need to make sure that you know what time the draft is happening, because if you miss the draft, the computer will take over and draft just as it would for an auto-pick draft.
Live Offline Draft
The other type of draft is the live-offline draft. This type of draft is one you hold yourself, in person, and upon the conclusion of the draft, the results are input into the website, and the rest of the league is run online just as it normally would. So you would probably go to somebody’s house, have a beverage or two, and draft your team with your buddies (Houshmanzilla….championship). This type of draft is generally done when you are in a league of friends, families, or coworkers. If you don’t know anybody else that plays, that is just fine; you can join an online draft and join in on a league there.
Live drafts, as I mentioned previously, are just like the real thing. Owners are randomly selected in a draft order (you can also input the draft order if you are commissioner of the league.) Once the order is set and the draft begins, you start drafting players onto your team. One by one, pick by pick, the field is narrowed, and your team begins to round itself out. This leads to the draft settings; live drafts can be either a straight line draft or a snake/serpentine pattern draft.
In a straight line draft, once the draft order is gone through, the owner who selected first would then pick first in the second round. So to clarify, if there are 10 people in your draft, the 11th pick would go to the person who selected first, and the 21st pick would go that person, and so on and so on, until the draft is complete.
In a snake, or serpentine, draft, the order gets reversed each time the end of the draft order hits. So in a draft of 10 people, the owner who is 10th in the draft order would draft on the 10th overall pick, and then again on the 11th overall pick. Then the person who selected 9th in the first round would have the 12th overall pick, the person who had the 8th pick would get the 13th overall pick, etc. (Each time the end of the draft order hits, the round is over, and the new round begins.) When the end of the second round occurs, the person who had the 1st overall pick would also have had the 20th overall pick, but then the snake pattern kicks in again, and that person would then select 1st in the 3rd round and have the 21st overall pick. This pattern keeps continuing until the draft is over. This draft style is more fair to all owners because if you end up getting the 10th pick, then you would then have the fortune of getting 2 picks in a row (picks #10 and #11.) instead of once at the end of each round (picks #10, #20, #30, etc.)
Auction Draft
Finally, there is an auction draft. This type of draft is a great concept, and allows you the best chance to get the individual players that you want. In this type of draft, you bid on players that are auctioned off one at a time. You are given a certain amount of money to bid with, and then you can use that money to draft your players. The very good fantasy players go for much higher prices than do the not so good players. So if you wanted to draft an elite running back, you would probably have to shell out a lot of money to get him. That is what is so unique about this type of drafting. You can get an elite multiple elite players if you wanted to (you probably wouldn’t have a whole lot of money left over though.) The concept behind the auction draft is to spend money liberally on the players you absolutely want the most, but then to try and get bargains for players that you think will help your team out. Obviously you are trying to draft the best team possible, but sometimes you have to take a cheap alternative to a player you may want so that you can also afford another player later on. If you spend all of your money on high profile players, you won’t have enough left to pay for the mid-tier, or even low-tier players. So it takes a lot of budgeting and planning in order for the draft to end up in your favor. Auction drafts are very unique and can give you a great chance to get the players that you want, and not have to worry about draft order to help you out.
**Note** It’s always important to know if your computer can handle the draft software the website uses, so you aren’t left out in the cold once the draft begins.
Also, check out the fantasy football draft strategies to get a feel for what else in store for you on draft day.
