Best Fantasy Football Draft Advice for Beginners

With USA Today reporting that nearly 30 million people played fantasy football in 2022 alone, it is clear that fantasy sports are more than a trend. If you, too, have been interested in getting involved in this fun pastime, we are here to help! We’ll go over regular fantasy and DFS with the best fantasy football draft advice for getting your first team going.

We have you covered with the best fantasy football draft advice whether you’re looking for traditional fantasy play or daily to weekly sprints. We’ll go over the top apps, top places to get daily news and advice, and overall strategies that are going to improve your game play.

Use our navigation links to quickly find the topic that most interests you at the stage you are at. This article has been geared more towards newcomers to the game, but can equally be used as a refresher if you are coming back to playing after a break or just want to find some new ideas for upping your skills. If you’re ready to play, check out our top DFS platforms.

• Daily vs. Traditional: Fantasy Football Draft Tips
• Fantasy Football Drafting Strategies
• Recommend Reading & Watching
• Final Thoughts

Daily vs. Traditional: Fantasy Football Draft Tips

Are you an absolute beginner? Then the first thing you might be wondering is how daily fantasy works versus traditional, season-long league play, and how fantasy football draft tips differ for both. No problem, let’s start with the basics.

Traditional Fantasy Football

League play, or traditional fantasy sports, is exactly that: a game that transpires over the entire season, with players available from across the league. Together with your fellow league players, you are going to draft your dream-teams. This phase is broken down into several steps.

First, there is preparation. Preparation is all of your research time. You are looking at the teams’ and players’ performance from the previous season, and reading analysis and predictions for the upcoming one. You will most likely choose your top picks, plus several backups you’d also be okay with, in case those players get drafted by someone else in your league. Once you have all of this prepared, you can go into your draft with confidence.

When the actual draft occurs, all players in a league (which typically ranges from 4 to 16 teams max, and often sits around 10 or 12) take turns picking their players. Since every player can only appear on one team in the league, this is where things get heated and your drafting order is important! However, drafts usually occur snake-style, with the last person to pick in one round starting off the pick in the next round and so on, until all of the teams are complete.

Another way that drafts sometimes occur in league play is via an auction. This is more similar to how DFS drafts work. In this case, every player has a budget they can spend, which means they will only get one or two elite players, with the rest of the team filled out by more mid-level players.

Once the draft is completed, the real sports season starts and likewise, the game begins for the fantasy players in earnest! Points are tracked, usually with automated tools to make it easy for everyone. With every game, points are added up and fantasy players are ranked week by week until the bitter end. At the end of the season, the winners of each league split up the prize pot that all other players paid into – and rightly celebrate!

Daily Fantasy Football

In daily fantasy, often abbreviated as DFS, the gameplay, and thus the strategy, is a little bit different. Daily fantasy happens, as the name suggests, either on a daily basis or sometimes on a weekly basis. The essential difference is that it is a shorter period of time than season-long leagues!

This is of course exciting for several reasons. DFS does not take quite as much preparation, because you can pretty much decide on your ideal team and stick with it, without needing too many backup choices. There is strategy at work because you still have a limited budget for buying players, but you aren’t competing with other players over your picks. This gives you more leeway to stick with favorite players and see them through.

Games and results are also over and determined much faster. This means you can put together a team and find out your results within a day, cashing in and cashing out much more quickly than traditional fantasy would allow. You can also play using multiple sports and shoot your shot many more times than in seasonal game play. This makes for a much more fast-paced and exciting approach overall, and might be recommended for complete beginners since you can easily try it out and see if fantasy is for you!

Now that the key differences between daily and traditional styles are clear, we’re ready to dive deep into fantasy football drafting strategies. Are you ready?

Fantasy Football Drafting Strategies

Since we’ve covered both daily and league football so far, we’ll likewise offer fantasy football drafting strategies for both sides of the equation. Here are the top tips for working on your fantasy league game:

• Know the rules of your league. Rules can vary significantly between leagues, so you’ll need to check: your scoring system, how many QBs are standard, how many teams in the league, scoring weight, time between picks in draft and draft style, at the bare minimum.
• Do a mock draft (or many). Mock drafting is a tool that allows you to see how others may pick based on ADP (Average Draft Position). To be clear, you do not want to base your picks on ADP alone. You need to outsmart this – and thus the majority of players – to get value throughout your draft, and to avoid losing out on your best players.
• Prioritize running backs over tight ends. TBs tend to get drafted early on, but ultimately they are not nearly as vital to your scoring as solid running backs are. Put your focus on finding the best RBs and snatch them up early on.
• Quarterbacks are important, too, and should be drafted fairly early on but not necessarily in the first few rounds. Stick with a tried-and-test QB, as rookies can sometimes let the team down. QBs are the highest-scoring players, and having a second or third QB will also earn you extra points in the bye week.
• Don’t put all your eggs into one basket. This is pretty solid advice for just about everything, but especially in league play. Don’t overdo it covering one position. Look for balance across your team in case of unforeseen situations – which do happen – like injuries or players underperforming.
• Likewise, aim for balance with standouts and consistent, stable performers. As much as you try to base your team on last year’s performance and predictions, the unexpected does occur. Don’t play it too risky, nor too conservatively, but find something in the middle.
• On that note, prepare for the unexpected! You might think you have all bases covered but then all of your backups are snatched by other players. Don’t panic. Have a plan B, C, and D ready and you’ll be golden!
• Like we said, we wouldn’t normally recommend using ADP, but when it comes to two positions, you can: Kicker and Defense. Players in these categories are not your priority and you can go with the consensus on these guys.
• Use confidence – and common sense! Be prepared and focused for your draft. This is not the time to pregame with a few cans, save that for watching the games! At the same time, go ahead and make bold choices. Other people might question them but that is not your concern. You win by setting the pace, not by following others.
• There are so many resources out there for learning more about fantasy football: Use them! We’ll share some more later in this article.
• Another great free source of information is the news. Watch games, watch highlights and watch analysis by professionals to stay on top of the latest developments every step of the way.
• Likewise, the NFL draft is a solid source of information, especially when it comes to new players! Use it as a reference point, but not a bible.

DFS Tips

It’s time to delve into Daily Fantasy. You will notice that some of the same information is helpful for both types of fantasy games, but of course daily fantasy brings with it its own particularities. DFS contests are quite different in how they operate, are scored, and pay out in comparison to league play, so you will want to understand these key variations.

• Cash vs. GPP (Grand Prize Pool): Firstly, understand the difference between cash contests and GPP contests. Some players prefer one over the other, but when you are starting out, we recommend trying cash games at first.
• Start with low bets. When playing cash games, you can try your hand with lots of $1 bets to start. This will help you with the inherent learning curve of getting used to DFS if you are a complete beginner. You can test different lineup strategies and see what plays out across one day, or several weeks, before making bigger bets.
• If you are participating in GPP contests, prepare to max enter. This means using the maximum number of entries allowed by the contest. The reality is most others will be doing this, so you do not have good odds playing against them if you only set up a handful of lineups compared to, let’s say, 100 lineups.
• You can also make the most of your max entries by playing low buy-in games like large-field tournaments (FanDuel offers these) where each lineup costs only 5 cents. Don’t waste your money putting one pricey entry into a competition where the others are max entering.
• Understand the scoring systems offered by FanDuel vs. DraftKings. There are key differences that mean some players will work really well within one system, but not yield as high returns in the other. For example, DraftKings offers bonus points for actions like 300+ yards passing and more.
• On that note, focus on just one platform to start with. You can always expand to another later on once you get the hang of things. Once you diversify, diversify your lineups, too, based on the rewards of that scoring system.
• A good way to learn is by playing with friends in head-to-head contests where you can select your opponent on the app. This way you learn strategy and don’t risk going up against extremely experienced players right away.
• Likewise, becoming part of the DFS community by joining forums, listening to podcasts, joining Twitch streams and so on are all good ways to learn while also having a fun time with other players. This will bring way more enjoyment to your experience and help you get better results, too.
• When it comes to choosing players, like in league play, you will want to look at projections and all of the news that’s out there. Of course, day-to-day news will be much more vital to you since you are drafting daily, so be sure to be up on the latest injuries and speculations.
• If you want to take DFS seriously, approach it analytically. Keep track of the bets you’ve made, what you’ve lost and what you’ve won. If you fail to see progress, you’ll have concrete evidence it’s time to switch up your strategy, or that you need to spend more time checking DFS resources.
• Take advantage of bonuses. This might not be as relevant for league players, but DFS players certainly can opt into amazing bonus deals from FanDuel, DraftKings and other providers. These are mostly available to first-time customers, so be sure to use them when you get the chance! It’s a perfect way to increase your earnings as a beginner, so don’t miss out on the opportunity while you can take it.
• Last but not least, go into playing with a clear goal and realistic expectations. Whether that goal is to make a bit of pocket money each week, pass time with friends, unwind after work or earn more serious cash – act accordingly when you play.

Recommend Reading & Watching

Honestly, the best fantasy football draft advice we can give is to read, watch and listen to everything you can to learn more about the game! If you are playing league style, the information we gave in section two is a pretty solid baseline for getting started in your first draft. You will need to do more research about players, but you’ll be ready to at least start coming up with a strategy.

However, when it comes to DFS, FanDuel and DraftKings offer so many different types of contests, it can be mind boggling to find which are for you and how they all work. We encourage you to take your time with this. It’s a lot to learn and there’s no need to rush in with big bets before you fully understand how it all works.

Therefore, for DFS especially, please do yourself a favor and get onto all of the resources that are out there. Most are completely free, and there are literally countless to choose from across YouTube, Twitch, podcasts, blogs and more. Some we can recommend are: the Fantasy Football Counselor, RotoGrinders, The Fantasy Footballers and Reddit (check out /dfssports).

Final Thoughts

We’re so excited that you are ready to try your hand at fantasy football! With our fantasy football draft tips, you are surely in for an astounding experience and we can’t wait to hear how it goes. If you have additional questions, check below to see if they have been answered already in our FAQ.