Fantasy Football Feature: Draft Philosophy - Pt. 2

More Draft Day Considerations:

• Runs on position - If you're drafting BPA, you will generally ignore these for the first couple rounds. However, you still need to address your starters at each position, so going purely BPA every single round would be a huge mistake. Ideally, you want to be near the front of a run on a position, but doing so without reaching. The best way to predict when there might be a run on a position of need for you is to check your opponents' board. Look for what position where they are missing a starter. Also, consider the value of said position. For example, if you're really high on Antonio Brown and the next four teams have one or more spots available at WR, the safe bet is just to take him. On the other side of the coin, if you really like Jacob Tamme and the most of the people between your current pick and your next one already addressed TE, you may be able to use a flier on anther sleeper before nabbing Tamme. This sort of thing is easier to predict when your drafting near the ends of snake drafts where there are less teams to account for.
• Bye week consideration - Don't do it. Seriously, just don't. It can be a small little thought in the back of your mind if you're really torn between two late round guys and that's the only way you can decide. I suppose you also want to avoid having all of your starters with the same bye weeks, forfeiting said week. I'm aware of the strategy that actually does this on purpose. It's a bad one. Not only are you guaranteeing your team at least one additional loss, but you're also probably reaching at least a few times for players just because they have this same bye week. It doesn't make much sense.
• Late rounds - The late rounds are where most people are going to address defense and kicker. This is also where you're going to draft your deep, deep sleepers. You don't want to neglect these selection. Sure, some of them seem like throwaway picks. The time you get draft an Arian Foster, makes the slight extra effort absolutely worth it. It's rare, but when you hit on one, it can be the kind of difference maker that puts you in the championship. You might also want to think about your backup QB. They can fall to injury and have down years just like everyone else.
• If you're new, I wouldn't try to get to clever and/or overly-complicated. If this is your very first year playing fantasy football, I'd simply suggest that you try to follow the Yahoo! Sports default player rankings as a guideline while filling our your roster. Of if you're playing ESPN, NFL.com, CBS, ect., use their respective default player rankings, because they're more than likely tailored to that site's default scoring and roster settings.

The other positions:

• TE - Jimmy Graham and Rob Gronkowski play like top tier wide receivers and they'll be draft as such. After that, there's a pretty significant drop off at TE. Antonio Gates, Vernon Davis, Aaron Hernandez, and Jermichael Finley are all among the next best TEs, but are seen ranked in various orders. The tight end position probably has the most notable first few drop offs. If you miss one of the runs, you probably won't want to each for a lower tier TE. I'd try to find one of the right value fall to you.
• K - Do not over draft a kicker. Every single year I see someone that thinks they are ahead of the curve, grabbing the highest ranked kicker in round 9-12. Anyone who does that is giving up on someone with a lot more value and probably a lot more potential. Kicker is easily the most replaceable position in fantasy football! You can either pick one in your final round or the second-to-last round. And there will be one or more on the waiver wire after just 2-3 weeks that's easy to pick up scoring just as much if not more.
• DEF - This season is a lot harder to predict for fantasy defenses. It's no longer as easy as Pittsburgh, Baltimore, one-two. After San Francisco being the obvious No. 1, the rest vary. We may see more rotating defenses than ever before.
• flex - This is actually incredibly important. Prior to drafting, you need to know your leagues roster settings. Many leagues use the flex position, allowing the ability to play more than one position in a single starting roster spot. Generally, these are either WR/RB/TE or only WR/TE. This can have a very large impact on how you and your opponents draft. You want to "field" the highest fantasy scoring team you can each given week, consider that when you're drafting the player that you plan to fill your flex position.

Rookie of the Week: Andrew Luck - I think Andrew Luck has to potential to be a pretty solid backup fantasy QB this season. I wouldn't reach for him by any means, especially not as a starter in a fantasy league, unless your league allows for two starting quarterbacks.

Brown of the Week: Trent Richardson - The knee surgery should be a major point of concern for potential fantasy draft suitors. His average draft position has taken a hit since then. Still, he's likely to return by the first week of the season. But with Hardesty doing reasonably well during the preseason, we may see Richardson lose a few carries for the first few weeks.

Tip of the Week: The Sophomore Slump - I also sometimes refer to this as the "second-year slump" because it doesn't only hit NFL sophomores. This refers to the slump in fantasy scoring for some players that just had a massive career-high year. Essentially, the explaination behind it is that NFL defenses may be more inclined to adjust to the new star. They won't be sneaking up on anyone. Examples of this include Matt Forte and Steve Slaton. Others avoid it, such as Chris Johnson or Arian Foster. Players you might want to keep an eye on this season are DeMarco Murray or Victor Cruz. Personally, I think there are enough exceptions that you don't have to avoid anyone like the plague just because they're coming off their huge breakout season.

As with every edition of the Fantasy Football Feature, feel free to treat this as an open thread on the topic of fantasy football. Talk about the players mentioned above or any of your own sleepers, strategies, ect...