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Twenty-two years.
That’s a long time to do anything, unless, of course, you’re Frank Gore.
To be clear, I am not Frank Gore.
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As I sat down to think about the 2020 version of the Draft-Day Manifesto, the 22nd edition of the column, I started to think about what should be in it and, of course, what shouldn’t. If you’ve read me for any amount of time, you know I am a creature of habit and the Manifesto is always a perennial favorite of my readers.
But it’s also long. Like really long. I mean, it ain’t the Draft-Day Pamphlet, you know? And we live in a TikTok world where attention spans are shorter than ever. Plus, while the core of it changes with each new season, a different player pool and league trends, much of it is similar year after year, like me wishing Frank Gore well in what I am sure will be his final season playing.
So as I contemplated what to write, my mind turned to Stephen Covey, who passed away in 2012 at age 79. His Wikipedia describes him as an educator, author, businessperson and keynote speaker. It mentions he was married, had nine(!) kids and 52 grandchildren.
But calling him an author is a little like calling Taylor Swift a singer. Because Covey didn’t just write books. He wrote a monster.
His 1989 book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” has sold more than 30 million copies, become the first nonfiction audiobook in U.S. publishing history to sell more than 1 million copies and spawned tons of offshoots, including “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens,” “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families,” and “The 7 Habits of a Highly Effective Frank Gore.” I’m pretty sure that last one doesn’t exist, but it should. Frank Gore forever.
I’ve long been obsessed with the premise of the book, and I’ve written about it before. Being able to distill achieving success into seven easy-to-grasp habits. And then I wondered … could I do that for fantasy football? At least for draft strategy? Could I distill the Draft-Day Manifesto into seven easy-to-grasp concepts that would give readers a fundamental, step-by-step blueprint on how to approach their draft prep?
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I decided I’m sure as hell gonna try.
So, welcome, friends, old and new, to the 22nd edition of the heart-stopping, knowledge-dropping, ADP-rocking, booty-shaking, strategy-making, earth-quaking, sleeper-taking, Springsteen-stealing, justifying, death-defying, legendary DRAFT-DAY MANIFESTO.
My very first fantasy league was in 1984, and I have drafted hundreds of times in many leagues ever since. And as a result I can confirm what my very first commissioner, beloved former commissioner for life, Don Smith, would always say to me on draft day: “It’s only the best day of the year.”
It really is. It’s also the most important day of the year. And it’s important you do well on it.
So, with that in mind, please pay attention.
These are The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Drafters.
Habit 1: They spend a ton of time preparing
It seems obvious, but much like everything else in life, what you put into it is what you get out of it. So you need to prep. But before you prep, you need to understand — to a T — what you are prepping for.
Here’s how you do that:
A. Study the rules and, more importantly, figure out the best ways to exploit those rules. I know it seems obvious, but you’d be amazed at how many drafts I’ve been in where halfway through someone says, “Wait, do we start two wide receivers or three?”
I just got done with the 10th annual Scott Fish Bowl, an industrywide massive tournament, and I bring that up for two reasons. One, to promote my friend Scott Fish and his FantasyCares.net charity that the tournament is for. But also because that league has really weird scoring, including negative points for incompletions and sacks and a half-point for every completion. Well, in 2018, in this scoring system, B. Start your research by watching, reading and listening. Everyone has different preferences and amount of time, so whether it’s TV, digital video shows, podcasts, columns or social media, start digging in. Immediately. You need to have an opinion on every player and more importantly, on that player (and that player’s position) relative to every other player. More on this later. Understand there’s way too much information out there, so it’s not about the amount you consume but the quality of it and how you interpret it. Just look at everything with a skeptical eye and understand that every single thing you’ll read isn’t actually a fact but rather an opinion disguised as a fact. Trust me. Or better yet, read my Not surprisingly, QB is once again very deep. Again, the approach is different for superflex leagues, where I ideally get at least one top-tier QB, but for ESPN standard leagues, where you start just one QB, you can wait at the position. Make no mistake, having Lamar Jackson or Patrick Mahomes on your team is not going to be the reason you lose. They are awesome, and you will enjoy watching them every week. But there’s some simple math to it: There are 32 starting QBs in the NFL, and in a 10-team standard ESPN league, only 10 must be selected. L-Jax, of course, was an outlier last season, so let’s put him aside for one second. Last season, through Week 16 on a points-per-game (PPG) basis, the difference between QB2 (Deshaun Watson) and QB11 (Kyler Murray) was 3.2 points per game. Now, that’s not nothing. But compare it to the RBs, where once again Christian McCaffrey was an extreme outlier and we’ll put him aside as well. If we say the league will split the flex position down the middle — that in a given week a league is starting 25 RBs and 25 WRs — last season, through Week 16, the difference between RB2 ( By the way, if you’re playing PPR, whenever you’re drafting RBs, try to get one who catches passes. I know that sounds obvious, but you might not realize how significant it is. Last season, eight of the top 10 RBs in terms of points per game averaged at least three receptions per game. Nine of the top 10 RBs saw at least 30% of their fantasy points come from receiving, while 18 of the top 20 RBs averaged at least two receptions per game. Wide receiver We’ve already talked about the depth at wide receiver somewhat, but just to give some context to that, in 2019 there were 19 wide receivers who averaged at least 15.0 PPG, 34 WRs who averaged at least 12.5 PPG and an impressive 55 WRs who averaged at least 10.0 PPG. And that’s before one of the deepest wide receiver rookie classes ever came into the league. Just anecdotally, as of this writing, below are the WRs being drafted from 30th to 34th at the position — meaning these would be people’s fourth wide receivers in a 10-team league: So, once more for the kids in the back. When building your team, when making start/sit or trade decisions, when doing anything in fantasy football, just think to yourself: At a fundamental level, fantasy football is entirely about minimizing risk and giving yourself the best odds to win on a weekly basis. Always ask yourself … what’s most likely to happen? There’s very little I know about COVID-19, and whatever I do know is likely to be out-of-date by the time this gets published. But here’s one thing I feel good about: Playing a season in a world where this virus exists is going to be very different from any season we have ever experienced. With so much unknown and unknowable, let’s start by eliminating the unknown things we can get rid of. For me, that means when evaluating players, I am going to focus on players who are in as similar a situation as possible to the one they were in last season. There are going to be no preseason games this year and, at most, 14 practices with pads. You can Zoom ’til your phone dies, but that is still not a lot of time for players to get familiar with their new coaches, teammates and playbook. Now let’s not be ridiculous. You’re not drafting
Habit 4: They recognize this fantasy football season will be vastly different from any other by a significant margin