PPR League draft strategy.

[cliburn]

I'm in a 14-16 team PPR league this year. I was wondering what order most of you recommend for my draft? I've done several mocks and was able to get QBs like Matt Ryan and Big Ben in the eighth round, so I'm thinking QB is not that big of a deal.

[The Iceman]

What pick # are u?

IMO i always like to go WR WR RB QB RB WR and from there on its whatever

[wwharton]

I wouldn't recommend following iceman's strategy... especially in a league that big. Your RBs will end up killing you. And yeah, you should be able to wait on a QB but each draft is different so you have to watch the trends. We do need more details. How many RBs/WRs can you start?

[The Iceman]

Yes your right ive never played with that many people i always go 10 - 12 people and it seems to work

It also depends on your pick number if its not top 10 go WR RB to start it off IMO

[cliburn]

Don't know draft order yet.

QB
RB
RB
WR
WR
WR
TE
WR/TE
WR/RB
K
DEF

[wwharton]

Is that definitely not WR/TE/RB? It's possible for you to start 5 WRs?

Kind of hard to give you much specific advice but what I do is put players in tiers. So lets say for RBs AP would be tier 1, then there may be 5 guys in tier 2, another 5 or so in tier 3, so on. Brady, Brees and Manning may be tier 1 for QBs, etc, etc. These are all examples but I do this for every position. Basically, the cut off between the tiers (for me) is when I get to a name that I absolutely would not draft before other positions or before a certain round or at all.

With this I then look at how big each tier is. For me, the top RB tiers are always the smallest which generally leans me to drafting 2 RBs in the top 3 rounds and usually the top 2. The idea is I'm trying to avoid having to draft starters from a tier I don't want to, and RBs is usually the one that's most likely to happen (all drafts are different though... in the last 2 years or so WRs have been catching RBs).

Also want to consider how many you HAVE to start at each position and how many you CAN start. This will effect how quickly you need to jump on players in the upper tiers as well as how early you can expect other owners to jump on players. For example, you only start one QB. Some people really want a top tier QB but if you're not one of them, the 2nd tier is usually pretty big and you can be sure that other owners won't be in a rush to draft a second QB before filling out their starting lineup.

Making up all the tiers for your personal taste can be a lot of work... if you don't want to go through all the trouble you can just make mental notes of cut offs but have some kind of idea where you're willing to go for each position at all times and you'll be fine. I'm in a league with 16 teams so I know how it goes. If you start losing track of things you'll end up picking the best available on whatever outdated list you decided to bring, full of players you've never heard of towards the end. If you can get a general idea before hand for each tier of each position it'd make life easier.

[cliburn]

Quote: Originally Posted by wwharton

Is that definitely not WR/TE/RB? It's possible for you to start 5 WRs? Kind of hard to give you much specific advice but what I do is put players in tiers. So lets say for RBs AP would be tier 1, then there may be 5 guys in tier 2, another 5 or so in tier 3, so on. Brady, Brees and Manning may be tier 1 for QBs, etc, etc. These are all examples but I do this for every position. Basically, the cut off between the tiers (for me) is when I get to a name that I absolutely would not draft before other positions or before a certain round or at all. With this I then look at how big each tier is. For me, the top RB tiers are always the smallest which generally leans me to drafting 2 RBs in the top 3 rounds and usually the top 2. The idea is I'm trying to avoid having to draft starters from a tier I don't want to, and RBs is usually the one that's most likely to happen (all drafts are different though... in the last 2 years or so WRs have been catching RBs). Also want to consider how many you HAVE to start at each position and how many you CAN start. This will effect how quickly you need to jump on players in the upper tiers as well as how early you can expect other owners to jump on players. For example, you only start one QB. Some people really want a top tier QB but if you're not one of them, the 2nd tier is usually pretty big and you can be sure that other owners won't be in a rush to draft a second QB before filling out their starting lineup. Making up all the tiers for your personal taste can be a lot of work... if you don't want to go through all the trouble you can just make mental notes of cut offs but have some kind of idea where you're willing to go for each position at all times and you'll be fine. I'm in a league with 16 teams so I know how it goes. If you start losing track of things you'll end up picking the best available on whatever outdated list you decided to bring, full of players you've never heard of towards the end. If you can get a general idea before hand for each tier of each position it'd make life easier.

No, you can only start three RBs. It's RB; RB; WR/RB. You can end up starting five WRs if you wanted to: WR; WR; WR; WR/RB; WR/TE.

I've been tiering players and trying to decide how low I should go before drafting a QB.

[wwharton]

Personally I'd get AT LEAST 2 RBs and 2 WRs before a QB. At that point I'd look at what QBs are left that I'd be comfortable starting and compare that number to how many teams haven't drafted a starter yet. Even more, depending on where you pick in the snake, look at the needs of the teams around you (have they drafted a QB? do they have 2 starting RBs?) and go through the rounds like that until you decide to pick a QB. If you can feel comfortable rolling the dice I would definitely try to have 2RBs and 3WRs before the QB and possibly even 4WRs or a TE (only if a top one had a big drop). But that depends on how deep you're willing to go into your QB tiers for a starter. I'd personally have guys like Ryan or Ben ranked somewhere that you could probably pull that off.