Playoff Draft Strategy

That’s it: it’s over. The 2005 regular season is in the books, and fantasy leagues – even those that scratch and claw for that last morsel of football by holding their championships in week 17 – have crowned their champions. No more trying to figure out whether to start Drew Brees or Drew Bledsoe. No more lording that Larry Johnson pick in the sixth round over your leaguemates. No more screaming at the TV when your opponent’s defensive back picks off a pass and returns it 87 yards for a touchdown. No more fantasy football – unless, of course, you’re playing in a playoff league.

Playoff leagues aren’t quite the same as regular season formats, of course, but they’re still a great way to keep those fantasy football juices flowing before the long, bleak off-season begins. The main difference is that under the most common playoff league rules, owners aren’t allowed to make trades, pick up players off the waiver wire, or even bring in substitutes from the bench. The team you draft is the team you’re stuck with, so landing players who will play more than one game is the key to success.

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to draft strategy. The most common is to draft as you would in a regular league, by projecting players’ values (always tricky when you can’t be sure how long a player’s team will stay alive), and drafting based on positional scarcity (the “value-based” method). Keep in mind, however, that scarcity will be a bit different with fewer players available. Running backs will still be at a premium, of course, particularly in leagues where a team can start more than one RB. It probably isn’t a good idea to wait until round eight to draft a passer, however…

The other commonly-used playoff strategy is a bit more extreme, an all-or-nothing approach that can give you an easy win, but might also put you ought of the running before the end of Wild Card Weekend. This tactic involves drafting as many players as possible from a single team which you hope will reach the Super Bowl. If it works, you’ll rack up more games played than any of your opponents. If you miscalculate and your targeted team makes an early exit from the playoffs, you’ll probably wind up dead last.

As tempting as this latter approach might be, there are several drawbacks that go beyond the difficulty of accurately predicting the Super Bowl finalists. For one thing, you most likely have to avoid elite teams like the Colts, whose players will be high on everyone’s cheat sheets. Instead, if you hope to fill the majority of your roster with one team’s players, you’ll have to look for underdogs like Jacksonville or Washington, or teams without marquee fantasy performers, like the Chicago Bears.

That brings up another problem: if two owners attempt to focus on the same team, neither will be able to put together an effective roster. In that case, you’ll have to scrap your plans and regroup on the fly.

And then there is one further drawback: the high risk of finishing at the bottom of the standings if your chosen team goes one-and-done. If your league’s constitution includes rules such as, “the last-place team’s owner must foot the bill for next year’s league fees,” “must display a pink toilet seat-shaped trophy in his office,” or even “must dress up as Bozo the Clown and serve munchies at next year’s draft,” stay far, far away from this strategy.

Naturally, there are plenty of other tactics that can be used in playoff drafts, including hybrids between the two discussed above (such as picking a QB-WR combo that you think will reach the big game, and drafting the rest of your roster using value-based considerations). No matter what strategy you decide to use, however, try your hand at a playoff league this year. Give yourself an extra four weeks of fantasy football; the off-season is long enough.

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