Five years ago, like millions of others around the world did, I drafted a fantasy football team.
Then I drafted another one. And another.
And then, when the binge drafting finally stopped, I had 37 fantasy football teams.
37.
This was not a good idea. I wouldn't recommend managing 37 fantasy teams to anyone with friends, family, a significant other, a job, a pet or a need to occasionally be outdoors. Any positive portrayal of this endeavor is unintended. Having 37 fantasy football teams is aggressively dumb.
I'll spare you the particulars and the backstory and the outcome. Hearing about someone else's fantasy team is painful enough, and I don't intend to multiply that pain by 37 for you.
Instead, let's focus on some of the lessons learned in the process, and how you can relate that to your much more socially acceptable amount of fantasy football teams this upcoming season.
Pre-Draft Rankings
Before the draft, you take a look at the preset rankings. You agree with some, you disagree with others. Maybe you make a few tweaks, and then stop after a couple of minutes of work.
Look, you're not alone here. Most people do this, get bored, and move on to something else. You'll have time to search for players and get a queue going during the draft anyway, right?
Well, yes, but this is still a sub-optimal approach. Going into a draft using one site's pre-set rankings, even when they're poured over like they are here at FOX Sports, is shorting yourself. Why not use multiple sites along with recent mock draft results to create an aggregate ranking on an Excel sheet?
That way, if someone is vastly underrated or overrated by a particular site, you can identify that easily. Is the guy sitting at the top of the draft board for the last two rounds really falling, or was he just ranked too high initially? Can I wait on my sleeper pick, or has he been going earlier in recent mock drafts than the pre-set rankings would suggest?
These are the kind of questions you want answers to in a timely manner on draft day. Don't go in blind.
Targets vs Value
Before every draft, you probably have a few players you're really hoping to get. These are the guys you believe can outperform their expectations and projected draft position.
During the draft, you'll inevitably end up with a dilemma: do I take another player who has unexpectedly fallen to me and is good value at this point, or do I take one of my targets, even if it's a but of a reach?
When you have a crazy person amount of teams, the smart play is to take the value pick every single time. Chances are, you'll end up with your favorites on enough teams, and so gaining exposure to a player you may not like under normal circumstances varies your attack and hedges some of your bets in a way.
When you have just one or two teams, though, you should take the opposite approach. We all end up with bad players, but it's much easier to live with it when you trusted your gut by taking someone you believed in as opposed to just taking a guy simply because everyone else left him there for you.
And if a player you thought would be excellent ends up being just that, and you don't have him on your roster? It's a terrible feeling. Trust your gut and your research, and go get the guys you want, value be damned.
Don't worry about bye weeks
People get caught up in bye weeks far too often, to the point where they'll pass on a player they like in the middle of the draft simply because he shares a bye with someone they already have at the same position.
Remember, it's a single week in the regular season! You'll be able to pick up free agents! With injuries and everything else, your roster can change drastically in no time.
I'm certainly not against looking at the schedule in my drafts, but I do it with the intent of taking players with favorable playoff slates and finding a defense with great matchups the first few weeks of the season. Bye weeks can be used as a secondary tiebreaker, but otherwise, I wouldn't fuss over them, especially in the first half of your draft. You're playing for the postseason; not week eight.
Take chances early on
You've heard this before, but I still see it every single year: don't carry multiple defenses or kickers in the first few weeks. Ever. It's a waste of a roster spot you can use to take a flier on someone.
In fact, I'll happily release a below-average quarterback or a tight end splitting snaps to see if the receiver who scored 20 points the first week is for real, and you should too. Most of the time it won't pay off, and the performance will be a fluke.
But that's okay! By increasing your opportunities, you're more likely to roster that gem who came out of nowhere to take the league by storm. There's a handful of those guys every single year, and typically they can spend two or three weeks on the waiver wire before anyone scoops them up.
Don't be late on a potential game-changer just to keep a late-round draft pick with little upside stashed on your bench. Be aggressive right from the jump and roll over to another high potential player if the first one doesn't work out.
The little details
One of the downsides of managing so many teams, other than the early onset Carpal Tunnel, is that you miss a lot of the important little details, particularly when it comes to free agency. No matter how organized you are with your list of pickups to search for and everything else, it's difficult to properly prepare for injuries and plan ahead.
With a single team, you can really map things out for yourself. If you have a player that's questionable or a game-time decision and is playing in the second set of games, you'll know to only target players playing at that time or after, so you can make the decision as late as possible.
Or, if you know a free agent defense has a prime matchup two weeks from now, maybe you take the small hit in the current week and scoop them up before they're a hot commodity next week.
It's the attention to detail, like writing out a message in a trade offer instead of just sending it over. It's keeping an eye on the weather for your kickers. It's looking beyond the current week.
Just like real sports, it's hard to win without talent. Your draft will decide an awful lot. Still, you can maximize whatever talent you have just by being more organized and paying closer attention than the next guy.
And yes, that's especially true if the next guy has 37 teams.
For more fantasy tips, follow D.J. Foster on Twitter @FOXSportsFoster.
