Fantasy Football Preparation Checklist

We just reached the Major League All-Star game, but I bet many of you feel like you are behind on your preparation work for the 2009 NFL Fantasy Football season. Sure, you could take the easy way out and let your autodraft engine pick your team for you and hope that you will be competitive. However, very few leagues are won this way. You need to gain the advantage at draft time by picking the sleepers ahead of the other managers and being positioned to pick the waiver wire clean at the appropriate times during the season. So, here is a basic checklist to start with.

1. Determine if you want to start your own league on MFS, join a friend's league and/or play in a Public league. You have many options for fun and profit. Also, remember that you can offset or eliminate your league fees by signing up and making a deposit into the Bookmaker.com sports book. Use the link on the MFS home page to make it easier.
   
   
2. Start building the pool of players that will one day make up your player rankings. Many sites have players ranked at draft time, but everyone in your league will have access to that information. You want your list of players ranked by your expectation of how they will perform this season. If you do your homework before the draft, you should be in position to take home the crown at the end of the season. If it looks iffy, bribe a few other managers to dump players your way.
   
   
3. Now, that player pool is not as easy to pour as a cold beer. Start by going over the free agent movement since the Super Bowl ended. There is a lot of time between now and your league's draft for NFL teams to build their depth chart. You want to flag potential position battles for the number 1 and number 2 slots in your money positions. No reason to worry about who the number 1 running back is in New York, but you may be concerned about who will win the number 2 slot. You want to focus on news involving these players.
   
   
4. Of course, you better factor rookies into the mix. Not many make an impact so drafting the correct players will save draft picks for more useful players or backups to your studs. So, grab the draft results from April. Everyone knows that Chris “Beanie” Wells will be a rookie to draft, but what about Donald Brown? You want to be the team that drafts him first. Of course, he’ll be known by draft time, so go through all picks and try to imagine where they will factor into the depth chart, even if they will not be the obvious number 2 back. For example, get to know LeSean McCoy. Wow, I could just hear a resounding “Who?!”. With Brian Westbrook a perennial injury risk, McCoy could be the feature back on a very good team in no time.
   
   
5. Start digesting news and injury reports, making sure to focus on the teams where you see the best position battles and greatest opportunity for upside. If you keep a comprehensive diary of these happenings, you can trust this more than random articles found before the draft….except mine, of course. Also, my mock draft will be on the heels of this article.
   
   
6. Don’t rely on your research to be the only source of influence on your initial player pool. Pick up a few trade magazines. We suggest picking up a copy of Fantasy Football Cheatsheets or Fantasy Football Diehards. Add some of their sleepers and rookies to your pool that you have omitted and you will have a good collection of players to track news on this summer and help you set your player rankings before your draft. Once again, you can ignore the news about Michael Turner, Larry Fitzgerald. and the like, that is, unless they have poor habits like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, swimming with sharks with an open wound, or constantly complaining about how unfair their contract is.