Tips & Tricks You Need to Know Going Into Your Draft | 'NFL Fantasy Live'

everywhere anyway, back on NFL Fantasy Live and we got this from Bengals beat writer Kelsey Conway, who posted on Twitter, Ja'Marr Chase isn't practicing again today. He showed up as the team finished stretching. So another holdout, wide receiver. We talked about Brandon Aiyuk at the top of the show. We talked about Jamaar Chase, too. We did as well. Blind date when I was set up with a guy who's ghosting us, he's been ghosting the Bengals so far. We'll see how long this continues and how much it impacts his draft stock and fantasy as we get to this final weekend of full fantasy drafts. Okay, rank, picture this. Yeah, it's draft night. You got your board set. Everything's great. The food is good, the drinks are chilled, you're feeling great. And then all of a sudden, the middle of the first round, your whole plan gets blown up, right? Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth or until, like, three quarterbacks go in the middle of the first round. What do you do? What is the one piece of advice you would give somebody that's approaching their draft when things maybe go sideways? And it's not necessarily a bad thing because we are doing the NFL Fantasy Live draft on yesterday and we're sitting there, I'm at nine. Where were you like 11? I was 11, so we're sitting there watching this draft unfold. And for some reason, Bijan Robinson just kept tumbling and I'm like, this, this can't be this. And then you look at some of them like this is why we shouldn't have producers doing this draft like, and get. No, I'm just no disrespect to them. But like Bijan Robinson was there and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to take him at number nine. That wasn't my plan. I figured I was going to get in. Anthony Brown or whatever. Anthony Richardson, not Anthony Richardson. No. Saquon Barkley was somebody. Listen I don't know what I was going to do. AJ Brown that's who you're looking at AJ Brown what is wrong with me. This is how this is how draft season's been going. But no when John Robinson's there then I make the adjustment and I keep expecting, you know, I was expecting to get Drake London in the second round, but I'm like, well, now I got Robinson. I can't take Drake London. So I had to adjust and Jonathan Taylor was there, so I didn't really want to go with two running backs to start that draft, or at least not go, what am I playing tennis like back and forth, back and forth. But I would have got I. But I made the adjustment and I did what I needed to do. Yeah. You know, I think you also have to sort of be I always say be like water, you know, the amoeba, the Bruce Lee theory. I would also tell folks, you don't necessarily have to get a second quarterback or a second tight end. In most leagues, you only start one guy at each position. If you decide you're going to spend the draft capital to get a top level quarterback or a top level tight end, you've staked your claim that this is going to be your guy. Aside from you know, the bye week, that this is going to be the guy you start every week so you don't necessarily have to go and get another guy later. Now, if you decide to wait on the position, if you say you're going to wait till like the ninth round or so to get a quarterback, then it does make sense to kind of double up. You maybe want one upside guy, say a Jayden Daniels with another kind of steady week to week guy, maybe a Jared Goff or a Matthew Stafford. That's when I think you can double up on the position. Same with tight end. If you don't reach for, say, a Kelce or a Laporta and you want to wait on, say, a guy like Pat Freiermuth, then it does make sense to maybe go get yourself a second tight end, but otherwise use those other draft positions to get extra running backs or wide receivers that you can get on your roster. Okay, so now those are the things that you want to avoid. Potentially. Everybody wants to feel like they're smarter than everybody else in their room. What's one thing that you are thinking that maybe nobody else in your league is thinking? Well, I take a lot of time to understand the way the rosters are constructed, the scoring system, and so many people just go into drafts and they look at, you know, some of these cheat sheets, some of these rankings or everything like that. But it doesn't matter, because if you're in a league where you draft just two or you just start two wide receivers, that's incredibly different than a league where you have to start three. Or can you flex a tight end? These are things that you need to know before you go into your draft, because you want to have all that stuff locked in. And I was sitting there, I was wondering, you know, for a while, like, why am I not doing so well in one of these home leagues? And it was because I didn't realize, like, oh, yeah, you know what? There's just two wide receivers. I should get a second running back before I get a third wide receiver. And I started paying off. Yeah. No, exactly. I had a draft where I had three wide receivers and a flex. I'm like, well, I can just load up on wide receivers because I can potentially start four of them in this league. Maybe not go so heavy. On the running back position. For me, I think we always talk about drafting defenses and you obviously want to wait a long time to do that, but when people do, you generally look at the quality of the defense, hey, the Jets, they're good, the Browns are good, the Niners are good. Let me draft them. Don't think that way because chances are you're going to go through a lot of defenses over the course of the season. You're probably going to stream the position. Think short term. Look at the first 2 or 3 weeks of the season, see what the matchups are, and use that as the defense you pick. If you see a defense that's going against several bad offenses, that's maybe who you lean into, because chances are in a few weeks you're going to switch it out for somebody else, and you're the defense you have in week one is probably going to the defense you have in week