Some fantastically different drafts

A lot of talk as the fantasy season comes ever closer to starting is with drafting for standard leagues, but there is a plethora of possibilities in terms of leagues. Here I will look into PPR, Keeper, IDP, Auction and our very own Quidditch leagues and considerations for their draft. You may even wish to get involved with our Auction and Quidditch leagues.

PPR leagues
Points per reception leagues are often high scoring and really good fun. Your draft strategy does alter slightly as you really want folk who take a lot of catches, and by folk I do mean running backs as well. Le’Veon Bell, Matt Forte and Jamaal Charles immediately spring to mind, but Marshawn Lynch is another who is good in a PPR. Often in a PPR the wide outs score higher points than the RBs, which is a bit different from the regular league. In a PPR draft (depending on the draft order) there is a bit more incentive to take a wide receiver earlier than you would in a standard. Pretty well the same wide receivers you would consider the best in a standard, just a bit earlier. Also the value of tight ends does increase somewhat.

Keeper leagues
My first keeper league was last year when I took over a team. In a keeper league, you select some players to hold onto. Usually you sacrifice some picks to keep the players, especially if they are top players. The longer you have held onto a player for and the better the player is, the heavier the penalty for holding onto them. I think it depends on the league rules but generally, if you have two great players, it is worth keeping both of them. A top player will cost you a first round pick, but then you would probably pick them in the first round in any case. The difficulty is if two top players cost you pretty well 4 rounds. What to do then? I still think it could be worth holding onto those two top players and do your best to fill in the gaps. Other people will be losing spots as well so dinnae fesh yerself.

Independent Defensive Players
I have not gone into who to pick for these yet, but generally you can pick a defensive end, a defensive back and/or a linebacker. Some of these players score more than second WRs and tight ends, so should be considered as early as round four, in cases round three (for someone such as JJ Watt). There is a drop off in scoring potential. I would possibly consider a no.2 RB before one of these players, again it is deciding on who is the best player available but the top ones should probably go round 4 or whenever you would consider getting a tight end. Just repeating myself now.

Onto the last two now….

Auction draft
The Gridiron Gentlemen do have an auction draft league, with a few select places left. Auction drafts are so much fun. There is a nominating draft order, which does not reverse each round. Each team can nominate a player to try and successfully bid for. Every team has a set budget and so you just have to set yourself a maximum you will be willing to pay. Admittedly most drafts will also set a maximum bid limit per player, this obviously decreases after each successful bid. They can be great for the first five rounds but then can get quite tedious as teams run out of cash to be able to bid for players and soon everyone just gets the player they nominate. So what is the best strategy? For me it is to spend the money on at least one top player, in this instance a running back or one of the top wide receivers. I would say two big pay outs means you have richer pickings later on, such as for someone who isn’t Gronk or Jimmy Graham. Quarterbacks are quite cheap as well. You can end up with actually quite a good team with more choice than if you blow most of your budget too early. Well that is the lesson I have learnt from my forays into the mock auction drafts.

And finally

Quidditch league

Yes the Gridiron Gentlemen have taken the sport of wizards from the Harry Potter series and applied it to fantasy NFL. It consists of 8 players in a team, so similar to the number of players in quidditch. The team is:

1 x QB (Captain)

1 x RB (Chaser)

1 x WR (Chaser)

1 x Flex (WR/RB/TE)

1 x Kicker (the Seeker)

1 x Defensive Lineman (Beater)

1 x Defensive Back (Beater)

1 x Defence/St (Beaters/Chaser special tactics)

7 x Bench players.

The kicker becomes the most important player as they can end the game with a 50+ yard field goal, which scores 75 points. Yup 75 points. Matt Bryant would have score 681 points last season.  Just saying, it is ridiculous fun.

Individual defensive players and def/st can earn more points than in normal games. For the offence scoring pretty well stays the same apart from a nod to yards on a punt/ kick-off return and punt/ kick-off return touchdown.

The scoring is as follows:

Offense scoring

Kicking

Defense / Special Teams

Individual Defensive Players

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