Hey everyone! The NFL season is winding down, so you know what that means. Get a head start on the 2010 fantasy football season.
The mock drafts are open for business! Get started now.
The rankings and ADP will take a few days to fully adjust, so feel free to leave comments in the draft room if you think someone is out of place.
Here’s a summary of some recent blog posts here on the Fantasy Football Calculator Blog, just in case you missed some.
Things will move fast once training camp starts later this week. Stay on the ball by refreshing yourself with these articles:
ADP Updates and Player Analysis:
QB Showdown: Rivers or Warner?
Wide Receivers Still Workhorses of the NFL
Pierre Thomas beats Reggie Bush
Site Updates and Other Cool Stuff:
Draft Sound Alerts and Improved Dashboard
5 Ways to use Twitter for Fantasy Football
Fantasy Football Headlines On iGoogle
New Site: Fantasy Football Chatter
Ready, Go!
There, now you’re up to speed and ready to draft smart this year.
There are new improvements that make the site easier and more fun to use. The first is an option to turn on an audible sound when it’s your turn to draft. The second is a redesign of the user dashboard.
Draft Sound Alert
Based on user requests, in the mock draft room you can now turn on an option to play a soft “ding” to alert you when the draft starts and when it’s your turn to pick. It’s a nice gentle reminder to get back to the draft if you’re busy doing something else.
Redesigned Dashboard
Registered users will immediately recognize that their personal dashboards have been rejuvenated. You can now more easily access your favorite fantasy football applications from one “Ultimate Dashboard.”
It’s the Ultimate Fantasy Football Dashboard because it helps you attack many aspects of fantasy football from one page: Mock Drafts, Simulating Drafts, Tracking Drafts, and Lineup Analysis and Monitoring.
The interface has been improved to a tabbed view and cleaned up significantly. It also shows how many mock drafts you’ve done so far so that you can brag to your friends about it. It has the same functionality where you can filter mock drafts by team size and sort them by projected fantasy points.
Be Prepared
As always this time of year, the name of the game is preparation. Try different strategies, see where players are falling, and of course, have fun. These recent changes should help you accomplish all of these objectives.
If you have a free account you can upgrade to get access to the premium applicaitons. If you’re new you can sign up directly for a premium membership to start using the most useful fantasy football applications available.
Man, there is a ton of interest in mock drafts already this year. Not only did the number of drafts per hour have to increase two weeks ago, but just today required another increase.
There is now a new draft every two minutes, with extra 8, 10, and 14-team drafts every hour. So far that balance seems to be working well.
Have you ever found yourself in round 6 or 7 without a quarterback and think to yourself:
“Hey, there’s a few decent QBs left. I might be able to stock up on a RB or WR now and also sneak a solid QB in the next round. What a steal that would be!”
Well, that’s what I was thinking in this 10-team draft as team #10. At the turn for rounds 5 and 6, I took a gamble that didn’t pay off.
I selected Willie Parker and DeSean Jackson in rounds 5 and 6 with the hope of finding either Romo, Ryan, or McNabb waiting for me in round 7. Alas, they were all gone. I resorted to drafting a quarterback in my personal 3rd tier of QBs, Matt Schaub, in round 8.
As this team stands, I’m not that happy with it, but it’s not too bad. I have tons of depth in RB and WR that could be used as trade bait if needed.
I think this also demonstrates the well-known problem of drafting at the turn. It’s hard to predict what everyone else will do when you have a long time in between picks.
How about you? Ever wait too long for a QB in a mock or real draft? How did it turn out for you?
In 2007, wide receivers with 90+ receptions outnumbered running backs with 300+ carries. That was the first time it happened since 2002.
At the time, it wasn’t clear if it was a fluke or a new trend in how NFL offenses operate. To follow up the original article with data from 2008, it looks like it probably is a trend.
According to Pro-Football-Reference, there were 6 wide receivers with 90 or more receptions while only 5 running backs received 300 or more carries.
Both high-use wide receivers and running backs dipped last year, with running back studs dropping to a low not previously seen this century.
Based on the previous trend in this graph, these two graphs don’t intersect much. There was a running back bubble period where up to a thirteen running backs received 300 carries or more. However, no one is expecting that to happen this year.
Just like the stock market has bull and bear cycles, the NFL appears to have passing and rushing cycles. Since the next couple of years look to be pass-heavy, it’s easy to imagine Jim Cramer screaming “BUY BUY BUY!” on wide receivers.
Just a quick update that starting now there will be more 12-team drafts, since those have been filling up quickly and there’s been a lot of feedback asking for more. There are now 4 additional 12-team drafts every hour.
Hopefully this update will maintain a good balance for the time being. Feel free to leave feedback if you feel they’re getting out of whack again.
Based on a suggestion by Lucas in a previous blog post, I am going to highlight a recent mock draft, give my thoughts, and see what you guys think. Here’s my first attempt.
This 12-team draft (Draft 474683) a few days ago caught my attention because of the variety of WR strategies.
For example, these three teams at the end of the draft varied widely.
Team 10 staggered 3 WR picks over 8 rounds, Team 11 took 3 WRs right away, and Team 12 took 3 wide receivers in a row in rounds 4, 5, and 6.
I think I prefer Team 10’s more balanced approach the best, but the other two teams aren’t too shabby either. If Team 11 gets lucky with some RBs, he could be pretty dangerous with those awesome WRs. Team 12 has a legitimate #1 RB along with the best fantasy QB this year, so they have a solid team as well.
What do you think? If you have a late draft spot, what is your WR strategy?
Even though it’s early in the year, there are still a ton of people practicing for their drafts already. The draft boards have been filling up fast at peak times, which causes a lot of unnecessary waiting.
I’ve just increased the number of 10 and 12 team mock drafts. If you’re curious, here is the current breakdown of drafts per hour:
And a partridge in a pear tree.
But seriously, the drafts now start twice as often (every 2:30 instead of every 5:00) so you should have an easier time getting into the draft you want.
If you have a free membership that saves your mock drafts and imports your team to the Lineup Calculator (and you should, it’s free), you may have noticed that some of your mock drafts didn’t appear in your dashboard.
That problem has been fixed, and you should now see all those missing drafts in your completed draft history table. There was a bug that was fixed and it should now automatically keep up with your drafts as you finish them.
Sorry for the inconvenience. Send me an email (kevin@fantasyfootballcalculator.com) or use the contact page if you have any problems like that in the future.
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