Two new site updates for anyone that’s wanted to either:

1. Use the draftboard to to help monitor a draft in real-time, or
2. Start a new draft with only computers

These new products are the Draft Calculator and Draft Simulator. They’re part of the 2008 Membership Package, which also includes the Lineup Calculator and saved Mock Drafts.

The Draft Calculator lets you pick a team size (6 to 18 teams), number of rounds (up to 20) and draft position.  You then manually enter every draft pick during your live draft to easily see how the draft is going.

This is an early version of the Draft Calculator, and it does not offer any suggested picks (that will be next year).  It is a good tool for visualizing a draft in action. You don’t want to waste precious time scrambling to see if the guy next to you has already drafted a QB.

The Draft Simulator is similar to the Draft Calculator except that the computer selects for everyone else in the draft.  It’s especially useful if you need to prepare for a draft with more than 15 rounds.

These two additions have been requested by a lot of people, and it’s exciting to see the draftboard used for other applications than just mock drafts.  You can get started now by signing up for a membership.

When I’m drafting, there’s typically three things that I want to know about a player:

1. What were his previous stats?
2. What’s happening with him lately?
3. Can I draft him in a later round?

Typically I go to these sources to answer those questions:

1. Pro-Football-Reference
2. Football Guys News Blog
3. Fantasy Football Calculator ADP (yes, shameless plug, but it’s true)

Whether it’s a slow email draft or a live draft, I want to get the information as fast as possible.  Since I use Firefox, I wanted a way to put the first two sites as custom search engines in the Firefox toolbar.

After some searching, I found the Add to Search Bar add-on.   It’s really easy to use, and here is how I used it to add PFR and FBG to my search toolbar:

1. Install the add-on
2. Go to Pro-football-reference.com
3. Right click on the search bar at the top right
4. Select “Add to Search Bar”

Then edit the name or just hit enter and you should see PFR in the search box!  Go ahead and search for a player and you’re taken directly to their career stats page.

Then you can go to Football Guys News and do the same.  My search bar now looks like this:

Obviously, if you have other sites you prefer to use this will work for any of them that have search boxes.  I’m not associated with PFR or FBG at all.  Just sharing a tip that I’ve found useful.

For Internet Explorer users, this link should help you do the same thing: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en-en/default.mspx.  It only works for IE7 though; IE6 doesn’t have a search bar.  I don’t use IE7 so I haven’t tried it myself.

Give it a try!  I think you’ll find it easier to look up player information during those precious few moments during a draft.