As always we here at the Bruno Boys want to do our best to help you out there in Bruno Boys Nation claim your fantasy football league's championship. To do so, we know you have to have a solid fantasy draft and we know as those all precious drafts approach you have plenty of questions that you need answering. Don't worry, Bruno Boys Ziza has you covered. Check out part two of this Bruno Boys Q & A, which is focused on Draft Day Advice. If you use this Q & A along with the Bruno Boys 2008 Fantasy Football Cheat Sheets, message boards and everything else that the Bruno Boys site has to offer, we have no doubt that your draft will be very successful! With that being said, let’s jump right into your questions.
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Question: Everyone knows the importance of the big-3, the QB, RB and WR’s, but my question is how important are the TE, K and DST positions in reality to the other three? Thank you very much Bruno Boys! –Michelle D; Las Cruces, New Mexico
Answer: Michelle, we appreciate your question and your readership! While by the end of the season it is always best to have as many top players on your team as possible, usually during your fantasy draft you are not able to monopolize on all the positions, which is why drafting for depth in case of injury or for trade possibilities is always a good thing. While being able to put the Minnesota Vikings, Jason Witten and Nick Folk would be great every week, with that would come a price. And that is that you would have to spend picks that are probably too high for your liking on all three positions. I am not recommending blowing off all three positions though. Quite the opposite! I am a true advocate of trying to have the best RB duo that you possibly can with a star WR thrown in there somewhere. You can always get your QB’s in rounds 4-7 and still end up with someone pretty damn solid. And then if your draft is going your way, you are set in everything that you really need, then start looking at the Tier Ranking system! If there is only 1 Tier 1 TE on the board left, 2 Tier 1 DST’s and 3 Tier 1 K’s, obviously take the Tier 1 TE and hope that you can get the DST soon after and cross your fingers for the K in the following rounds. If you can end up filling your whole team and still landing Tier 1 players throughout the board, congrats! That usually will never happen, but if you do, great! But if you don’t get to grab your Tier 1 players, look for these things to help improve your results; K’s on an explosive offense usually put up a ton of points, even if they don’t start the season rated as high as some other K’s. DST’s you can always strategize and try to grab two mid-level DST's that will allow you to play the match-ups, and TE’s come and go, but if you don’t get a top 3 or so, don’t panic. The next tier or two usually has similar point totals when the season is set and done. So getting the #4 TE or the #7 TE usually won’t make much of a difference. You just want to make sure that your team is built to where you are very solid to start off, can substitute if an injury arises and just keep building your team through trade.
In summary, concentrate on the big three and try to get a star or two in the others if possible, but don’t panic as there are always ways to find a diamond in the rough among the smaller three! Best of luck in 2008!
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Q: Hello, second year player and Bruno Boys fan for as many years, how important is it to use Tier Ranking and exactly what is that? I don’t mean to sound too green, but I really would like to take a step forward this year! –Carlos M; Atlanta, Georgia
A: Carlos, I highly recommend Tier Rankings. There is nothing that you can do in my mind that can prepare you for a draft more than having a Tier Ranking Cheat Sheet in front of you! It helps you throughout the draft so much and allows you to not have to sift endlessly through your fantasy magazine, freaking out as your pick draws nearer, only to end up drafting a player that you really didn’t want or need when someone that you really could of used is still sitting on the draft boards!
An explanation of a Tiered Ranking Cheat Sheet is as follows; A tiered sheet allows you to be able to see all of the players that you are interested in drafting, most commonly found sorted by positions. In other words, your QB, RB, WR, TE, K, DST’s and if you use them your IDP’s will each have their own Tier Rankings. Within those rankings, you will have some type of indicator, normally either shown by drawing a line between the names of two players or by highlighting and non-highlighting different tiers, or just by using different colors to represent different tiers. Each tier represents a drop off in value from the tier above. If you need a RB and WR in the next two rounds and there is similar value between the two positions as far as the ranked players still available, yet there is only 2 RB’s in that tier and still 5 WR’s, it would be wise taking the RB as odds are there will be one of those WR’s still on the board when it is your next time to draft. Yet if you decided to take one of those 5 WR’s instead of one of the 2 RB’s, odds are when it is your time to draft again, you will not have one of those RB’s available to you and you will have to select a lesser RB.
In summary, if you would of gone through the first example and drafted a RB, you could of probably ended up with a RB2 and a WR1 or 2 instead of a WR1 or 2 and a RB3. If that doesn’t make sense please email me and I will try to explain even further! Best of luck to you!
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Thanks again for all of the great questions submitted by you, members of the Bruno Boys Nation. We love having our e-mail boxes filled, so keep the questions coming. Also, stay tuned for Part 3, the final segment, of the Bruno Boys Q & A - Draft Day Advice, coming soon.