What are some good strategies and tips for preparing for my fantasy football draft?
First you should understand a few things about your league. This will influence how you prepare.How many teams are in it? If it's 6 or 8 then it will be close to all star league, which favors new players because you don't have to know about third and fourth receivers to draft well. If it's 10 or 12 then you're really looking for 1 or 2 a-level players to stay in it. Bigger leagues tend to be won more with running back pick-ups than in the draft.How is passing scored? Is it Points Per Reception (PPR)? Are passing touchdowns worth 6 points or less? If it's a PPR league with 6 point touchdowns, receivers and passing QBs are more valuable than in a standard ESPN league. Possession receivers like Wes Welker are much more valuable, and pass-catching running backs also get a big boost.How deep of a bench do you get? In some leagues there's a large bench that means you could play the whole season without ever dropping or adding players. In most, especially in the bigger ones, this isn't the case. You're going to want to know how deep you're going to go at each position.Is it cool if you bring a laptop or iPad to the draft? Most of the leagues I've been in have not allowed this.As Nick Barron mentioned, most of the big sports sites do a pretty good job of ranking the players. ESPN has a downloadables section of their Fantasy Football page that lets you download pdfs with the players cut up a bunch of ways. If you're drafting in an ESPN league in an online snake draft, you don't need to do this. Their drafting application will tell you who the best remaining players are at each position while the draft is going on. ESPN updates their rankings weekly, so you just want to be aware of high profile injuries that have happened in the last week or so.As Marc Bodnick suggested, the best way to draft well is to eliminate bias. The easiest way to do that is let an expert make the unbiased decision for you. My advice is to find a magazine or download ESPN's latest per position player ranking*, adjust accordingly based on your league (my notes above), and have fun.*http://sports.espn.go.com/fantas...
I'm playing fantasy football. Should I trade mark Ingram for Doug Martin?
I would say yes. But it’s not a slam dunk. Both players are borderline top 10 running backs. I checked on Fantasy Pros and they are listed back to back at 8–9 (with Martin ahead). Before checking, I pegged them pretty close together in my head.I’d go with Martin for three reasonsHe’s on a team that I believe is more committed to the run. The Saints last year went into the season talking about a run first system, but there modicum of success didn’t happen til they went back to what brought them success in the past, the arm of Drew Brees. The Buccs finished about the same as the Saints last year, but their trajectory is upward, and they will run to help out a very young Jameis Winston at QB.When he’s been good, he’s been very good. Both last year and four years prior, the muscle hamster put up outstanding fantasy seasons (1400 yds) Ingram on the other hand has never rushed for 1000 yards. Ingram did uncharacteristically have 50 catches to bring his all purpose yards over the 1000 mark last year.Injury Concerns. Mark Ingram finished last year injured, which isn’t the real concern. I’m more worried that he’s missed between 3 and 6 games every year he’s played, but 1. True, that if he played 16 games last year, his numbers might have surpassed Martin, but I really don’t know if he’s got a full season in him.This being said, I still believe they are very close in their quality. I wouldn’t be shocked if Ingram somehow stayed healthy for a change and wound up the better of the two running backs. If you need stability Martin is the guy though. But it really comes down to personal preferences. In my one Dynasty League, I own the rights to Ingram, and honestly don’t know if I would accept the trade for Martin, as they are that close.There are many lower rated RB’s I would target if I was shooting for an upside play and willing to take on risk, my favorite of all is Dion Lewis, but there are others.