Matthew J. Jillson (@eatcookcryptos) is providing some 2019 fantasy draft tips leading up to the start of the season. Read his fantasy draft manifesto here.
Underrated, overlooked and hubristically ignored – how the rule structure of your league affects the wide receiver position is the ultimate deciding factor in how you should approach your draft, always.
Certain wide receivers in a full-point PPR league become imbued with the Emperor of Man’s might – the avatars of racking up points and crushing dreams in the physical realm of fantasy football. This is before we start considering all the cute bonuses that an overzealous commissioner might layer into your league. Davante Adams last season, in particular, can almost single-handedly win you a trip to the playoffs in this type of dystopian realm. Adam Thielen? Forget about it is right.
Sieg Zeon! is not a battle cry you want to hear and full-point PPR leagues aren’t meant for fantasy degenerates like us. They’re meant for the weak, those who wish to “dial it in,” or possibly not start a lineup in Week 10. Even Jaaames at The Water Cooler can be a fantasy threat in full-point PPR … BAH!
We don’t believe in super weapons that we can pin all of our hopes and dreams on to only be dashed in Week 13 by injury or similar Curse-inflicted flukes. The ideals of the Principality of Zeon die here – Ctrl+Alt+Del this out of your mind, friends. We will not be considering horrors in the grim darkness of this future, where wide receivers become much more valuable than running backs.
Keep this in mind as you continue reading. What we are talking about is related to standard-scoring-type .5 PPR leagues.
Make a list (of players you had to look up)
Maintaining focus once the Fog of Draft descends and not letting your emotions – and the adult beverages – get the better of you cannot be overstated. Much like in professional line cooking, when you are under the gun during service or a draft, emotions are running wild and you revert back to your habits – whether they are good or bad (usually bad).
In the case of fantasy football, this might translate to the old names you know (Larry Fitzgerald) and might grab way too early because the board is unrecognizable with so many receivers and you’re uncomfortable. This is a one-way ticket to Rekt City, so stop doing this. If doing well in your Fantasy League is important to you – you are reading this a few weeks before the actual NFL starts, so I’d wager it probably is – take a half an hour or hour to actually make a list of players you are interested in.
Rookies (N’Keal Harry) third-year receivers poised to break out (Curtis Samuel), backups to The Cursed injury-prone (Tyler Boyd), names you might not know in a pinch but might provide gold in a very late round at next to zero risk (Zay Jones) or possible deals (OBJ in the mid-2nd??). When distractions mount, and they will, this list will become a beacon in the maelstrom and chaos through the various rounds, pulling your objective to win a title back into focus, even in the thickest Fog of Draft.
Lose out on the studs? Wait a few rounds.
As time ticks down to being on the clock with your pick(s), keep this in mind: Outside a few notable cases, wide receivers are quite replaceable as the season progresses. What I am saying here is that it is very easy – should you miss your shot at the top-3 receivers – to over commit your important early-round picks to a position that you can fill a few rounds later with marginally-lesser fantasy players.
This is the trouble with Tribbles: they’re all so cute and promising that you want to keep’em all. But, the truth is, for the most part, they’re a dime a dozen. Realizing this lets you grab a top-3 tight end without losing sleep over it. You’ll have the resources to craft a stable of running backs that even The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would fear. What the draft doesn’t provide, the waiver wire undoubtedly will.
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