What are the keys to winning a fantasy football league?
OQ: What are the secrets to winning a Fantasy Football League?A good draft (40%): Most of the work is done on draft day. If you have done your homework and have a good draft strategy, you’ll be able to put together a strong team on day one.Watch waiver wire (30%): Projections are one thing, reality is another. Some players will fail to meet expectations, others will exceed them. Keep an eye on who is available and transaction trends from other leagues. Don’t let your opponents find these hidden gems before you do.Show up (20%): Some owners give up on their teams too soon. You can pick up easy wins against absentee owners and sneak into the playoffs.Luck (10%): Luck plays a role in all of the above. Will your #1 pick stay healthy (or even show up to work)? Will you claim the next hidden star before your opponents? Will you get the right matchups and breakout performances from your players on the weeks you really need them? You can never tell, but that is what makes the game fun.Good luck.
How much time did it take to become good at fantasy football?
Define good? I hate to be that way, but what is your goal?A. Join in with your friends, have a good time competing, and maybe not finish last?B. Win huge $$$ every week in DFS, enough to retire on?C. Somewhere in between?We've got no idea what you want. If it's “A" above, you can be “good" this year, by listening to the experts, getting multiple sources of opinion, and using your head.If it's “B", it'll take some time, as the relatively few people who are at that level likely make it their full-time job, and have been doing it for years.I'm in the “C" category, been playing for about 10 years, mostly season-long leagues, scarcely any DFS. I spend some time at it (5-7 hours a week), and have reached the point where I place in the top 3 about 67% of the time, and win outright about 25%.Other folks have given good advice, but some items bear repeating:Wait to draft your QB until after the 7th or 8th round;Draft your Defense in the 2nd-to-last round.Draft your Kicker in the last round.Running Backs! Always take the best available players in each of the first three-four rounds, but I prefer RB, RB, unless a stellar absolute points machine WR is available.In the middle rounds, take RBs and WRs. You want 4 or 5 RBs on your roster, and you'd like them all to be bellcow / every down backs.There is enough talent at WR that you can find great value in later rounds.Work the waiver wire assiduously. Have patience with your currently-rostered players, but always be on the lookout for someone who can improve your team. But don't base things on performance over a brief period.
What is the best fantasy football provider: Yahoo, ESPN, NFL.com, or CBS?
I see that the it’s been awhile since anyone answered this question. It’s shocking that there hasn’t been a fantasy sports provider to launch season-long leagues in over 10 years (I think 2006 was the last), and as a result innovation has been lacking in the industry. We just released season long leagues on Sleeper this past week to push the industry to innovate, and would argue that we are now the best fantasy football platform (full disclosure, I am a creator but TechCrunch also agrees). Following up on Dan Chaparian ‘s comment below about the “lack of social integration” in existing products, we also believe this is the case and focused Sleeper on providing a better social experience with friends. Most season-long leagues are formed between family, friends, and coworkers, so the chat and smack talk is a core component of what makes leagues fun. Sleeper leagues are built into a messenger app expressly to address this gap in the market, and chat is weaved through almost every screen to make it more social and enjoyable to play against friends. In addition, we offer modern web and mobile apps that are meant for more than just checking scores, powerful commissioner tools and settings customizations, and an in-season experience where you no longer have to resort to email to keep in touch with leaguemates. Hope you check it out on iOS, Android, or Web.Draftboards you can cast to TVChat integrated into leaguesGame center with live scores, fantasy stats, play-by-plays
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...