This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
If your fantasy football draft is this week, here's some last-minute advice:
First quarter: Know your league's rules
Just to state the obvious: Duh. The biggest no-brainer "advice" ever, eh? And yet, you wouldn't believe how many people follow the RB-RB-WR-QB pattern, only to discover afterward that their novice league commissioner made passing touchdowns worth the same six points that rushing and receiving scores are.
In such a case, it might make a tiny bit more sense to take a quarterback who's good for 35 touchdowns every year than a running back who might get you 13.
Just sayin' … it never hurts to double-check the little things.
Second quarter: Get your man
I've had the last pick of the first round in roughly 98.6427 percent of my drafts. This, of course, means back-to-back picks and then waits about as long as the time between the start of Adam Sandler's acting career and his first Oscar nomination.
All of which means a bunch of guys you're hoping will slide will be long gone before your next pick rolls around. So if you're picking first or last, and you have a player in mind, take him.
Middle-of-the-round guys can afford to gamble on their target being there next time. If you have 16 or 20 spots between picks, you can't.
Third quarter: Take a risk or two
The draft is winding down and you don't know the difference between Danny Amendola and Danny Woodhead? If you've got all your positions accounted for, take a gamble. Kenny Britt went in the final round of my first league's mock draft — the same Kenny Britt who had nine TDs and averaged 18.5 yards a catch last season.
Everyone assumed he was going to be suspended multiple games. A few days later, everyone was officially wrong. Even if he had missed a few games, though, there's more potential reward there than in picking a backup TE.
Fourth quarter: Don't be that guy
Never fails that someone decides inexplicably early it's time to get the first defense/special teams off the board. This, inevitably, gets other people panicky about missing out and suddenly you've got a run on D/STs about eleventy picks earlier than you anticipated.
Just don't.
We'd all rather have the Steelers' D/ST than, say, the Bills'. But consider the cost. In my first draft this year, the Steelers went with the first pick of the fifth round. The Packers also went in the fifth, while the Eagles and the Giants went in the sixth. Meanwhile, I got Larry Fitzgerald and LeGarrette Blount in those two rounds.
Predicting those two guys will whip any of those D/STs is about as easy as asserting that Steve Buscemi is an unattractive man.
The same applies to kickers. Is the best PK worth that many more points than, say, the 10th-best? Nope.