How to Create the Perfect Fantasy Football Team

If you’re new to fantasy football, what we’re talking about here is a game that allows football fans to create, manage and run their own imaginary football team that is made up of a draft of real players that are to take part in the upcoming season. Each “club owner” then joins with a group of friends or even a more professional league, where the winner can actually earn some pretty decent money, and they pit their teams against each other, awarding points according to the actual performance of the real-life players in their draft.

It’s a game that can be really fun, but also really addictive, even when just playing for bragging rights, as each football match throughout the season becomes something not just to watch, but to become genuinely invested in. Fantasy football leagues tend to run throughout the season and winners are declared each week and then at the end of the season, by tallying up the points scored by each player on each team in the league. Every week, “owners” get the chance to either release players from their team or to trade with others in their team.

The key part of all this is, though, is getting your draft right from the outset. Sites like NFL Draft Buzz are an invaluable resource in figuring out which players to draft into your team, as is a good knowledge of the game and the various players, but there is more to drafting your fantasy football team than just selecting the best players.

How Players are Drafted

Fantasy football leagues tend to be made up of 8, 10, or 12 separate teams and the point of playing in official leagues - and often the same league season after season - is both to allow different teams to trade with one another, but to ensure that the teams competing are not made up of the same players. If it wasn’t played in this format, every “team owner” would simply look at a list of the best players and would pick them for their team, resulting in a bunch of various similar teams competing against one another.

In a league, each team has to have a completely different lineup of players, usually consisting of at least one goalkeeper, four defenders, three or four midfielders and two or three forwards, but also four extra players on your bench. This means that leagues select anywhere from 120 to 180 separate NFL players and not all of them are going to be in the uppermost ranks of the sport (though this being the big leagues, none are too far from the top either).

Drafting a team isn’t simply about picking the best of the best, but balancing your team so that your best players can pick up the slack of the weaker players you will inevitably need to pick to fill up your team, without being dragged down by them. Learning how to do this is an art in and of itself, but first, a quick look at the two main methods that are used for team owners in a league to pick their players.

1. Standard Selection. The simplest and most common way of drafting a fantasy football team follows a snakelike pattern, whereby each team owner gets a turn made of an allocated amount of time (can be anything from 30 seconds to an hour) to pick a player one after another. The order in which the owners pick is decided before the first of fifteen rounds with each alternate round reversing the order - hence the snake pattern,
2. Auctions. Probably closer to real life, auction drafting literally consists of each team owner in the league bidding on each player they select. This method is less common, but the way it tends to work is that each owner is allocated the same amount of imaginary money to start off with and each round a player is nominated for them to bid on. They have to be careful how much they bid on each player because if they run out of money, the rest of their draft will be filled with whichever players are left after the bidding period ends.

For our purposes, we’ll assume we’re talking about a classic draft but an auction draft would be the same, just with the added complication of budgeting correctly.

5 Tips for Drafting

Here, then, are 5 useful tips to keep in mind when building your team to make sure you have the best chances during the upcoming season.

1. Anchor your team with a star quarterback. The quarterback is very much the backbone of any football team as they are most likely to score. Either pick an established quarterback or go for a promising up-and-comer.
2. Get as many running backs as you can. With a solid quarterback anchoring your team, runners are by far the most important position to fill. Get these early and try and nab a mix of established and new players.
3. Balance is everything. As is always the case in life, balance is crucial and in this case, that means making sure you use a mix of steady players along with those that really excel at specific things. Mix newer players and older players and don’t put all your faith in just a small group of players.
4. Average Draft Positions (ADP) should be your guide. This refers to knowing when each player is most likely to be picked so if there’s someone with a high ADP that you really want, you should choose them first. On the other hand, if you know that a player you have high hopes for has a low ADP, you can wait a few rounds before going after them.
5. Plan B, Plan C, Plan D… Don’t just go in with a small list of the exact players you want to draft because you may well lose out not just on some of them, but even most if your favorites are already the most feted players. Be flexible and keep your mind open.

These 5 tips are hardly the only things you need to know about Fantasy Football. And also keep in mind that sports betting is another competitive, engrossing way to become more involved in the next season. Use this guide to learn more about sports betting and the ways it differs from fantasy football.

Either way, with the new season rapidly approaching now’s as good a time as any to brush up on your sports betting and fantasy football strategies to make the season more than just a spectator sport.