Fantasy Football for newbies

This cannot be emphasised enough. You can come up with the perfect value board, get the players you want in the positions you want, and the season can run out perfectly and you come out on the right side of the variance that is injuries etc, but it can all be irrelevant if your commissioner has implemented some sort of gimmick rule which makes Tim Tebow worth a first round pick.

That's an extreme example unless you had a rule that said Tebow scores quintuple points. But some other things to be aware of are:

- QB scoring. There's a big difference between a league which has 4 points for a passing touchdown (which is somewhat standard), and one that has 6 per TD.

- Points per reception. This makes wide receivers as a whole more valuable, but not universally (someone like Brandon Marshall gains a ton of value, whereas someone like Colston who's on an offence where the ball is thrown to all manner of targets goes down). Similarly with running backs, last season it was fairly close as to whether Turner or MJD should be the #2 pick with normal rules, but with PPR, you could have picked Jones-Drew number 1 overall and nobody would have batted an eyelid.

- Flex positions. These don't change a great deal - a 2RB-2WR-1W/R flex makes running backs more valuable, but it's nothing to write home about, the only thing to watch out for is if a QB can be used in a flex spot. This makes all quarterbacks massively more valuable - in a normal league quarterbacks tend to go behind RB's and WR's because, although they score more points than them, you can only start one of them so it's not a big thing. Starting two changes everything. Just consider that if you're in a 12 team league which starts 2 QB's, not everybody can have a backup, and those that are backups are terrible.

- Return yards. Most leagues tack these onto the defense, but some credit normal offensive players with them. This increases the value of players like Cribbs who'd normally not be draftable and makes them into a legitimate starting option.

Obviously how much you do can vary. At the very least, go to a few fantasy websites and look at their different cheat sheets. Most people don't have the time to make their own projections, myself included, so use other people's work.

Note that I say look at a few. Don't just look at one site, print of their top 200 players and be ready to go, as if that site is either plain bad, or has some notable outliers, particularly when it comes to overrating players, you can end up taking some players way too early. Just scan some and take averages.

I don't care if you think Brett Favre is the biggest attention seeking media whore in the history of humanity and think he should have stayed retired the first time, if he's available where you think he's good value you need to be taking him. On the other side, you might be the biggest Cowboys homer in the world, that doesn't mean you should be taking Romo in the first round.

Trying to rank every single player at a certain position precisely is mostly a pointless exercise beyond the first few picks, as you have too many differing opinions.

A better idea is to try to group players that you think will put up similar numbers together, and consider them to be roughly equal. Once you have done that, if you see that it's your pick and you're considering between a RB and WR, but there's only one WR in your current top tier, but five RB's in their tier, take the receiver.

The concept is based around trying to work out which position, if you have more than one current need, will have the biggest drop-off in value from your current pick to the next one.

When it comes to the early rounds of a draft, it's fairly hard to fail if you draft sensibly. Coming up with a rigid strategy beyond the first pick is counter-productive as later picks will all depend on what is available at that time - I guess it's somewhat similar to build orders, deciding you're going to forge FE PvZ is fine, but exactly how you do so is dependent on what the Zerg has done.

As such, things you might hear like "taking two RB's in the first two rounds is the way to go" or the opposite may or may not be correct. Just follow the tiered list that you'll have made from points 2 and 4 and don't stray from it.

One important thing to point out is to be aware of who your opponents have been drafting and how it fits in to your plan. Suppose you have pick 9/10 and it's your third round pick. Let's also assume Peyton Manning is available and you see he's the best player available (probably won't be available then in an actual draft, but it's not implausible). Do you take him now? It depends. If the guy who picks 10th already took, say, Aaron Rodgers, then there's no point in taking Peyton now, purely for the reason that Peyton will still be available at your fourth round pick, so take someone from a different position and then take Manning in the 4th.

Similar things apply if everyone who is due to pick between your current and next pick have gone more heavily towards RB's or WR's one way or another, it creates an imbalance in their needs, so if your team doesn't particularly need one particular position, take what the upcoming owners are going to need more.

Keep an eye on bye weeks. Try not to have multiple players that you intend to start in a position have their bye on the same week. While you'll always do worse when they have a bye, you don't want to turn things into an auto-loss because both of your starting RB's aren't playing.

You generally can't win a league in the first few rounds of the draft, you can only lose it by making large errors. Typically after, say, 5 rounds, you'll want between 2-3 RB's, 1-3 WR's, quite possibly a QB, and maybe a TE if one of the better ones has fallen to you at a good spot. Anything particularly outside of those numbers indicates that you've made a mistake somewhere.

After the first few rounds, you should have either filled up or be very close to filling up your starting lineup at RB and WR, now you need to start looking to fill your bench. Here you should continue to go for the best player available unless there is a huge need to fill. Stockpile running backs and wide receivers.

As for other positions, it's important to know how deep the pool of "startable" players is. For quarterbacks, I'm of the opinion that there's around 7 that are clearly better than the rest who you will be automatically starting every week, and then there's around 8-10 that are competent enough to be a starting fantasy QB but a level below them. If you have one of the top 7 QB's, I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't bother getting a quality replacement unless they drop so far down the draft that they're excellent value, as you just won't use them. Instead, look to who has a favourable matchup on their bye week. Someone like Leinart, who is not a good QB, is actually a good option for this, if only because he plays Seattle when many elite quarterbacks have their bye. If you have an elite QB, but his bye coincides with a great matchup for one of the second tier of QB's, go ahead and pick him but don't reach for it. If you miss out on, or simply choose not to draft, an elite QB, then I think it's very important to pick out two QB's so that you can play a starter by committee. Watch out though, as many of the second tier QB's have the same bye week - Kolb, Ryan, Cutler, Eli and Flacco all have the same bye, so look to grab McNabb, Palmer or Favre.

Tight ends, after the first five or so, are all much of a muchness. Clark's a bit better than all of the others, and I think Gates/Finley/Witten/Davis are fairly close with Celek not far behind. If you can bag one of those at a reasonable spot, do so, otherwise you may as well wait for quite a while as there's around 10 after that which are all very close and perfectly startable.

Don't draft a defence until the last couple of rounds, if at all - there's not many good ones and they almost universally get taken too soon. I don't even think the Jets should be taken at anywhere in the first 100 picks or so, but they're usually gone by then. Either grab a top one late if they're there, or play by committee on waivers. Someone has to play the Rams/Lions etc every week.

And never, ever draft a kicker. Only do so if your league requires you to, in which case kick the commissioner in the nuts for having stupid rules. Just play from week to week, picking one up just before the start of the season. Better to have an extra back and wait to see who'll be worth keeping.

Should be obvious given what I've already wrote, but one thing that I often hear when looking at people's drafts and they've taken someone too soon is "everyone else was taking (say) tight ends so I needed to get a good one".

THIS IS WRONG.

If the player you got is good value, then fine, take them. If not, that means you already missed the boat for now and the value is in other positions.

Once you've got your QB/RBs/WRs filled and have one or two quality backups, it's time to gamble. Players that are being picked in the later rounds are being picked there because, on average, they're not going to score many points. That said, a wide receiver that expects to score 70 points over the course of a season comes in many forms.

One is a player that we have seen before and we know exactly what we're going to get from them, and they have what we term a low ceiling. These are the sorts of players we avoid, and are typically veterans - see players like Roy Williams, Tomlinson, McGahee, any running back at the Redskins.

The others are those that will probably do nothing but have huge upside, which is what we want to target. With the last 2-3 picks, we're not going to be starting them ever unless everyone we already have gets injured, so pick players that have the potential to do something out of the ordinary. Examples include rookies that have the chance at decent playing time (e.g. Tate, Benn, McCluster), players where because of trades they have a much higher ceiling than before through an improved offence (e.g. Raiders receivers now they have a better QB, the likes of Burleson who is now an obvious no. 2 behind Johnson and may get more looks, Bears receivers if you think Martz will turn things around), or those players that will be a huge beneficiary of a key injury (particularly looking at running backs that are a clear number 2 in an offence that isn't playing running back by committee, the clue is in those RB's that get drafted in the first round, they're there because they don't have other backs stealing carries). Finding the next Sims-Walker, Austin etc in a late round is huge so give yourself a chance of doing so.

Feel free with the last couple of picks to do something homerish if it isn't ridiculous, as a Raider fan I'm taking Schilens a lot with a last pick (although see above, I actually, possibly naively, believe that with Campbell we might not suck so much this year), or if you feel someone's completely underrated, go for it.

Generally if you drafted decently, you'll not need to trade, barring injuries. That said, players underperforming occurs, so there is a place for making changes.

The best thing you can do is to sell high on players that are doing better than expected when you don't think that it's sustainable. At the same time, buying low on players that are in temporary slumps is hugely desirable. It's not the easiest thing to work out whether a player that's performing above or below expected value is temporary, or whether what we expected was actually an over or underestimate, so be careful.

Similarly with picking players up off waivers - be careful who you pick up. Some players have a good week and then aren't heard of for the rest of the season, and blowing waiver priority on them is not great. I prefer to wait for RB's to go down and pick up their backups rather than gamble on someone who may fluctuate.

Fluctuations can occur because of matchups - a particularly tough schedule may make players' numbers go low, and that's a hell of a lot different to someone just not showing up. Actually watching games can help to look behind the numbers and seeing if someone you're looking at is the real deal or just a flash in the pan. Always be aware of schedules, particularly late in the season - if you're midway through the season and looking certain of a playoff place, look to pick players up that have an easy schedule late in the season when you have your championships. Giving up someone who's going to score more points over the whole season than who you're bringing in doesn't matter that much if the new guy is going to score more where it counts.

Never drop your stud players because they are up against a tough defence. A truly elite player will always be a better bet against a tough defence than his likely backup - the swings required to make such a change worthwhile simply don't exist. Swapping your second RB/second and third WR about for backups because of matchups is more reasonable. Generally your first three-four picks are good enough that, barring injury, they'll play every week.

Do stay on top of injury updates, with these new fangled iphone things you're never more than a few feet away from the latest news. This is very important coming up to game time, there's nothing more annoying than setting your team only to see that your star running back has tweaked something in warmups and is inactive.

One time where you might want to bench a better player for an inferior option is if he's listed as questionable in a late game, and the worse player plays early. You can't bring a player in the early game into your team after he's played if your late starter doesn't play. If you're likely to win the week comfortably, reduce variance and play the worse player rather than risk a 0 point game allowing the other guy back into things.

Have fun with your league, think of a good team name, and don't blame me when your star RB tears his ACL in week 1. Ask questions if you want.