2010 Fantasy Football Draft: AMILE's Preparation Course Part 1

OK, you've turned in your retention list. Or it's just a start-from-scratch league. So let's prepare for the draft (or auction!).

Obviously, you should be reading as much as possible. I would be checking ESPN.com at least once a day. Read the articles, listen to our daily Fantasy Focus 06010 podcast I do with Nate Ravitz; it's the best thing I do, frankly. As we get into the regular season, watch our daily Fantasy Focus videocast and our Sunday Morning show "Fantasy Football Now" on ESPN2 and ESPN.com. Stop by our chats. I highly recommend our free mobile alerts.
In addition, you can find my Twitter feed (@AmileWaters), where I will dish out last-minute news, advice and fantasy nuggets.

I find Twitter to be an incredibly helpful tool for finding out news and interacting with fans. If you haven't signed up for Twitter, I would do so, get an application that allows you to get tweets to your phone and follow, well, lots of folks, starting with me and many of my ESPN brethren. Too many to list here, but almost all of my fantasy colleagues and most of the NFL folks at ESPN, such as Chris Mortensen and Adam Schefter, are news-spilling machines on that thing.

There's an ESPN iPhone App that I like, and for those who want even more of an edge you should sign up for ESPN Insider (or get yourself a RotoPass from my site, www.RotoPass.com, which includes Insider as well as access to some other great fantasy sites).

But don't just read fantasy sites. Read the football sections of major newspapers. Watch "SportsCenter" and "NFL Live." And once the season starts, watch games. Not just highlights. Games. See how a guy gets his 100 yards. Was he grinding it out or did he just get a lucky 75-yard gain and got crushed on the other 20 carries? The more info you can have, the better.

There are millions of sites devoted to fantasy football. See which you like, which you trust, which you agree with, which you think are for morons. It's all speculation -- some of it more informed than others -- but at the end of the day, we're all just making educated guesses.

Either way, knowledge is power. The more you know -- about players, lineups, injuries, sleepers, coaching changes, schedules, bye weeks, etc. -- the better shape you are in. So prepare as though you are testing to get into Harvard Medical Shool, because the only thing worse than screwing up on draft day and listening to your buddies say you're a jackass for the next six months is having to sit in front of a TV on Sunday while saying, "Come on, this is a perfect Spencer Havner situation! Get him in there!"


Speaking of knowledge being power: I know this sounds stupid, but you'd be amazed at how many people make this mistake as they sign up for more and more leagues and simply assume they know the intricacies.

Know your league's rules. Inside and out. (Another reason you need a constitution.)

Like, do you get the same amount of points for a touchdown pass as a touchdown run? If so, quarterbacks are much more valuable than they are in leagues that reward six points for a TD run and just four for a TD pass. Do you get points for receptions? What about return yards? Do you get negative points for turnovers?

Bonus points for long plays? Do running backs get points for receptions and receiving yards? Because Reggie Bush is actually valuable if they do. It all matters when prepping for your draft and evaluating players.

OK, you know your league's rules. You've marked draft day on the calendar. You've got Ben Tate at the top of your sleeper list, you've checked the latest info on Wes Welker's injury and you can't wait to grab Toby Gerhart and, in the process, screw over Adrian Peterson's owner.

But now, time to get serious. You're going to need to do some paperwork prior to the draft to make the draft easier and more efficient for yourself.

First, get yourself an up-to-the-minute depth chart for every team in the NFL. We have a really good, easy-to-print version in our ESPN.com draft kit, and they will be updated throughout the preseason. But whichever site's you like, print them out and bring them with you.

When you're nearing the end of the draft and you need another wide receiver or a starting tight end, the depth charts will come in handy. Trust me. A simple depth chart is one of the best tools you can have.

Whatever list/magazine/book you choose to go with, just bring one. Too much info can clutter things up. Decide ahead of time whose is the best fit for you, and go with that. If one has Rivers over Romo and the other has them reversed, so what? They both rock.

Personally, I like to make my own list. But whatever list you have, you need to prepare it. By that I mean I like to group players into tiers. As an easy example, you'll group your tight ends. I say Antonio Gates, Dallas Clark, Brent Celek and Vernon Davis are the elite guys.

The next tier has about seven guys. So you may say to yourself, "I don't want my tight end to be worse than, say, Chris Cooley." So the big four are off the board plus Owen Daniels, Jermichael Finley, Tony Gonzalez and Greg Olsen, because one guy in your league doesn't realize Mike Martz never throw to tight ends. You don't freak out because you look at your list and see Jason Witten, Kellen Winslow, the aforementioned Cooley and Visanthe Shiancoe are still left, and you have two selections in the next six picks.

You can probably take an upside running back with the first of those picks and know that you'll get one of those other guys on the way back. Or even better, a quick glance shows seven of the 10 teams in the league have a tight end, there are five left that you'd be fine with, so you can wait even longer. Chances are it will be a while before teams start drafting their second tight ends, so you can keep stocking up on other players instead of "wasting" a pick on a tight end before you need to.

And this kind of stuff is amassing as much high-upside depth as possible. The better the player you can stockpile, the better chance you hit pay dirt.

During the draft, it's especially important not to get hung up on one particular player. By dividing your list like this, you'll be more able to see where there is scarcity in the draft and where there is surplus. Like with wide receivers, just because you don't get Percy Harvin or Jeremy Maclin as your young wide receiver with upside, you're not out of luck. Pierre Garcon will be just fine.


Another thing you want to do before the draft is prepare a "draft sheet" for every team in the league. This is a sheet that has every team in your league and every position they need to fill. I cannot stress how important this is. As the draft progresses, you are going to want to be able to know who everyone has, what positions they have filled and what they still need. You can see every team online in our draft rooms but I still do it by pen and paper because I like to see every team at a glance.


If it's a keeper league, make sure you fill in who has been kept before you draft. And hey, if you are a member of Insider (or RotoPass) you get a free Draft Analyzer, which is an easy computer program that helps keep track of all this stuff for you during the draft. (I am nothing if not a company man.)


But if you're old school like me, with pen and paper, here's what you do: Let's say Team 1 takes Chris Johnson. You write down "CJ" in one of Team 1's RB slots. Team 2 goes with Adrian Peterson and you put that name down in that team's No. 1 RB slot. This way you can see at a glance what you need in comparison to every other team.

Sleeper alert! Matt Moore averaged 207 yards and two touchdowns (with no interceptions) in the final four games of the 2009 season.Say it's the 10th round and you need a backup quarterback, but there's a sleeper wide receiver you want to grab as well. You look at your sheet, see most everyone has two quarterbacks, and according to your quarterback tiers, Chad Henne, Jason Campbell, Matt Moore (whom I kinda like as well) and Vince Young are still out there. So you should be OK when it comes around to you next. You don't need to burn the pick here. Conversely, the three teams picking after you all need wide receivers, so you better grab the guy now or never get him. You grab your receiver and then get a decent No. 2 quarterback next time around.

This sheet will save your bacon more than once toward the end of the draft, and that's where leagues are won and lost, not in the first few rounds. Any idiot can take Chris Johnson in the first few picks. It's the guy who grabs the next Sidney Rice in the double-digit rounds who generally wins the league.

I also like to have a list of sleepers I want to target. When you're in Hour 4 and can't think anymore, you can glance at the sheet and go, "Oh yeah, I wanted to take a gamble on Michael Bush. Or Early Doucet. Or Arian Foster. Or Matthew Stafford." You then grab them instead of saying, "I can't think of anybody & I'll just take my kicker now."

By the way, if it's a salary cap/auction league -- did I mention you can now do auctions on ESPN.com for free? -- I also have a place to see how much money they have left. Those of you with laptops can have a spreadsheet do all this for you, obviously (or if you are using ESPN.com Auction Draft Lobby, we do it for you). If it's a keeper league with a salary cap, you start with how much money each team has left for how many positions to fill.