12-team Non-PPR. We can chose our draft spot. I have 2nd selection. Assuming the first guy chooses #1, I am entertaining the possibility of selecting in the 5th spot, rather than staying in the 2.
I am thinking, of McCaffrey, Ekeler, Henry, Harris, and Cook, it is guaranteed that two fall to me and I can make a selection. The 5 spot then allows me an earlier second round pick. This may be helpful, as Jefferson, Kupp, Chase, Diggs, Fournette, Lamb, Deebo, A. Jones, and J. Williams all likely will be kept. So I am thinking it will be important to have that earlier 2nd rounder to start off strong.
I don’t really have a preferred draft spot, to be honest. I don’t mind drafting late. The #12 spot means I’m missing out on 11 players, but also that I get 2 out of my top 13, whereas everybody else only gets 1 out of their top 12.
In a keeper league, I like the way you think. Count the number of (available) players you are perfectly fine with drafting in the first round, and then select the spot that reflects that number. The earlier you can draft again in round 2, the better.
From my perspective, the 5 spot is ideal. Najee will be available there almost certainly, and I like him better than the other 4 you mentioned.
CMC and Ekeler are less valuable in non-PPR, and CMC will likely miss some time this year with another injury (or two or three…). Henry might also have his his age cliff as well, so we’ll see.
Cook isn’t a bad choice. With the Vikings moving more towards a pass-oriented offense, that could cut into the wear and tear on him. But I’d still take Najee first.
In non-PPR, I would draft as early as I needed to be sure to land Derrick Henry–by far the most valuable asset in non-PPR scoring. Last year was basically the first time Henry has ever had a significant injury–but even after a Jones fracture in his foot sidelined him during his 8th game, Henry was back on the field before the end of the year. He’s an ironman.
And he’s a bellcow. As I mentioned, Henry went down in his 8th game last season. It was two weeks before Jonathan Taylor caught him in fantasy points, and after Week 13, Henry was still 4th in non-PPR scoring among RBs, despite not having played for a month.
Full disclosure, this is not my original idea…it comes from several strategy articles I’ve seen done on this topic in fantasy football and baseball.
In this situation, there’s a trade-off in play that you need to recognize before making a choice. The earlier you pick in the first round, the later you pick in the second round, so you’re trading the ability to guarantee what you see as an elite asset early for picking a second or third tier asset with your next pick. That continues to be true for any odd-even pair of rounds throughout the draft, although the later you get the less it matters and the fall-off is pretty rapid. So the key is to have a set of rankings and tiers you’re confident in for your scoring format. Then you can determine who is in your elite first-round tier (they should be guys you’re equally happy getting in round 1) and your optimal pick corresponds to the number of guys in that tier.
For example, if you’re AxeElf playing in a non-PPR league, your elite tier consists of one player (Henry) and your optimal pick choice is the earliest one you can get to make sure you secure Henry. If instead, you were someone playing a PPR league where your elite tier might be two RBs and three WRs you’d be equally happy with, your optimal pick would be 5, That ensures you get one of your 5 elite guys and you get to pick as early as possible in round two and have a better chance to steal a better player who falls.
If you can’t get your optimal pick (say, you have 5 guys in your elite tier, you’re choosing draft spots 8th, and one through five are gone by then), you either do the same exercise with your tier two and set your pick that way or you go with some other choice that you believe gives you a strategic advantage later. For example, some people like the back turn (last pick) if they can’t get an earlier pick they like because it reduces the guesswork between your picks. There’s all kinds of opinions on the second-best strategy.
So in the rare occasions I’m playing this kind of league (usually Kentucky-derby starts in tournaments in my case), that’s the general approach I use, for whatever it’s worth.
What am I missing here? That sounds like a normal snaking draft order, and I honestly cannot remember when I last played a league that doesn’t do it that way.
The issue was, in leagues where you get to choose your spot in the draft order, - instead of randomly drawing the order or setting it based on past results - what is a good strategy for choosing that? It’s something that’s mostly done in tournaments, but some other leagues do it too.
Every single league I played in (redraft, keeper, tournament, dynasty startup) in at least the last 10 years had a snaking draft order. Only in rookie drafts in dynasty leagues, the draft order is usually not snaking (and shouldn’t be).
Unless I miss something, what you describe seems to be a regular snaking draft order. Odd rounds are processed in the regular draft order, no matter how it’s been determined. Even rounds are processed in reverse order.
As per my experience, that’s the standard in fantasy leagues for many years already, Hence my confusion.
You’re not listening, or you’re not comprehending. I don’t know which. We’ll try this again.
The issue is not whether it’s a snake or linear draft. It’s a snake draft (although you could apply these same principles to a linear draft). The issue in this case is that the managers who will pick in this snake draft, by some mechanism, get to pick which position in that snake draft order they are going to be drafting in when draft day comes around. Their choice of where they are in the snake draft order comes some weeks or months in advance of the actual draft day snake draft. Maybe they randomly drew the order in which they choose their draft spots in the eventual snake draft and then, in that order, pick their spot in the eventual snake draft order. Maybe they’re using a Kentucky-Derby start system based on rank-ordering. Maybe it’s something else. This is the issue, not whether the eventual draft is snake or linear. There are several possible strategies people use to make the choice of draft position in these cases, one of which I outlined above.
All of this is in contrast to having one’s position in the snake draft order chosen for them, which is most common and is apparently is what you have experience with, Maybe you show up in the draft room on draft day and your spot in the snake draft order was chosen for you at random. Maybe, weeks or months ahead, your spot in the snake draft order was determined by last year’s results. This is the kind of thing most people are used to. This is not what was being addressed in the original question.