Fantasy football is a great way to get more out of your NFL watching experience. If you enjoy the NFL, then you must be in a fantasy football league. Fantasy football allows you to draft players from any team in the league and score points based on their performance. It is rather easy to draft a fantasy football team, but there are still several principals to follow to make sure that you have the best chance to win each week.
Prior to the start of the fantasy football draft, all of the teams will be randomly assigned a draft position. Once it is your turn to pick in the draft, you can select any player currently in the NFL that have not been drafted by the other teams.
Each fantasy football league is going to have slightly different rules and starting rosters, but the drafting principals will generally apply to every league. Every team will have to start a variety of quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, kickers and team defenses each week. The goal is to have a well rounded team at each position with several quality players on your bench to help out on bye weeks and in case any of your players get hurt.
The goal in the first several rounds is to take the best player available, regardless of what position they play. While the player’s position does not matter in the early rounds, quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers are going to give you the most value. You are going to want to draft at least two running backs, two wide receivers and a quarterback in the first six rounds. These are the three most important positions in fantasy football, so that is where you want to concentrate must of your picks. If you do not have a tight end by the end of the sixth round, then it is a good idea to draft one in the middle rounds.
The middle rounds of the fantasy football draft should be spent drafting your bench players at the quarterback, running back, wide receiver and tight end positions. You want to make sure that you have quality players on your bench because there are so many injuries during the NFL season. It is nearly impossible to go through a season without having a player on your fantasy football team get injured. Your bench players will also have to replace your starters during their bye weeks.
The bye weeks are often ignored by newcomers to fantasy football. You must make sure that you pay attention to the bye weeks of all of your players during the draft. It makes no sense to draft two quarterbacks with the same bye week because you still going to be without a quarterback that week. Your bench players must have different bye weeks from your starting players so that you will always be able to have a full starting lineup each week of the season.
Now that you have starters and backups to the most important positions, you are going to want to draft a defense and kicker in the last two rounds. The scoring for defenses varies too much based on who they are playing that week, so you do not want to waste a top pick on one. All of the top kickers will score close to the same amount of points at the end of the year, so it does not really matter which kicker you end up drafting. There is also no need to draft backups for your defense and kicker because you have plenty of quality options to pick up for their bye week.
If you follow this guide, then you should be able to have a contending fantasy football team. Fantasy football is a great way to interact with the sport and your friends, so there is no reason why you should not experience it.