Value Based Drafting

Want to win your league?  If your answer to this question is yes, then keep reading.  Now that I have your attention, bear with me through this as things are about to get dicey.  Turn off your TV, your Vengaboys CD, your wife, and your baby monitor, and devote your next 15 minutes entirely to Razzball.  I promise you won’t regret it.

Is it just me, or does it always seem like your first round pick is the hardest?  You will probably spend most of your time debating this pick more than any other pick.  However, the truth is, you should be concentrating on the later rounds rather than the early rounds.  For this walkthrough, let’s assume that you have the 6^th overall pick in a standard 12 team non-PPR Razzball Commenter League (by the way, you can still sign up for an RCL here.  If you’re looking for a more competitive, active league, sign up now!).  Anyways, you’re now debating between taking a QB, RB, or WR as the top 5 RB are off the board.  You look at your cheatsheet, and at the top of their respective positions are Michael Vick, Rashard Mendenhall and Andre Johnson.  What’s the best approach?  Well, read below and find out.

It’s called value based drafting (VBD).  From my experiences, this is by far the best strategy to employ when going into a draft.  As long as your draft picks don’t poop the bed, I can guarantee your team will be a contender all season.  I applied this strategy for the first time two years ago in a 16 team dynasty league, and I walked away with the regular season points record, finished first overall in the regular season standings, and ultimately won the championship.  And I will admit, a large part of this was due to my draft, not necessarily my in-season moves.  Ten out of my twelve drafted offensive players (not including kickers or defense) finished the year on my team.  Not too shabby eh?  This should be more than enough motivation for you to use VBD in your leagues this year.

Okay, okay, okay, enough bragging, I get it.  Let’s move on.  What is value based drafting?  All in all, it is very simple and logical.  Understanding it is easy, applying it is the hard part.  Rather than drafting the best name available on the board, you should be drafting the positional player that will ultimately give you the best value at that point in your draft.

Initially, you will want to rank players by position (let’s not use K and DEF because, frankly, I hope you aren’t drafting them until the late rounds.  I’m talking very late.  Like last 2 rounds late.)  Along with ranking of players, include projections based on your league settings.  Hard work, right?  Well, if you take your mouse that actually isn’t a mouse, and move it to the top of this screen, you’ll see a link that has all of Razzball’s 2011 Fantasy Football Rankings.  You can’t go wrong using those.

Now that the easy part is over with, it’s time to actually concentrate.  From this point forward, you’ll need to play Miss Cleo.  You’re going to use personal drafting experiences, ADP reports, and reviews of expert drafts to properly analyze the future that your draft will bring to you.  Back to the problem at hand…  You’re drafting 6th, and you’re thinking to yourself, it would be awesome to grab the top WR off the board right now.  But, is this the smartest move?

Your next pick isn’t until pick 19 in round 2, so from picks 6-18, 13 players will be selected (including your pick).  Based on my review of expert mock drafts going on this year, on average, 3 QBs, 6 RBs, and 4 WR will be taken before your next pick.  Is this exactly how your draft will turn out?  Probably not, but it is a great guideline.  Now this is where VBD comes in.  You’re going to have to compare QB ranked 1 to QB ranked 4, RB ranked 6 (since the top 5 are gone) to RB ranked 12, and WR ranked 1 to WR ranked 5.  Based on your point projections, subtract QB ranked 4s projected points from QB ranked 1.  As per Razzball’s projections, you will deduct Peyton Manning’s 301 points from Michael Vick’s 357 points giving you a difference of 56 points.  This essentially means that by not drafting a QB right now, you will be giving up 56 points of value in QB.  Let’s look at the remaining two positions.

Deducting Maurice Jones-Drew’s 202 points from Rashard Mendenhall’s 231 points, you will get a 29 point differential.  And by deducting Hakeem Nicks’ 181.5 points from Andre Johnson’s 205 points, you get a difference of 23.5 points.  Comparing all three positions, you will see that the biggest drop off comes in the QB department.  For value purposes, your best bet is to draft Michael Vick.  However, you may not feel comfortable drafting a QB destined for injury at some point this year, and you decide to temper your projections for Vick.  Let’s drop his point total to Rodgers total, which I feel is a bit more reasonable.  By doing this, you’ll see that the drop off is reduced to 19 points.

Now if you believe that Vick will put up the numbers projected, then by all means, draft him with confidence.  If you’re looking for reliability from your first round pick, then don’t be afraid to reduce expectations for Vick (Doc has him ranked 13th, so does have reservations about him or would have him #1).  This change in Vick’s projections means that the biggest drop off comes from RBs.  For the sake of this experiment, I’ll go ahead and draft Mendenhall because if I don’t draft a RB right now, by the time my next pick comes around I will have given up too much value in RBs.

I’ll walk you through round 2 quickly to make sure you understand what’s going on.  So you’re sitting at pick 19.  Your next pick isn’t until pick 30 in round 3, which means 11 players will get drafted between picks 19 and 29 (including your pick).  Once again, based on expert mock drafts I’ve analyzed, 1 QB, 4 RB, and 6 WR will be taken in that time span.  Comparing QB ranked 4 and 5, there is a drop off of 3 points.  Comparing RB ranked 12 and 16, there is a drop off of 15 points.  Comparing WR ranked 5 and 11, there is a drop off of 18.5 points.  Looking at this data, it makes sense to draft a WR.

Below I’ve made a table of data for the first 8 rounds of the draft.  Remember, this is assuming a standard RCL league and picking 6^th overall.  Every pick is different, so you’ll need to do a separate analysis for your league type and where you draft slot is.

Your first 8 draft picks should go as follows: RB, WR, RB, QB, TE, WR, RB, WR.  This will provide you with the best value per round, and should give you one of, if not the best teams after the first 8 rounds.  Your team could look as follows (assuming players get drafted exactly as per Razzball’s rankings, which will obviously not be the case, so you’ll most likely get a couple steals at each position):

QB – Tony Romo

WR – Hakeem Nicks

WR – Austin Collie

WR – Jacoby Ford

RB – Rashard Mendenhall

RB – Shonn Greene

TE – Jermichael Finley

W/R – Brandon Jacobs

You’ll take that and like it.  Now you have an extremely solid foundation to build around.

To sum things up, should you be using value based drafting as your cheatsheet on draft day?  No, absolutely not.  Use VBD to help you determine the value of the player you are about to draft.  Use your knowledge of draft trends to find value.  This is difficult because you have to try and project what positions will be drafted before your next pick.

As the key to building your starting line up with the most overall value, there are times where you will take a lesser valued player because the expected drop off in value until your next pick is greater at another position.  It is often preached while everyone else zigs, you should zag.  But what I often preach is to zig before they zig.  The key is to react before they do.