Rabbit Rules of Drafting, Part II

I use Rabbit Rules to get me through the critical first six rounds. The idea is to get the core of a playoff-ready team without spending all your free time doing research. Of course, it helps a lot if you’re a pretty hard-core NFL fan. That gives you good familiarity with players, and thus a good idea of where the standard ranking lists might be wrong.

My leagues are all hosted by Yahoo. They are free to play and give plenty of opportunity to customize settings. The site’s player rankings are probably about average compared to the other sites I’ve seen. Quirky in the ranking of rookies and (especially) IDP players, but pretty well aligned with what I see at other sites. Bonus for 2009 is that Yahoo will provide live scoring in realtime at no cost. That’s not an endorsement, but I’ve had no cause to complain.

Rabbit Rule #5
Don’t waste your time researching the obvious.

When you look at rank-ordered lists of player by position across a dozen or so sites, it quickly becomes clear that these lists are remarkably similar. So what’s the point? I just use Yahoo’s lists, which can be sorted by a number of metrics (last year’s stats, 2009 projections, etc.). There is no “right” list until it’s too late. So what should you research?

Rabbit Rule #6
Track the NFL news beyond SportsCenter.

Just the pertinent stuff. There are plenty of sites that provide daily news updates from training camps – which rookies are earning playing time, changes in depth charts, who will get the goal line carries, etc. I do this by using a single site, visited once a day or so, and I don’t even both to write it down anymore. Instead, I just process: upgrade Ray Rice, don’t draft McGahee. Beanie Wells will play, but seems to get hurt a lot. Percy Harvin lining up all over the field and will return kicks. Etc.

This is the closest thing to “work” I do in building my teams. But frankly, I love it – a nice little break from my work-at-home lifestyle. And it makes it easy to build a customized draft list. Remember the previous rules:
-Target the guys you really want.
-Know which guys you want to avoid.

Rabbit Rule #7
Accentuate the positive – don’t worry about mistakes.

Everyone makes them. I made a tragic error in League Two this year. There I was, 5 W/R guys in my pocket. My turn comes up in r6 and I still need a QB. But at that point, all my targeted guys were gone. In a 10-man league, 9 QBs had gone in the first 4 rounds; none in r5. And in my view, any of the next few guys on my QB list (Ryan, Palmer, Schaub), would be equally fine. So, following my own advice (Rabbit Rule #2), I grabbed my WR3 (selecting Eddie Royal over Anthony Gonzalez) and resolved to take my QB in r7.

But that wasn’t my mistake. That came in r7 when - despite the fact that Carson Palmer had been taken as someone’s QB2 - I did not draft my guy! Big mistake. Instead, I decided to take the first IDP player of the draft – hoping to start a position run while getting the guy I coveted (Josh Wilson, DB SEA). I figured, between breaking the IDP cherry, the last really decent RBs, WRs and TEs sitting there, and the fact that everyone else had their QB, I could wait another round and still get one of my guys.

Wrong!

Before my pick in r8, Matt Ryan, Matt Schaub, and Big Ben all became backups. That left me with the absolute last acceptable starter – Eli Manning. Not bad, I grant you. But not my guy. And all because I got a little greedy.

What happened? I had a conflict in Rabbit Rule #3 – target the guys you really want, prioritize and see what falls to you. Problem was, I had two guys I really wanted – Matt Ryan and Josh Wilson. And I had failed to coordinate my priorities between IDP and QB. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that the QB is far more important. But I managed to convince myself otherwise, and paid the price. Good thing I’m a big believer in Rabbit Rule #7.

While I didn’t get my preferred QB, I did get the highest-scoring defender available. We count return yards in our league, and Josh Wilson is both a fine CB and an excellent KR. He totaled 196.15 fantasy points in 2008, while the next-best DB (Gibril Wilson) has 141.50. That’s a 55-point gap – well over 3pts/week better than the #2 guy. And Seattle had confirmed that he would be returning kicks again. And Eli Manning is still a 3200-yd passer who threw for 21 TDs last year. Not chopped liver. Then in r9, I added Matt Cassel. All is well.

Rabbit Rule #8
Don’t waste early draft picks on one-week players.

If the others in League Two knew this rule, I would have Matt Ryan. If you draft Peyton Manning, you won’t be benching him except for the bye week. So if you’re taking your QB2 in 7th round, that’s a wasted pick. So when I look back on that, there’s only one possible explanation: That guy must have really wanted Josh Wilson. So when he wasn’t there, he tried to continue the QB2 run, possibly as retribution.

Looking back on it, I like that Josh Wilson pick. A lot. The real mistake was probably in round 6, when I could have my choice of Moore or Carson Palmer. But is either significantly better than Eli Manning or Matt Cassel in 2009? It’s anybody’s guess.

And that’s the beauty of the “competitive but fun” approach.

Rabbit Rule #9
You can’t have too many RBs and WRs.

Where most teams have a solid set of backups, I’m a big believer in loading on the more injury-prone positions – RB and WR. Typically, I don’t bother with backups for TE or the IDP slots. There’s a simple reason for this: The waiver wire is your friend. Any backup you pick after the 15th round or so is unlikely to be any better.

We have big rosters. In League Two, we use the standard starting set of seven on offense (QB, RB1, RB2, WR1, WR2, W/R, TE), a Kicker, and five IDP players (DB1, DB2, LB1, LB2, DL1). So that’s 13 starters. To that we add 10 Bench players. My 23-man roster includes: 3-QB, 6-RB, 7-WR, 1-TE, 1-K, and 5-IDP. But what about Bye weeks, you ask?

Rabbit Rule #10
Don’t stress over Bye weeks.

Keep track of them, sure. Not having the same Bye week as your QB1 is a great tiebreaker when choosing your QB2, for example. And you don’t want your top three RBs all taking the same week off. But if you’re packing 6 or 7 RBs, you can’t really go wrong. Remember: ultimately, you will probably be turning over at least a quarter of your roster during the season. If you have to make a tough call on dropping a kicker or defender, it can only mean that you’ve got a deep, strong roster – good for you! My philosophy is to fold bye week replacements into that process, because you’ll know a lot more about the value of marginal players once the season starts.
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So that’s how I draft. I’m sure it’s not for everyone. But it seems to work for me. It helps to play with the same groups every year. You learn tendencies, both of individuals and the league overall, which can really help when you’re torn between the best defender and the #11 QB. Or if you’re wondering whether Randy Moss will drop to you or how long Devin Hester might last in a league with 4 or 5 Bears fans.

Conventional wisdom says that you should check your fandom at the door if you want to succeed at fantasy football. And there’s some truth in that. But it’s my belief that it sucks some of the fun out of the game. And that’s not acceptable. I’m a Chicago fan, and it’s a pretty good bet that I’ll have a Bear or two on my team. (Any more puts too many eggs in one basket.) And that’s enough, even if it’s just Robbie Gould kicking or Earl Bennett at the end of the bench.

My point is simple: It’s entirely possible to succeed at fantasy football without investing a lot of time and money. All you need is your natural NFL fandom and a good grasp of the Rabbit Rules.  The 2009 NFL and fantasy football season starts tonight. May your roster stay healthy and your matchups be favorable. Just remember...

Rabbit’s Golden Rule
Have some fun, and kick some ass.