Last Minute Fantasy Football Draft Guide

To all of you that this article is relevant to, good job. You waited right until the NFL season started to draft your Fantasy Football team. As many people know, if you draft early, there's always a chance you get burned. Unless you're in a 12+ man league, or a two QB league, you should not have drafted Teddy Bridgewater, but if you drafted two weeks ago and you were one of the unlucky few, you might be screwed.
There are tons of different strategies that people have when it comes to drafting the perfect team, I'm going to share my personal favorite, one that can almost guarantee you'll be make the fantasy post season. This guide is meant for standard scoring, one QB leagues but many of the principles apply to any type of league. Just like the draft, let's start with Round 1.

Round 1: RB/Gronk/WR (In that order)
Most lists you'll see will probably rank Antonio Brown, Julio Jones, and Odell Beckham Jr. as top ten picks. There's no doubt that each of those WRs are extremely talented and will likely put up huge numbers this season. The reason I would draft a RB (or Gronk) before any WR is simple: there aren't a lot of good ones. Last year only 7 RBs had more than 1,000 rushing yards and only 2 of them had more than 1,200. Only 4 TEs had over 1000 yards last year: Gronk, Greg Olson, Delanie Walker, and Gary Barnage. Out of that group, Gronk was the only TE with double digit touchdowns. Last year 22 WRs had more than 1,000 yards (I think this year there will be even more) and 11 of them had more than 1,200 yards. Nine of those WRs had 10 or more touchdowns. Personally I rank Adrian Peterson as my number one RB to draft. He may not end off the season number 1, but barring injury, he is by far the most secure running back to finish in the top 3. I don't have a lot of faith in Devonta Freeman. He had an unbelievable start to the season last year but during the last 8 games he played in he averaged a very far below average 54.3 rushing yards per game and if you don't count his game week 11 where he only had 3 carries, he averaged 2.9 yards per carry which is beyond awful. In his last 9 games, Devonta Freeman had 2 rushing TDs.

Rounds 2 - 6: RB/WR
These rounds are where you build the bulk of your team. Your biggest scorers are going to be RBs and WRs so you want to get the best ones you can while they're still available. If you didn't take Gronk in the first, you can take Greg Olsen, Jordan Reed, or Delanie Walker in the 5th round.

Rounds 7-9: WR/RB/TE
Round 7 is the first round where I would say to take one of the better TEs that I haven't yet named (Gary Barnage, Travice Kelce, etc.) Other than that continue building your team and start building a solid bench

Round 10: QB/RB/WR/TE
If you haven't drafted a TE yet by this point I would make sure to draft one now. I prefer to take my QB as late as possible for the same reason I don't value WR as highly as other positions. There are a lot of really good ones. Obviously certain QBs are more trustworthy and will put up higher numbers than other but why would you take Aaron Rodgers in the third round when in most leagues you can take a QB like Phillip Rivers or Derek Carr in the 10th+?

Rounds 11-13: QB/RB/WR/TE
At this point you're mostly going to be drafting mostly handcuffs (I'll get to these in a minute) and sleepers (I'll get to these too). By the end of round 13 you should have your entire team other than your Kicker and Defense. I personally don't like to carry more than one QB but that's a matter of preference. Now back to the handcuffs and sleepers. A handcuff is a player who is the back up to one of your players. For example, if you drafted Le'Veon Bell, you would draft DeAngelo Williams as his handcuff so if Bell get's injured you will already have the Steelers new starting RB waiting on your bench. A sleeper is a player who won't start the season as a stud but you think will develop into one (Josh Gordon, Christine Michael, Tajae Sharpe etc.)

Rounds 14-15: DEF/K
The only positions you should have left to fill are defense and kicker. I personally like to swap defenses week to week. This year I'll probably try to pick up whatever defense the Bears or Titans are playing that week.

You should now have a playoff worthy team. Good luck and let me know how you do!