Yesterday, I told you he most important players to focus on in the draft are running backs and tight ends because the really good ones are in short supply. I don’t mean there is an endless supply of wide receivers and quarterbacks. You need all five categories to win, but the law of supply and demand is ironclad.
When draft night rolls around, I will have my list of players to draft in priority order. What I won’t know is what the draft order is. Fantasy football offers two basic types of drafts: the snake draft and the auction draft. Most league utilize the snake draft format, and that’s what I’m going to discuss here.
The snake draft is divided into rounds — one round for each available roster spot on each team. Each team makes its first-round pick based on a predetermined order. When the first round ends, the team that picked last in the first round picks first in the second round — in other words, the draft snakes back on itself.
Round 1 is important because there are only a handful of what I will call “elite players.” In my estimation, there are eight – Le’Veon Bell, Todd Gurley, Alvin Kamara, David Johnson, Antonio Brown, Ezekiel Elliott, DeAndre Hopkins and Saquon Barkley. Most people agree on these eight, although some will omit one of them.
In my opinion, if you draft one of these eight players in the first round, you had a successful start. What if you have the No. 9, or No. 10 pick? The good news is that there are plenty of very good players out there, and you will be able to pick two of them in fairly quick order because of the coiling of the snake.
Tomorrow: Drafting a winning team, part 2.
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