How many te should i draft

However, he still is an attractive option at the top of Tier 5. Tennessee has proven to feed their tight ends, and Firkser is a crisp route runner who has commanded targets when he's on the field. Kmet and Howard look to break out and supplant the future Hall-of-Fame tight ends that share a position room with them. They both have the tools to do it, but we can't be percent certain until we see them getting regular snaps and targets. Like Kmet and Howard, Ertz might be a 1B tight end in his offense.

However, Philadelphia doesn't have much outside of Goedert and DeVonta Smith, so it's definitely possible for two tight ends to eat in that offense, especially with the lack of deep accuracy from Jalen Hurts.

Ebron and Hooper have both netted fantastic fantasy seasons in the past, but those now seem like mere outliers. Ebron is heavily touchdown dependent, and Hooper's passing offense isn't prolific. Plus, he has Odell Beckham, Jarvis Landry, and Kareem Hunt to compete with, who all operate in the middle part of the field. Herndon has disappointed in the past, so he's tough to trust, but Conklin is completely unproven and has dealt with a hamstring injury in the preseason.

Trautman is the Tier-5 version of Jarwin. He has the potential to be no worse than the No. Sure, Alvin Kamara will eat targets, but with Michael Thomas out indefinitely after ankle surgery, Marquez Callaway and Tre'Quan Smith are the only receivers that remain with real potential. Those guys are largely unproven. It will be an all-out war for targets, and who's to say Trautman can't win it? At an ADP of Everett, Hurst, and Knox just won't have heavy volume.

Hurst is obviously hindered by Kyle Pitts, but could still see usage with Pitts lining up at a variety of positions in Atlanta. Seattle hasn't proven to allocate enough targets to tight ends for great fantasy relevancy. Everett hasn't exactly been a target magnet, so it's tough to see why that would change.

Knox has the most upside of these three, but he only has 94 targets in his two NFL seasons. In college, he charted a mere 39 receptions. He's not someone you want to rely on week-to-week, as he's more of a high-upside TD-or-bust option.

Unless you're playing in the deepest of the deepest leagues, these guys will be sitting in waivers at the start of Seek 1. They all may have some DFS relevance at their cheap prices, but they're only worth keeping an eye on in redraft leagues.

Graham's and Rudolph's prime came and went. We enjoyed their ups and dreaded their downs. In , sure we should monitor them, but you don't want to get stuck relying on them. Arnold is in a position battle with Ian Thomas, so it's tough to evaluate his prospects.

Either way, he's probably the fifth option in the Panthers passing attack if he wins the job. Johnson is in a similar battle with Adam Trautman in New Orleans, but given his background as a wide receiver, he has major upside if he wins the job. Kroft has the chance to be Zach Wilson's security blanket, but that's purely hypothetical.

Doyle and Freiermuth are likely to serve as time-share tight ends this season. Alie-Cox is gaining momentum to take more targets for Indianapolis, and Ebron still resides in Pittsburgh.

Freiermuth is attractive in dynasty, but he's probably going to be a makeshift offensive lineman in his rookie season. Akins will look better if Deshaun Watson is his quarterback, but he hasn't been spectacular with Watson in the first place.

Monitor his position battle with rookie Brevin Jordan before considering him on waivers. Dissly and Okwuegbunam are both injury-watch players, specifically Okwuegbunam. If something were to happen to Fant, Okwuegbunam has the profile to be at least a top tight end. Again, don't spend your draft picks on any of these guys, but keep your eyes peeled for any chance of an uptick in opportunity and production.

American Football. Is Tua Tagovailoa playing on Thursday night? NFL 10h ago. Ravens vs. Dolphins v Ravens 12h ago. NFL 12h ago. NFL 17h ago. But running backs touch the ball with lots of players between them and the goal line. Receivers sometimes get it with none. Consider also that receivers average 14, 15, and sometimes close to 20 yards per touch.

A top running back averages close to five, and workhorse backs often produce less than that. We might also consider a failed run — one of less than two yards when there's more than seven yards to go for a first down — the equivalent of an incomplete pass.

There's really no difference fantasy-wise, so running backs don't get as many more touches as it seems. And even a successful short-yardage conversion isn't worth anything if it's not around the goal line. Moreover, running backs are more likely to get hurt due to their large number of touches. In fact, running backs get drilled on all 20 touches even when they get nothing for it, whereas receivers don't get hit all that often on incomplete passes going over the middle, maybe, but otherwise, they usually get off scot free.

Finally, because running backs get the ball so reliably, it's easier to expect production out of a fill-in starter, than a fill-in receiver who might see just two passes thrown his way.

If you don't have reliable receivers, you're much more likely to get a zero from a roster spot with a guy you just picked up off the waiver wire. In a league with experienced owners, then, you're much better off taking what the draft gives you and going for value than blindly adhering to the strategy that everyone else is following.

If you want to get that elite running back, you simply have to pay up for him and manage your diminished budget as you fill out the rest of your roster. Auctions allow far more strategic flexibility, too, as you can roster several would-be first-round picks and a bunch of cheap players, or build your team around solid, unspectacular contributors all of whom have established roles not recommend except in deeper leagues.

You are no longer locked into the players available on a round-by-round basis. Here are some guidelines and principles that have worked for us in fantasy auctions draft players pay attention as well; there is some overlap in the strategy :. At times owners make definitive judgments and final decisions on their auction strategy or drafting strategy long before the event takes place, and then they refuse to budge from those principles once the game begins.

This is an enormous mistake! Maybe you really need that specific player because he's the last legitimate RB left. It can work in the other direction, as well.

You have to adjust to the economics in your league on the fly. The best auctioners are often the ones who recognize the dynamics and adjust quickly. Track every owner during the auction if you want to have any success in the midgame and endgame. It's essential you know what they've spent, how many roster spots they've already filled and what they still need to get. It's possible to track this without using the actual players bought simply make a position grid and X-out the appropriate spot when a player is sold , but we recommend using the actual player names.

It's up to you. Accounting turns into Accounting when the midgame and endgame set in. Get in the habit of figuring out what a team's maximum bid is left — it's not a hard calculation to make, and often the software does it for you. This is very important in any league, draft or auction — make sure you stay in touch with the "personality" of every positional pool. Are all the stud quarterbacks gone? How many of your breakthrough receivers are still on board? Without being aware of the remaining inventory, you won't know when to jump in and out of the marketplace.

Try to see the trends and patterns before they become blatantly obvious to everyone else. Just like the champion poker player who is always evaluating something, or someone, you really don't want to stop thinking at the auction table other than a periodic break to refresh yourself. Fantasy football rosters are a lot smaller than say baseball ones, and a star football player makes a far greater impact on your bottom line than you might think.

The balanced-roster theme doesn't always translate to football. If you don't have one of the primary studs, you usually can't win a football league — unless you play in an unorthodox league with gigantic rosters. In an NFL auction, players need to have some of the upper crust to have a chance. Successful players are more likely to be aggressively bidding when top names come out, even at the risk of having scrubs fill out the end of the bench.

The smaller the league, the more important it is to get those blue chips. One strategy that has worked for us is to spend one half to two thirds of our budget early on a few stars, making sure the money is going to difference-makers, then waiting in the mid-game for people to catch up to and often surpass our spending before cleaning up with bargains late. This achieves three objectives: 1 No money left on the table; 2 A roster with difference makers; and 3 The ability to choose among the best values and cheaper options late.

Nominate some stars that you want, and toss out the name of a so-so player, or even a scrub, in the early game. Keep them guessing. Don't be too easy to read. Usually people nominate star players right away, and they go for less money than they should.

Because everyone is waiting to see what they go for, and then buy bargains relative to the established market rate. But there is no market rate to which they can compare the initial bids, so many owners are overly cautious.

Instead of bidding against 11 other people, you are often bidding against only a few. Secondly, no one is desperate to get the first few players are there are many other options available, reducing the likelihood of a bidding war.

Often, the best bargains are on the stars that come out right away. We realize you probably talk football a lot with your buddies, so to some degree they probably know what players and teams you like and don't like. That said, there's nothing wrong with keeping your cards concealed at the auction table. Try to avoid being predictable if you can when it comes to nominating the next player up for bid. Sometimes nominate players you want to acquire, and other times nominate players on whom you want others to spend money.

Bidding Principle 4 — If you're going to overpay, do so on a stud or a known quality. Every auction will bring you some bargains and some tremendous discounts, but you'll probably have to overpay now and again, too.

And with that in mind, be sure to use that overspend luxury on someone who's a difference-maker. Don't blow it on someone you're not sure of unless there's absolutely no way around it. This is closely related to the fourth bidding principle. Yes, it's tempting to play "mess with your opponent. Don't assume that your opponents will run to you with trade options later in the year just because you have something they, in theory, desperately need.

Owners often refuse to trade for a logical position-fill player or backup for any number of rational and irrational reasons. One of the primary benefits of a keeper league is that it allows teams that aren't in contention for the current year to stay involved to try and improve their team for the future. One of the primary means of doing so is by trading players with current value to teams in contention for players or draft picks with future value known not-so-fondly as "dump trading".

Unfortunately, this one essential and fun aspect of keeper leagues seems to create the greatest amount of conflict among owners. Invariably, different owners will have different ideas about the future value of young, unproven players. When a top player is traded for future value, competitors often think correctly or incorrectly "What a terrible deal, I would have given up more for him.

For those new to keeper leagues, these trades might even seem offensive. In most fantasy football leagues, in which the last few weeks of the season dictate who wins and who loses, these trades can have tremendous impact.

In our experience, nothing engenders more disagreement and tension among owners than these dump trades. There are a few unique considerations related to free agency in keeper leagues.

Should you allow players selected as free agents to be kept? Should you allow teams to pick up and keep injured players dropped by other teams? If your league uses long-term contracts, and a player on a long-term contract is dropped, should the team that picks up the player assume the contract?

If the same team picks up a player that it drops, should it get the player on a new contract or still be responsible for the long-term contract? For the most part, there is no "right" way to do it — just decide what fits best for your league. So now you've set up your keeper league. That was the easy part. You just wrote ten pages of rules, and now you have to enforce them.

In no particular order, this includes closely scrutinizing yearly keeper lists to make sure owners can actually keep the players they submitted in the draft slot or for the contract price they listed , enforcing year-to-year penalties such as when players are dropped in the middle of long-term contracts , keeping track of traded draft picks, keeping track of which players on rosters are keepable and which are not, and ensuring that teams aren't picking up ineligible free agents and unwinding those pick-ups when they happen.

You're never going to have perfect compliance, but make sure that everyone knows and is familiar with the rules. If you have new owners, give them a mulligan or two. If there is an unbalanced trade involving a new owner, explain the keeper implications before letting the trade move forward. And, of course, be flexible with your rules and consistent in your application of them.

Every once in a while, during the season you'll determine that one of your rules results in unintended consequences. If that happens, consider changing the rule. Generally, for in-season rule changes the vote to change the rule should be unanimous to keep owners from voting for rule changes just because it will benefit them that season. Otherwise, wait at least until the offseason to change the rules. If a rule change affects decisions teams have already made, make the changes applicable further in the future good examples are major changes to the draft or keeper structure.

And listen to your fellow owners: if everyone supports a rule change but you, then maybe you shouldn't hold up that rule change. We'll give you one good reason you should play in a league with individual defensive players: J. J Watt. Any league that won't let you dig on monsters like Watt is a league not worth being in. Being able to cheer on ridiculous snake-like interception returns for touchdowns and three-sack games with that little added gusto is what this is all about.

Given the choice between fantasy points from more tackles and less playmaking versus low tackles and higher playmaking, go for the tackler because his stats are more stable from year to year, and his production is more consistent from week to week. They tend not to get the tackles needed to rank very highly among linebackers, but can be some of the best linemen in leagues that count them as such.

SS: Strong safeties are almost like linebackers in that they make a ton of tackles upwards of and are in position to grab some sacks at a relatively consistent clip. Their leg up on linebackers, of course, is the increased occurrence of interceptions. Picks are notoriously fickle from year to year, but the top safeties each year rank right up there with the best linebackers. FS, CB: Although free safeties are more likely to tackle well than corners, the profile here is pretty much the same.

The good corners get as many tackles as free safeties and make up the difference with interceptions. There are always free safeties and corners in the top 20 among defensive backs, but it's usually different ones each year since picks can be so random. With linemen and linebackers, there's a core of usual suspects you can rely on each year, but in the secondary, where careers peak and fizzle far more quickly, that group is much smaller.

Some do it with speed, some with strength, but the best ones get plus solo tackles and double-digit sacks. Most are in the solo-tackle range, however.

Some are every bit as productive as ends. But for the most part, these guys aren't too interesting statistically. Take a pass on these. Overall, look for middle and weak side linebackers for your linebacker slots, safeties for your defensive back slots, and defensive ends for your lineman slots.

With flexible slots, you'll want to concentrate on linebackers and safeties, since they score far more points than linemen. In a normal league where you have to set your lineup each week, not having star receivers is a big problem.

Not only do they score the most points in a PPR format, but you need more of them. Moreover, once you get outside the top or so, it's hard to predict which week a WR will go off. It's actually hard to predict which week even a Julio Jones or an A.

Green will go off, but because they're so good, and you never remove them from your lineup, you don't have to worry about that. But for mid-level receivers, you might sit them after a few games with low-target totals and production for someone who put up a couple 7-for lines and watch them catch a yard TD or two from your bench.

Simply put, if you're messing around with mid-level WR, it's hard to time them, and they're not good enough simply to keep active no matter what. However, this problem goes away in best ball leagues.

You don't have to guess when a mid-tier WR goes off because the software will make sure they're in your lineup on those days. Receiver volatility is no longer a liability, but an asset. You can make up for not having a star on whom you can count by having volatile types that collectively will blow up enough to carry you.

For running backs in best ball, the opposite dynamic is at play. In regular leagues, drafting mid-level running backs isn't a problem because you usually know in advance whether they're getting touches in the short term. If you have a Derrick Henry, you can be fairly sure what his role is most weeks, so long as he's healthy. But while running backs are more stable game to game, they're less stable year to year.

Running backs are bigger injury risks, and few mid-level ones are good or established enough not to get replaced by coaches when their production dips. In standard leagues, you can deal with that problem by picking up their backups, working the wire, and making trades. In best ball, you're stuck with the ones you picked all year.

For that reason, you need to have the safest of the bunch — they're still riskier than top wide receivers, but they're much less risky than mid- and later-round backs. Daily fantasy sports contests differ from season-long leagues in that the "season" only lasts a single week. The advantage of playing on DraftKings is simple: the site's popularity allows it to host a wide variety of contests, including some with massive payouts at the top.

Contest offerings have expanded to include a "Tiers" game and a "Showdown" mode, but the traditional salary-based game still accounts for the vast majority of their business. Compared to other large DFS sites, player pricing on DraftKings tends to be a bit sharper, quickly responding to role changes in a way that limits the number of obvious bargains.

On the other hand, huge price gaps between the top and bottom players can lead to some really stunning values when an injury to a starter initially goes unreported or occurs during a mid-week practice. DraftKings will raise a backup's price for the next week if the starter in front of him gets injured during a Sunday afternoon game, but there's nothing the site can do if the injury isn't public information until after contests for the following week have opened. Given the otherwise sharp pricing, it's important to jump on these opportunities when they arise — particularly in cash games where you tend to target higher-owned players.

What all these games have in common is relatively good odds to make a small amount of money. The goal is simply to create a lineup with the highest mean projection — a. In a , for example, half the participants will receive a payout, with the highest-scoring lineup receiving the same amount of money as a lineup that finished in the 51st percentile.

Each prize is a bit less than double the entry fee, as the site takes out a "rake" of percent. A double-up contest does exactly what its name implies, but it only pays out percent of the field to leave room for the rake.

For those chasing a bigger payday at slimmer odds, large-field tournaments — referred to as Guaranteed Prize Pools GPPs — are the way to go. This is the main attraction on DraftKings and most other daily fantasy sites, with descending prize structures that allow for huge rewards in the 99th percentile, though they only pay out to the top percent of lineups.

Tournament strategy demands a more risk-tolerant approach, most notably encouraging the use of multiple players from a single real-life game also known as "game stacking".

With no financial difference between a mediocre lineup and a lousy one, it almost always makes sense to use at least one pass catcher from the same team as your quarterback. There's also a good argument for using a wide receiver or tight end from the other side of that game, hoping to take advantage of a shootout that forces both teams to continue passing throughout the second half. Long story short, we're focused on the upside scenario without giving much thought to the downside if things don't work out.

There's also an element of game theory to tournament strategy, as the relative value of a huge individual performance isn't nearly as big if the player is in a high percentage of our opponents' lineups. While you may not think this is an integral part of the overall DFS strategy, it may be one of the most important aspects when it comes to large-field tournaments. Between the PPR scoring and yardage bonuses, players can put up big point totals without scoring touchdowns. Generally speaking, the format encourages volume hunting over TD hunting, though in many cases those two goals are one and the same.

Know why you're taking a player. Sounds simple, right? Make sure you've heard of the guy you're taking in each round. Have a general idea of his talent level and what his potential role can be — both on his real team and your fantasy team.

Don't go for some shaky veteran WR5 when you can take a more valuable young RB4 who is an injury away from big touches. You're not taking a player because you like his name or where he went to college. You're making every pick count with the intent that each pick can help you win a championship.

Don't be a slave to the rankings. While you do want to follow somewhat of a script early, be prepared to pivot and freelance a little once you see your early draft results develop.

Are you happier about some positions more than others? If a player doesn't excite you or can give you only limited help, you shouldn't take him. Use your cheat sheet as more a rough outline than a stone tablet.

Make sure you use your gut and make your draft your own. The one predictable thing about a fantasy draft is its unpredictability.

Don't be influenced by other picks. This is an addendum to the previous tip. During your draft, there are bound to be position runs or drafters going straight down the list, filling out their starting lineups before getting backups.

Every pick should be your own. Don't base it on what everyone is doing because you think that's what you should be doing. Avoid getting too caught up in bye weeks. Other than the exception of making sure not to take two top quarterbacks who are off during the same week — Rodgers and Mayfield both have byes in Week 13, for example — you don't need to pay much attention here.

If you can get all three early to have a loaded wide receiver corps, you would do it. For the backfield, the same goes for drafting say, Aaron Jones and Kareem Hunt, both also off in Week Sure, you will have a tough go of it that particular week, but you will be in great shape the rest of the season.

First and foremost, the goal is to have as much productive talent as possible, then worry about minimizing availability conflicts. Things also can change so much at the non-QB positions that a seemingly solid bye-week fill-in on draft day is a waiver-wire afterthought come Week 6. Know your byes so you are prepared during and after the draft, but obsessing over them is a waste of energy.

Embrace the stream with defenses. There's always one defense that has a ridiculous season. Last season, it was the Rams. The year before, it was the Patriots. In , it was the Bears; in '17, it was the Jaguars.

But it's hard for a defense to sustain a high level of playmaking sacks, interceptions, TDs in an offensive-minded league, especially if it faces a tougher set of matchups. In New England's case in , it lost a lot of pass-rushing pop in the offseason, wasn't playing with as many leads without Tom Brady, and had a more difficult schedule. The Patriots slid all the way down outside of the top 10 in most formats.

The Rams didn't just lose their ace defensive coordinator, Brandon Staley, who took over as the Chargers' head coach, but they also took some key personnel losses in the secondary and look weaker in a few spots around Aaron Donald up front. The Rams also face a top scoring offense from in eight of their 17 games. You can get fortunate with the next Rams, Patriots, Bears, or Jaguars, but wait everyone out to try to get that unit.