We live in a real world. We follow a real team. However, this thing called Fantasy Football pervades the lives of a lot of us in the real world.
Fantasy football has taken the country by storm.
It has become as important to some people as the football on the field. Do I want to win? Sure I do, and I have. Several times and in several formats. That said, if I had to pick between the two for championship success, I would choose my Dallas Cowboys.
So how do we go into drafts with a realistic view of our beloved Cowboys? What happens when you are sitting in round 8 and you realize you need a quarterback? Tony Romo is available. But #9 isn’t being drafted until the 10th round on average and sometimes being taken as low as the 15th QB off the board. What do you do?
Managing Assets
To have any success in fantasy football, you have to be an asset manager.
Each player that you pick in a fantasy football draft is an asset. Just like a house, or a car, that asset has a value. If you are going to buy a house and the real estate agent tells you that the house appraised for $100-thousand-dollars, but then says the asking price is $200-thousand, you aren’t going to buy it. The same is true with your fantasy football drafts.
If the experts are telling you that a certain QB is, on average, being drafted as the 12th quarterback, exercising restraint will allow you to draft him at the proper spot, without feeling like you paid too much for him.
If you draft that player too high, you run the risk of missing out on value at other positions.
Blue Bloods
As people who bleed blue here in Cowboys Nation, we run the risk of over valuing our Dallas Cowboys players because we carry a higher view than others might. We can undervalue them too, if you read a lot of national media or listen to your non-Cowboy fan friends.
I will get into it more in a later post, but Tony Romo, to me, might be the best value in standard drafts. If you get him outside of the top 10 quarterbacks, it’s a good pick, because he has top 5 scoring potential.
It’s important to decide a player’s worth and stick to that evaluation.
Much like the Dallas Cowboys front office, you have to get value with each of your picks. If you reach on a guy and you miss, it can seriously change your fortunes for the season. It’s easy to let emotion take over at times, reaching on a player or letting emotion cloud your judgment on a player.
Getting ready
Each time you enter the draft room, the temptation is there to reach for “Your Guys.”
If you’re in a league with your friends, they’ll know. Especially if you are one of the few Cowboys fans in your league. The best way to draft is to take yourself out of the equation and try to select the best player you can at each draft spot. The first couple of rounds are essential to getting your plan set in motion for the rest of the draft.
Now, as a side note, if fun is what you’re looking for then have fun and feel free to draft how you want. It is a game after all.
And that is what I hope to bring here at Inside The Star; a Cowboys focus to the fantasy game we all love to play. During the preseason, I will be releasing my outlook for the players on the team and updating it as we go to give you the most up-to-date insight toward the start of the season. Soon I’ll have my preseason positional rankings ready for you.
During the season I will give you the matchup for your Dallas Cowboys with sit/start suggestions as well as sleeper plays. Weekly, you’ll receive updates to the positional rankings.
You can find me on Twitter at @john9williams for your sit/start questions, your trade ideas, or your constructive criticism.
No one who has played fantasy football for as long as I have gets it right every time. I have made my bad picks; Eddie Lacy in the first round in 2015. And I have made my great picks; AJ Green in the 13th round of his rookie season.
