You may be a pretty good Fantasy Football Owner, but you could be better.....

While not exactly a "How to Win Friends and Influence People" conversation opener, I believe that statement is most likely true. Please understand, possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of all things NFL, does NOT necessarily make you a good Fantasy Owner. While they certainly help, knowledge and information are only part of the formula for a successful Fantasy Season. Crucial parts yes, but you must have more. If becoming the "Shark" of your league is what you're after....you're in the right place.

Within this website, you'll be able to access more current, insightful, and accurate news and analysis than you'll find anywhere. My friends Bob Harris and Brian Francisco have few peers when it comes to these areas. Of that, I'm quite confident. I'm equally confident that the information you'll receive here will have little value unless it's properly applied.

That's where I come in. The thrust of my work will be focused on helping you take this information and making it work for you. For example, Bob may tell you that a Wesley Walls is due for a breakout year and support it with countless reasons among them the fact that Kerry Collins loves a TE and how the Carolina situation is perfect. This is excellent. However, you must then take that information and apply it to YOUR league and YOUR situation. How does Walls relate to the other TE's? How does he relate to the other players in the draft pool? What's his value? Where should he be drafted? Get the idea? Knowing that Walls will likely explode is only half the battle.

Don't get me wrong, Bob and Brian are as sharp as they come, but they can't do everything for you. Without properly applying this information, it's like stockpiling ammunition without a gun. It's my intention to let Bob and Brian handle the ammo, I'll provide you with a double barreled Howitzer and we'll have your fantasy competition lined up squarely in the crosshairs.

I know a great many semi-serious fantasy owners who enjoy Fantasy Football, but never devote the time and effort to better learn the game, simply because they feel that "luck" plays too prominent a role. Without a doubt, luck is a factor. The very shape of a football will tell you that. I seriously doubt you'll find any owner who'll say that luck plays no part, myself included. However, for every 10 semi-serious "baitfish" owners, there is a "Shark" who sees things a bit differently. Sharks tend to agree with Baseball Great, Branch Rickey, who said "Luck is the residue of design".

While owners are moaning about the lack of production from their rookie WR, the Shark relaxes knowing that in the last 30 years, only 5 Rookie WR's have gained 1000+ yards. He makes a deal for one in week 9 then reaps the rewards. While some owners are whining about QB injuries and the stiff they were forced to start, the Shark realizes that few signal callers stay healthy all season and drafts a quality backup. Get the idea? A great many things that the average owner dismisses as luck, both good and bad, can be planned for and anticipated before they happen. To paraphrase Mr. Rickey, Sharks believe in making their own luck.

The truth of the matter is that in virtually every league across the country, there are a couple of owners that consistently succeed. They consistently outdraft their opponents, they consistently make smart trades (often the result of surpluses from a strong draft), they consistently manage their roster well and year after year, they consistently wind up either at the top of the heap or very close to it. This is not luck. Luck is when Mark Brunell has a receiver get pushed out of bounds at the one foot line and doesn't get the TD. Drafting Brunell as your backup Quarterback and riding him to the playoffs after your #1 guy goes down is most definitely NOT luck. These successful owners have skills that enable them to succeed.

Fortunately, like most skills, they can be learned. Yes, you heard it right friends, you too can learn to be a Fantasy Football Shark. The concepts of Position Scarcity, Player Valuation, Performance Prediction, Inter Position Relations, Draft Economics, Trading Principles and Roster Management are all things that can be learned. In fact, if you're having success in Fantasy Football now, you're probably already using these concepts in one form or another. You may just need to tune them up a bit.

Let me say this: I don't intend to claim my Strategies and Principles are the only way to win at this game of Fantasy Football. There are hundreds of different methods used by a great many people who obviously have success. What I AM saying is that these things work for me. More importantly, they work consistently for me. They also work consistently for a large number of other successful Fantasy Owners. I do not claim to have invented all these Strategies and ideas. Like many owners, I cut my Fantasy teeth on the Rotisserie Baseball work of Bill James, John Benson and Peter Golenback. They taught me the foundations and I built upon them with my own work. I am thankful and appreciative of their contributions, as are a great many successful owners.

The ideas you'll see me put forth are not "ivory tower" theories. They're concepts I've learned and more importantly, applied. Many were born out of necessity. For instance, my local league drafts players in what I call a "speed draft" format. It's an intense scene where you have 120 seconds to make your selection, absolutely no exceptions. A format such as this leaves little room for indecision and forces the owners to formulate accurate and disciplined draft lists. Over the years, I began to identify some common traits of successful Fantasy Owners. Some I learned through my own personal experience in my own leagues, some I learned from other people. All were consistently successful. All were Strategies and Principles that I had seen produce outstanding results. These are the type of things I'm going to be talking about.

It's important to understand the difference between a Strategy and a Principle. A Principle is an overall concept or truth. A Strategy is a particular example of implementing that Principle. For example, a fundamental Principle in Fantasy Football states that the value of a player rises when there are fewer good players at his position. It's basic Supply and Demand. In other words, when star RB's are scarce, their value rises. A Strategy for this Principle would be the "grab Stud RB's" method that is so popular.

You must understand the difference because while Principles are always the same, Strategies regarding those Principles can and will change drastically. For example, instead of the "grab a stud RB" Strategy, your league's situation may favor a Strategy that leans toward grabbing top WR's instead. The Principle would still be the same (identifying value based on Supply and Demand) but the Strategy would be altogether different based on the particular situation in your league. Make sure you are comfortable with the difference. Because league rules vary so widely and therefore make prescribing specific Strategies dangerous, I will focus almost exclusively on Principles.

Because each league has its own set of circumstances, I always advise people to avoid anyone's specific Strategy advice unless they are specifically aware of your particular situation, scoring system, starting lineup requirements, number of teams in your league, and what players are in your draft pool. All of these things will dramatically affect the Strategies you should implement. Anyone who says "you have to draft strong WR's", (or any other position), without knowledge of your specific situation, is misleading you. Unintentionally, I'm sure, but it's misleading nonetheless. Specific Strategies are simply to dependent on a particular league's situation to broadly prescribed. The thrust of my work here will be to make it easy to identify the guiding Principles upon which your Strategies will be based.

Over the next several months, I intend to share with you many of these ideas and Principles in order to help you improve your fantasy success. I am certain they will produce for you as they do for me. Early on, we'll focus our attention on that most important event, the Draft. From there, we'll take a look at Inseason Roster Management and maximizing your available players. In between, we'll devote a great deal of time to the deeper, thought provoking aspects of our game and how it relates to a successful season. Your comments and feedback are always welcome and asked for.

In this introductory article, I'd like to introduce the concept of Player Valuation and show how it relates to all aspects of the game, but most importantly, how it affects your draft.

Draft night is the single most important day of the year in your Fantasy Football season. Months of preparation will culminate as you enter the smoke filled room hoping to emerge victorious hours later after assembling another juggernaut. Is draft day overrated? In my opinion, it would be impossible to overrate your draft's importance to your season. Yes, I've seen teams rebound from a bad draft. It is possible. It's also possible to win the Indy 500 by starting in the back row. Obviously, you're miles ahead of the game if you can start on the pole. It's the same way with a draft. What you do during the draft determines a great deal about how you'll spend the next several months. You can draft poorly and then depend on your trading and management skills to pull you through. As I said, I've seen this done. It's just much easier (and a lot more fun) to emerge from the draft with a strong team and let your trading and management skill push you even further ahead.

This may come as a shock to some, but the essential first step to a successful draft is developing a hard set of projected stats that you expect every player to post in the following year. I'm not interested in the grumbling about unpredictable football players and the whining that normally follows any discussion about player performance projections. If you're going to dominate in this game, it's absolutely essential that you have all the pertinent stats that your league tracks projected for the entire season. In my league, it's Rushing TD's, Receiving TD's, Passing TD's, Interceptions, Fumbles, Passing Yardage, Rushing Yardage, Receiving Yardage, Field Goals (by distance), Missed Field Goals (by distance), Extra Points, and Missed Extra Points. I project these numbers for every player that I expect to be Drafted, not just starters.

Is this too much work? If it is, maybe you're not Shark material. Save yourself the effort, stop right here and return to the "baitfish ranks". Go buy yourself a "cheat sheet" off the newsstand and have a good time. You may do well. More than likely however, you'll pad the wallets of the Sharks in your league.

It's not really that much work though. If you'll think about it, you're probably doing these projections already, just not this specifically and probably not formally. Everyone thinks that Young will throw more TD's than Bledsoe. We all think Watters will gain more yards than Murrell (although it'll be closer than you think). Everyone expects Morten Andersen to boot some 50+ yarders. Those things we know. What you must do with your projections is get a handle on EXACTLY how many more TD's you expect Young to throw than Bledsoe. It's not enough to say "he's better". You must decide how much better. This becomes critical later because in a real draft, you're not comparing Bledsoe to Young only. You're comparing Bledsoe to Ben Coates, Edgar Bennett, and Brett Perriman perhaps. To see how Bledsoe compares to them, you MUST understand exactly how he compares to Young. You'll see why in a moment.

Hey, nobody's perfect with projections. You'll do well to get close. It's a tough game to predict. However, you can't just throw in the towel. You must take your best shot at projecting the stats. It's the starting point from which everything else is based. Spend some time on it. Give it some thought. You'll get better as seasons go by. I always keep old projections and look back to see how I did. Look back each year and try to learn something. Should you have identified Bruce last year? How about Curtis Martin? Everybody blew it on Bledsoe. Maybe an established track record IS important? Can you trust a kicker? These are the type of factors you'll be looking at and making your projections from. Sure, I've made tons of inaccurate calls. BUT, they were MY calls and when I drafted that player, I had a definite reason behind it and could justify why that he earned that spot on my roster and in the draft order.

OK, stats are projected for every player. Now what? Now run those stats through your league's scoring system and come up with a Projected Number of Fantasy Points that you expect each player to produce this year. Rank each player BY POSITION from highest points to the lowest. For right now, keep the players separated by position.

This part is fairly easy. Most magazines publish "cheat sheet" rankings like you've just done (without the Projected Fantasy Points). Unfortunately for the cheat sheet warriors, most leagues don't hold a RB draft, followed by the QB draft, followed by the WR draft. They have this funny habit of drafting all the players at once. Now wait a minute! How do I know if Jeff George and his 125 points should be drafted before Ricky Watters and his 95 points? How does Pickens' 100 points compare to Coates' 75? And what in the world are we going to do with Jason Elam and his 150 points?

The decisions you make here will be the difference between a great draft and a good draft. Here's the concept behind building a team based on Value. I'll be going into much more detail in later issues.

Take your position rankings and decide which players you expect to be starters in your league according to your starting lineup requirements. For our FanEx league, we have 12 teams each starting 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE and 1 PK each week. Therefore, I would identify the top 12 QB's, 24 RB's 36 WR's, 12 TE's and 12 PK's. These are my starters and I'll use them to place a VALUE on each player.

When determining a value for players, I look to see how far the player distances himself from his peers at that position. Make sure to understand, Value is not the same thing as Fantasy Points scored.

WARNING: As you're already well aware, it usually takes me several thousand words to effectively say anything. I realize the reader can get a little lost at times. Occasionally though, I'll say something profound that deserves immediate attention. I learned from Zig Ziglar long ago that it's best to inform your audience that something profound is on the way or else they're liable to miss it. Here goes, Profound statement to follow:

Think about it for a moment. The goal is not to score a ton of points. You can score a ton of points and still lose. The goal is to OUTSCORE your competition. In other words, the goal is to distance yourself ahead of the competition. How do you best do that? You do that by selecting players which outscore their peers, not necessarily the players who score a ton of points. This is extremely important. Copy this and paste it somewhere prominent. It is the key to success in this game.

For example, if you select a Morten Andersen at say 145 points, your competition can counter that move with a Jason Hanson at 143. You're up 2 points, big deal. Your opponent takes a Favre at 115 points. You can effectively counter with a J. George at 100 only giving up 15 points. You select a Ben Coates at 75 points and if your opponent counters that with Irv Smith at 35, you're suddenly up a whopping 40 points. The team that wins will be the team that can most distance themselves from the pack at each position. It makes no difference from which position the advantage in points come from. All you're looking for are the points themselves. You can gain the advantage from being just a little better at each position, or you may gain the exact same advantage by being incredibly strong at one position and just a little weaker at all the others.

People sometimes have a hard time seeing this. They'll say "how can a TE (Coates) scoring 75 points be more valuable than a #2 WR (Jake Reed) scoring 85 points? The answer is that it's not a game of TE vs. #2 WR. It's a team game. The Coates owner gets to draft a #2 WR to team with Coates and the Reed owner must draft a TE to team with Reed. The Coates owner will be able to draft a #2 WR fairly close to Reed's numbers. The Reed owner's TE will post numbers much lower than Coates'. When the owner combines the numbers of Coates and his #2 WR, they will be more than the numbers posted by Reed and the available TE. Does this make sense?

OK. Another profound three paragraphs to follow:

Think about it like this. We are NOT trying to assemble a group of the highest scoring players with no regard to position. If that were the case, the best team would be full of kickers. We are bound by our starting lineups as to the positions we must fill. Our team, consisting of a specified number of players from the specified positions will compete against the other teams consisting of the same number of players from the same positions. Therefore, the object of the game changes from assembling a group of high scoring players (with no regard to position) to assembling a starting roster with the highest scoring players at each position. Think of it in terms of individual matchups pitting your team against another team, position by position. For simplicity's sake, let's just say your starting roster is 1 QB, 1 RB, 1 WR and 1 PK. Your QB outscores his QB 20 to 18 (+2 points). You're up 2. Your RB is outscored by his RB 0 to 5 (-5 points). Now you're down by 3. Your WR outscores his WR 20 to 5 (+15 points). Now you're back up by 12. Your kicker outscores his kicker 21 to 20 (+1 points) This puts you up 13. You win the matchup 61 to 48.

Your Team His Team Points Advantage Cumulative Total

Your QB 20 His QB 18 +2 for you +2

Your RB 0 His RB 5 -5 for you -3

Your WR 20 His WR 5 +15 for you +12

Your PK 21 His PK 20 +1 for you +13

Total Pts 61 Total Pts 48

Listen up now. The point differences at each position, when totaled, will determine the winner. In this case it was a total team difference of 13 points. Here's the important question. You and the owner above are going to have a draft, fill your 4 man roster and play a 1 game season. The only 8 players available to draft are the 2 QB's, 2 RB's, 2 WR's and 2 PK's above and you already know they're going to post the points I've stated. You must draft 1 QB, 1 RB, 1 WR, and 1 PK. Who would you draft first?

The WR who scores 20 points must be the #1 draft pick. The 20 point WR is BY FAR the most valuable player even though he scored the same as the QB and 1 point less than the kicker. He gives you a 15 point advantage at WR while the better QB only gives a 2 point advantage, the better PK gives a 1 point advantage and the better RB gives a 5 point advantage. The WR's 20 points were much more valuable than the QB's 20 points and the PK's 21 points because of how the player relates to his peers. It's like tic-tac-toe. If it doesn't make sense, actually do the draft and see it yourself. Because you must fill each position, the owner who drafts the 20 point WR cannot lose. You give me the 20 point WR and my dogs, Gator and Nike, can draft the rest of my team and still beat you. Re-read this and make sure you understand it. It's vital.

You must see that all points do not have equal VALUE.

This example translates exactly to drafting an full team for an entire season. Instead of four starting players, you simply use however many starters your league uses. Instead of two teams, there are however many your league has. Expanding the number of players and teams does absolutely nothing to dilute the principle behind it.

In reality, most owners already understand this. It's generally accepted practice to wait until later to select a kicker. Why? It's certainly not because they don't produce points. Kickers usually lead the league in Fantasy Points. The reason that most owners wait is because kickers have low VALUE, even though they produce a great many points. They have low value because there are many kickers who will all produce very similar points. Even though they score a lot, an owner knows he can wait because he feels pretty confident that the kicker he'll be able to pick up later won't be too far behind the kicker that he could select now. This is a Principle of VALUE and as I said, it is the key to success.

It's always amazed me that smart fantasy owners will understand and apply this Principle when it comes to kickers but then completely ignore it when they consider QB's or other positions. The Principle is exactly the same and applies to all the positions with equal validity. If the kickers who fail to distance themselves from their peers have little value, it stands to reason that the players who can most distance themselves from their peers have the highest value. This is a simple truth, but it's largely ignored by a great many smart people. Use it to your advantage.

Consider Emmitt Smith. Emmitt's largely regarded as the best player available. In most (but certainly not all) league scenarios, I agree. He scores a truckload of points in just about everyone's format. However, that's not why he's so valuable. Emmitt is the most valuable because he not only scores a lot of points, he scores a lot more points than his closest RB peer. His value lies in the fact that when you draft Emmitt Smith, you've probably just distanced yourself further from your peers than you could have with any other pick at any position. Of course, you can't just stop there. Your fellow owners can make up that distance if you don't continue to draft well, but if everything goes like 1995, you can forget about catching Emmitt in the RB race and you'd do well to concentrate on making up ground in other positions.

Here's how I assign a numerical value to each player. Go back to your position rankings where you list each player at each position ranked by how many Fantasy Points you expect them to post. Using your starting lineup requirements we talked about, determine your starters. Now you must determine a baseline to use so we can measure each player at that position against a standard baseline.

Baselines are something that could be discussed for many pages. For right now, lets use the baseline of measuring all players against the worst starter. For our FanEx league, that would mean that we'd measure each RB against the #24 RB. Each QB against the #12 QB, Each WR against the #36 WR. Each TE against the #12 TE and each PK against the #12 PK.

If the #12 QB on list is expected to post 75 points, I would subtract 75 points from each QB. That would give the worst starter (#12) a value of 0. All QB's who are not expected to start would have a negative value. This number will be called your "Points Above" number of PA #. Do this for every position.

What you'll then have is a PA # for every player that shows how many points you expect them to score MORE than the worst starter at that position. THIS is the number that determines value. You'll most likely find that your kickers all have PA's fairly low and fairly close together. This reinforces what you already know. Even though they score a ton, they're all just about the same and you can afford to wait and snag a good one later. You'll probably be surprised when you look at the other players too. QB's are probably deeper than you think. After Young and Favre, there is a drop, but the group of Mitchell, Blake, Marino, Elway, George, Moon etc. is awfully strong. In yardage leagues, you'll probably be surprised at the depth of RB's. Players like Murrell and Heyward quietly pile up the total yards without much fanfare. TE's will probably shock you. When you start to see the benefit that a Coates/Sharpe can give you over an Irv Smith/Pete Mitchell, you may be surprised. WR's are probably not as deep as you may think, especially in yardage leagues, and therefore the value of the top players are increased.

Think back to our 4 man league example of before. What you're looking for are players who have the most advantage over the other players at that position.

As you begin to play around with the system, you'll immediately see that the number you choose to use for a baseline has dramatic effects. Because that number will effect each player's PA #, it's the center pole of your system. There are many schools of thought here. Probably the most common is using the worst starter. Although many use the average starter as a baseline and still others use all the players they expect to be drafted , not just starters when determining your baseline. This is important and we'll go deeper into that another time. For right now, just get comfortable with measuring players against a baseline at their position and assigning value based on how much they differentiate themselves from the group.

You'll also want to notice how things like the number of teams, required starting lineups and available players drastically affect the baseline and therefore the player's PA # and value. For instance, the value of a Jerry Rice in a 14 team league that starts 3 WR's every week will be much greater than Rice's value in an 8 team league that starts only 2 WR's each week. In the first league, Rice is being compared to a pool of 42 starting WR's. In the 2nd league, you're comparing Rice against a pool of 16 starting WR's. The more average WR's you throw into the pool, the more valuable Rice becomes. It's basic Supply and Demand but many owners fail to see it. That's why I firmly believe that overall rankings and draft cheat sheets are largely useless for most owners. In the example above, Rice's value could have fallen from a #1 overall pick to an early 2nd rounder solely depending on the situation and league.

Still not convinced after the 8 player draft example? The simplest way I know to prove this to yourself is to do this: Grab a few buddies and do a mock draft filling out your starting lineups and rosters---With LAST YEAR'S players and LAST YEAR'S stats. Knowing what each player will score for the year, build your team. Think about it for a while and you'll start to see the concept of value and how the different positions relate. Draft a team and start adding up the points. You'll find that the players who distance themselves the most are indeed the most valuable. A TE who can score 50 more points than the average TE, suddenly becomes a better selection than a WR who can score 25 more points than the average WR, even when that average WR will outscore the top TE head to head. It's not a game of TE vs. WR. It's a TEAM game where the TOTAL points determine the winner. Some owner will be forced to start that average TE and you'll be further ahead when he does.

Ok, that's enough to digest for one sitting. I threw a lot of important ideas out and we'll continue to build upon them. If you only remember two things, remember this:

1. The object of the game is to outscore the opponent. You must fill a roster with a specified number of players at specified positions. The surest way to outscore your opponent is to build a team of players that outscore their peers. The players who most distance themselves from the other players at their respective positions are therefore the most valuable. Remember the 4 player example where I get to draft the 20 point WR first.

2. Factors such as the specific number of teams, starting lineup requirements, frozen players, and scoring system for your league dramatically effect the values of each player. Don't put any faith whatsoever into an overall ranking of players unless you're positive that the specifics of your particular league have been factored in.

Next time, we'll dig deeper into the Value question and how to develop a specific draft list for your league.

In the meantime, remember my constant admonition: Try Harder.....

Joe Bryant
Co-Founder, FanEx League Owner