Fantasy Football Draft Research, Research Order Fantasy Football

Filed under: Commish, Football, General Sports, News, Trends by: commish

This year I had the unique honor of drafting first in one league, as well as the unlucky honor of drafting last in one league. Normally this wouldn’t be that big of a deal and just a coincidence, but there is an added twist to this story that makes it great for using as a test case for fantasy football draft research and how it effects teams. It wasn’t just my team that had this coincidence this year, but FantasyGirl also plays in both leagues and had the exact same draft spots but in reverse leagues. The league I drafted first, she drafted last, and vice-versa in the other league. This makes for an interesting observation of how the fantasy football draft research can make or break your season before you’ve even had a chance to pick.

At the end of the regular season, both of our teams that drafted first, finished first overall in the league. I guess this isn’t that big of a deal because we obviously took the same player that blew up and so we got the best player and did the best for the year. However, we both took different players in the first round so that couldn’t exactly have been the case.

With the team that we both drafted last, we both went into the last week in the final playoff spot and needing a win to stay in it, but in both league we lost and finished one team from the last position. What made it even more strange is that in both leagues we lost the final playoff spot to the same team, who also plays in both leagues.

We took some time to think about why that would turn up that way, and there are a few explanations. One reason for this the lack of depth drafting last. The first persons drafts, but then doesn’t get to pick again till around 25, given a 12 team league. This means that the first person will have 3 players in the top 25 as well as the #1 overall player. Whereas the last person will get the sloppy end of the top tiers with top picks in the top 20, but the next one after that won’t be till the end of the 3rd round where the players start thinning out more. This means that even though a last drafting team can manage to draft good players, they are more susceptible to injuries, byes, and other fall-outs that will prevent them from sustaining the run and inevitably making the playoffs. Not that it can’t be done, obviously a team can be drafted last and win, but it would have to have a good run without too many low points in order to conquer it all.

I personally like to draft in the middle and think that it provides the best overall range of depth and talent, but given that I’m first in one league and I took LT number one, I think I’m in good shape. I certainly don’t look forward to drafting last again, but if I should I will have to work extra hard knowing that it takes more to get it done at the end.

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