Fantasy Football 2006: Draft Tip #5

Draft Tip #4: Beware the Experts. (Part 3)

In Part 1 of "Beware the Experts", I posed the following three questions concerning the differences in how a player is ranked by different preseason Fantasy Football publications. (As we noted, these differences can be significant.)

1. Why the differences?
2. How do I know if I am ending up with a top-level starting player or Defense rather than one that should spend the season in the free Agent pool?
3. How many of these magazines do I have to buy at $7.99 or more to get a good idea what the real story is?

In my previous post (Draft Tip #4), I addressed the first question, now let's look at the remaining 2.

Question 2 (How do I know if I am ending up with a top-level starting player or Defense rather than one that should spend the season in the free Agent pool?):

There are four things that are of major importance in answering this question:

1. Use player rankings that are based on the most current information possible
2. Don't believe just one source's view of any given player
   
3. Make sure the rankings are based on a scoring system that is as close to yours a possible.
4. Keep checking player status on a regular basis.

As for the first of these, realize that Fantasy Football publications have it extremely difficult in that they have to finalize all their content along about April to be able to hit the newsstands by mid-June. As a result, their content can become extremely dated, especially with regards to injuries and personnel changes.

• I know of at least one publisher that pulls their mags off the shelf after one month, puts a new cover on them, and ships them out with exactly the same content inside (just a month older by now). Why? Because newsstands typically leave a mag on the shelf for only one month. The new cover makes it look like a new issue, and, surprisingly enough, people buy it.

Concerning item 2, we gave you an example last time of a certain player ranked #29 by ESPN.com and #63 by NFL.com. Who is right? Can't say. Could be one, the other, or neither. But, the thing that you can do is look at a bunch of rankings for this player. This will at least give you a better idea how the player is seen by a bunch of "experts" rather than just one or two.

• OR, you can sign up with us. We don't try to predict player participation. Rather we scan industry-wide rankings and put together a consensus participation factor. Our draft package is based on an overall view which we believe provides much more accurate rankings. (in other words, we do the legwork for you)

Item 3 can be a real pain to deal with as well. For example, if you are in a Yahoo Default league, having rankings based on one of ESPN's scoring systems may not do you much good (and that's assuming ESPN.com even uses one of their scoring systems for the rankings). Even if you do find one that uses your exact system, you're sort of stuck with their expert's views on player participation.

• The rankings in our draft package are based on the different major default scoring systems. We provide specific rankings for such systems as Yahoo, ESPN, CBS Sportsline, AOL, NFL.com, Sporting News, and Fox/MSN.

Item 4 is ultimately up to you. There are plenty of sites that provide daily player updates. The bottom line is that if Larry Johnson for goes down for 6 weeks in spring practice, he's not likely to be a top 5 draft pick no matter what the publications say. So stay as informed as you can, knowledge really is power.

Question 3 (How many of these magazines do I have to buy at $7.99 or more to get a good idea what the real story is?):

How many of the $8.00 mags should you buy? It really depends on how much money you have to spend and how much information you want to try to digest. Certainly those who are better informed generally have the basis for making better draft day choices. However, at some point the amount of info can become confusing and player recommendations can degenerate into nothing more than a contest between battling experts. (Look out, here comes another "or"...)

• OR, you can sign up with us. Not only will you get player rankings that are league specific and based on concensus participation levels, it is updated through the start of the season.

• In addition, you get a full season of the most accurate weekly point projections for over 600 players based on the same league specific scoring systems noted above.

• How much? Less than the cost of four of those newsstand mags. Yep, only $29.99 (Doesn't that look better than $30.00?) for a preseason draft package, individual point projections, for the entire season, and a whole lot more. Plus, keep an eye out for our sign-up special.
  

Check back for Part 6 of our Draft Tips where we will give you some thoughts on the 2006 Mock Drafts we have seen.