Final draft prep, part 1

In the final week before your fantasy football draft, there’s still work to be done. By now, you should have looked over the rankings and have a good idea of who you want to draft. And who you don’t want to draft.

The latter is just as important as the former – perhaps more important. Many people will have their teams selected by auto pick, and ESPN (or Yahoo) will assign players to teams randomly based on their rankings.

I was unable to attend last year’s live draft, so ESPN drafted my team for me. I wasn’t too happy with the outcome. My quarterback, Andrew Luck, never played a down last year, and I had to hit the waiver wire early.

Hindsight is 20-20, but I can tell you that I would not have drafted Luck based on the uncertainty of his shoulder injury. And if I did draft him, I certainly would have drafted another quarterback in the later rounds.

I shy away from players who start the year questionable. ESPN lists all of them with a red “Q” after their names, and that’s a warning sign for me. But if they have an “O,” it means “Out.” If they’re out, they’re out for me.

I may draft a “Q” if I think he’s slipped in the rankings and is now a value play. I watched LeSean McCloy slip into the fourth round in many drafts. I was interested until I read about the Bills preseason game on Sunday.

I had been hearing about how bad Buffalo is, and now I believe it. The Bengals were in the Bills’ backfield all night, proving the latter’s offensive line is terrible. McCoy is already injured, and he’s in for a rough year.

Final draft prep, part 2