The late Branch Rickey once said, “Luck is the residue of design,” and that statement truly applies to fantasy football.  No one can precisely predict how every team or player will perform in a given week or season, but by doing your homework, using a logical approach, and playing the percentages, you can be “luckier” than most.   

There are many facets to having a successful fantasy season, but none is more important than your preseason draft.  Making key trades and free agent acquisitions, and starting the right players week to week are critical factors, but without a solid draft, you face an uphill battle.   

Every summer, I receive many e-mails concerning draft strategy, and without fail, a good number of them read something like this:  “I know I will take a running back with my first pick, but I was wondering if you thought I should go RB, QB, WR or QB, RB, WR with my next three selections?”   

My response to this type of question is always similar:  “I do not believe in predetermining which position you should take in each round.  I think that you must evaluate each selection based on the relative value of the players available, along with supply and demand.”   

In my reply, I note that the general priority for positions is running back, quarterback, wide receiver, tight end, team defense/special teams, and kicker, but it varies greatly, depending on your league size, rules, and scoring system.   

Most drafters already use the relative value principle to some degree, but they may not know it.  Using relative value means to draft players not based on their total output, but rather on how much they separate themselves from others at their position.  For example, no one with any sense takes kickers early in a draft, not even in a scoring-only league where they invariably are among the top scorers.  Why?  There is little separation among the field.  A top-5 kicker will score between 120 and 140 points, while the next ten will score 105-120 (an average difference of 17.5 points).   

Let’s look at another example using an overall performance scoring system (yardage and scoring).  Your average top-10 quarterback will score 300-325 fantasy points, while your average top-10 tight end will score 80-90.  Looking at the numbers, it would seem to be a no-brainer that taking a QB is more important than a TE, but when you consider relative value, a stud like Tony Gonzalez will have more value than most quarterbacks. 

Last season, Gonzalez racked up 174 fantasy points, which were 89 more than the average of the other top-10 tight ends.  Compare his numbers to Peyton Manning, who more than doubled Gonzalez’s output with 356 points.  Manning ranked third among QBs and scored 56 more than the average of the quarterbacks ranked four through ten.  Assuming that everyone played their starters regularly, if you drafted Gonzalez in a ten-team league, you averaged roughly 89 more points than the rest of your competition at the position.  If you drafted Manning, you averaged roughly 56 more points than seven of the teams in your league, but lost points to the two teams that had Daunte Culpepper and Jeff Garcia.   

To further illustrate this, I have included a chart of the top 25 players based on relative value.  You will see that Gonzalez ranks fifth despite having the least amount of fantasy points on the list.  I used an overall scoring system to calculate the fantasy points, and I compared the players to the worst starter at their respective positions in a ten-team league with a standard starting lineup.  In other words, I compared all QBs, TEs, defenses, and kickers to the 10^th slot at their respective positions, and for RBs and WRs, I compared them to the 20^th player at their respective positions. 

If I based the rankings on a different sized league, they would change because the baseline would move.  For example, in 12-team league, I would compare all QBs to the 12^th player at the position.  Also, if I chose to include backups at each position, my baseline value would be lowered, and the rankings would change again.   

If I used a different scoring system, the rankings could vary drastically.  The Ravens defense, for instance, would not appear on the list if the fantasy points were based on a scoring-only league.  

See our 2000 Relative Value Rankings for actual examples that include backups and use both overall performance and scoring-only point systems.   

In order to use the relative value principle at your draft, you must first make projections for all of the players on your draft list, based on how they will perform in the upcoming season and for your league’s scoring system.  A good starting point is to review each player’s statistics for the last two or three years, but to do this effectively, you must dig deeper than that.  You have to weigh in personal factors for each player that could affect future performance, such as age, durability, experience, potential, attitude, and contract status.  You also need to know the coaching and personnel changes each team made during the offseason, who is impressing at training camp, who is injured, who is in the coach’s doghouse, and who is a holdout.  You must then consider what effect these offseason changes and new developments will have on a team’s strengths and tendencies, and each player’s role.  Lastly, you cannot overlook strength of schedule, which plays a large role in fantasy football.   

Once you have generated your projections, you need to pick a baseline to calculate relative value.  As discussed previously, the baseline is the player used to compare all others from a given position.  In the rankings above, my baseline was the worst ranked starter for a ten-team league.  Other approaches include using the last player drafted at each position, which is usually twice as deep as the starter baseline, or using the last number-one backup at each position, which is somewhere in between the other two methods. 

The worst starter baseline is a good way to compare players such as Gonzalez and Manning because you would basically start them every week except for their bye.  The problem with this method is that backups have no or a negative value, thus the worst starting kicker (No. 10 in our example) would have more value than the top backup RB or WR (No. 21 in our example). 

Using a baseline that includes backups, such as the last player drafted, will correct this problem, and is probably the best approach.  However, you have to know where to draw the line when including backups.  You do not want to make your baseline so low that you are drafting a third-string QB or a fifth running back before you have selected a starting kicker or defense. 

After you select a baseline for each position, subtract it from the projected totals for all the other players at that same position to calculate their relative value.  With this number, you will have a more accurate measurement of the players’ true value, and not only is this very useful for conventional drafts but also for auctions and salary-cap leagues. 

Of course, many of you will not have the time or energy to calculate numerical projections and relative values for each player.  That’s not a problem because we have already done all the work for you.  The auction/dollar values on our cheat sheets and player rankings are based on relative value with a baseline that includes a backup for each position (two for RBs and WRs).  Using our dollar values as a guide, you can separate the players into groups, highlighting those with similar relative value (dollar value) in a certain color.  By colorizing your cheat sheet, you will find it much easier to make your draft decisions in a timely fashion.  

When drafting, you should continually evaluate who’s left on the board based on relative value.  If one player stands out and you haven’t already filled the starting slots at his position, you should select him.  If you have filled those starting slots, you may want to consider a starter with a lower relative value at another position, depending on the likelihood of your starters not performing because of injury or other factors.   

In addition to relative value, supply and demand must also be considered.  We all understand that the shorter the supply, the higher the demand, but defining this in a draft is not a clear-cut process because there are a number of factors to consider:    

1. The number of available players at each position with a high relative value.
2. The number of starters that you need at each position.
3. The number of starters that your opponents need at each position.
4. The drafting tendencies of your opponents, which you may or may not know.

Supply and demand mostly comes into play when you are considering players who have similar relative value.  The general rule is to take the best player from the position where the ratio of quality players available to the number of starters that you need is lowest.  However, you should also consider your opponents’ needs and the players that are likely to be drafted by the next time you pick again.  You can benefit from ignoring your greatest needs if the players that you covet at the position will be available in later rounds.    

If the best available players have similar relative values, you should compare the number of players that you are considering at each position to the number of starters that you need at those positions, and to the number of remaining starting slots that must be filled by your opponents.  For example, there is a group of 12 players (six RBs and six WRs) with a high relative value, and you need one starter at each position.  The rest of your league went RB heavy early in the draft, and you know that they collectively need five starters at RB and 15 at WR.  In this case, you should go with a wideout because the chances are less that any of that group will be available when you pick again because of the high demand.  However, if that group of 12 consisted of two backs and ten receivers, it would be best to take a RB because the supply is so low.   

You may be thinking that making a pick in a short period of time is difficult enough, so why complicate the process?  Well, you are probably using some or all of this logic already and may not realize it, and once you understand and refine the process, drafting becomes easier and much more fruitful.