Draft Planning Series: Standard 10 Team 7th Position Episode 2 - Best ADP Lineup

I'll start quickly, so stay with me.  Stay with me.

First, to determine how many positions to take in the beginning to Maximize.  I take the number of starting positions, excluding DST and K.  I count RB as the Flex player unless the league is very deep, and I add 1 backup RB and WR because of the heavy usage and scarcity of those positions.  I never want to be short RB or WR.

In the particular league we're working on, we're looking at 1 QB, 4 RB, 3 WR, and 1 TE as our first 9 picks.  We should simulate all the different combinations of those 9 picks with who should be available at the time of our selections, and pick the order that provides the most projected points.

The key part to drafting is to look at the entire draft as a whole, not to take each pick as a separate event.  Doing so puts you in control of your surroundings, not the other way around.  Ambition can be a virtue if it drives you to excel.

After I put in the legwork, the following order comes out, with the following players.

1: WR - Calvin Johnson
2: RB - Chris Johnson
3: WR - Randall Cobb
4: RB - Darren McFadden
5: QB - Colin Kaepernick
6: WR - Torrey Smith
7: RB - LeVeon Bell
8: RB - Montee Ball
9: TE - Jermichael Finley

The idea is to grab a player right before a big drop off.  That is obvious for our 1st and 5th pick, but there is a significant drop off after all of these picks.  Don't fight with the picks; I didn't modify the projections at all.

When we look at the entire draft, we can maximize the entire draft, rather than selling out on one pick when another one would be almost as good and giving us a better deal later on.

For example, the biggest drop off is after Round 2 with Jimmy Graham at TE.  However, the deals later on for RB are not as good as Jermichael Finley all the way down at 9, so we need to grab the RB here since we want so many of them.

As you can see, this isn't some cookie-cutter strategy like RB-RB-WR, or WR-QB, because every year ADP and projections are different.  The more work you put in, the better chance you are the one at the end saying, "Roma Victor!"

Draft Planning Series: Standard 10 Team 7th Position Episode 1 - Introduction

Have you ever felt lost at a draft, or scrambled to figure out who to pick, only to discover seconds after you made your pick that you overlooked something crucial?  If you have, then you need to train more before entering the Colosseum, and this draft planning academy is for you

This is a series that will focus on taking your team from joining the league through the draft.  I divide the process into the following steps:

1.  Projections
2.  Determining Best ADP Lineup
3.  Sleepers, Defenses, and Kickers
4.  Contingency Plans
5.  Draft Implementation

The first league I'll take you through is a standard scoring ESPN league with:

1 QB
2 RB
1 Flex
2 WR
1 TE
1 DST
1 K

Pretty easy, right?  To get our feet wet this year, I'll skip the first step for this league, and just use the footballguys rankings.

Next post will determine the best ADP lineup according to those strict projections, and once we're finished with all our plans, I'll do a mock draft and show you how it turned out.  Later, I'll take you through a couple pay leagues I'm in (I don't pretend to be a man of the people, but I do try to be a man for the people).

It's easy when you have a firm plan in place when drafting, and I usually have a really good idea what my team will look like before I even make my first pick.

"What we do in preparation, echoes during the draft." - Fantasy Football Maximus