We've all been there. Draft season rolls around and you have an awesome fantasy football draft strategy in your mind, but you continually put off the research until the last minute. This approach often backfires and ends up in a fantasy draft that just doesn't go as well as you had hoped. It's a double whammy because you know you could have done better and will have to work harder during the season to make up for the initial deficit.
This year, instead of going with that last minute route, you can get ahead of your fellow league managers with offseason preparation via the RotoWire fantasy football draft kit. In this article, we will show you the benefit of using the draft kit early, detail how early offseason rankings are established, illustrate how you can track ADP trends before they shift, provide information about building a draft strategy around market movement and walk you through how to use mock drafts and tools to refine your draft plans.
Why Start Using a Fantasy Football Draft Kit Early?
You may wonder why you should start using a fantasy football draft kit early in the offseason when things are just going to change down the road. The answer is simple. Early preparation will help you better identify breakout candidates and avoid overhyped players ahead of time. With enough prep, you will know what to look for in NFL depth chart movement before the other league managers. Do this often enough and you will be able to identify value plays that can make your team much stronger.
This upside doesn't stop with the depth charts. When you have your proverbial finger on the pulse of how the fantasy football ADP rankings and projections are moving, you can get even more value out of using draft preparation tools before draft day.
Familiarizing yourself with the RotoWire fantasy football projections will also allow you to watch for notable ADP value changes when other managers are stuck on trying to get up to speed on the projections.
Breaking Down Early Fantasy Football Rankings
The key to understanding early fantasy football rankings is to recognize that they are compiled using a combination of stat projections, team roles taken in context and offseason movement. That context includes coaching changes, scheme fits and workload opportunities.
When you are looking at an early fantasy football cheat sheet, you will want to compare positional tiers to see where the draft day value valleys are likely to occur. This is something you should do for every league scoring format you have a team in, since these rankings can change notably depending on if you are in a PPR, half-PPR, standard, Superflex, 2QB or Best Ball league.
Tracking ADP Trends Before They Shift
ADP trends are an excellent barometer for spotting rising players, falling veterans and market inefficiencies. These trends and inefficiencies are much easier to spot if you start watching ADP valuations early in the offseason and continue watching them until the beginning of the fantasy draft season. The best way to watch these ADP developments is by subscribing to RotoWire and using the ADP tracking tools available to subscribers.
When watching these early ADP values, be sure to note that ADP rankings are volatile. Things in this arena will often change dramatically following a free agent signing, draft pick or NFL injury report update. This means you are best advised to use these initial ADP rankings strategically rather than treating them as fixed values.
Building a Draft Strategy Around Market Movement
The above elements have plenty of power when used separately, but combining rankings and ADP trends together supports smarter roster construction. For example, if you see a running back on the border of the RB1 and RB2 tiers in your customized fantasy football rankings fall into the RB2 ADP tier, you will know that is a player to target.
You will need to adapt these strategies of combined tactics to whatever preseason news changes occur throughout the preseason. The RotoWire news wire is an invaluable resource in helping you do this.
Using Mock Drafts and Tools to Refine Your Plan
Your draft plans will need refining as these changes take place. Draft simulators, cheat sheets and customizable tools can help you with those refining decisions by helping you practice decision-making and testing roster builds.
Repetition and preparation lead to more confident draft-day execution. One useful method for doing this is to do practice drafts with the RotoWire fantasy football mock draft tool. Doing this will test the validity of your strategic approaches while giving you much more familiarity with the rankings and ADP values.
It will also give you a feeling of unmatched confidence once fantasy football draft season begins as other fantasy managers are still trying to figure out their starting point.
