The Basics 

More than 30 million U.S. citizens play fantasy football every year. And no matter how popular fantasy football is, there are still the first timers out there who need a concise guide to conquer the world of fantasy football drafts. This article is an attempt to resolve this problem and guide enthusiasts, so that, they can play with confidence. Fantasy football is a virtual game where players make up fake teams with real football players, primarily based on their performance in the field. The fake teams compete with one another, and the fake team, which scores highest points, becomes the winner. Both luck and strategy play a big role when it comes to winning the fantasy league. To come up with a strategy, the players need to have a proper plan in place. Players spend on an average twelve hours in a week to prepare their fake teams. Over this, they also need to keep up with any situation that would require modifications to the team structure.

How to Play

As the competition is fierce, seeking out advice is vital to winning at this game. If a player doesn’t know simple rules and is unsure of how to begin with selecting football players, then it becomes necessary that a new comer learns the ropes of fantasy football quickly and master the moves. Some people work for ESPN, CBS Sports and other major sports websites who track and analyze the football player statistics. Other independent researchers rank players, on the basis of their performance and predict their future performance. For guidance, enthusiasts can follow these experts and select players accordingly. But keep in mind that speculations decide the rankings. There are websites like fantasypros.com, which provides the average of all experts’ rankings on football players. Narrow down on the analysts and websites that provide rankings and choose the football player based on data points provided. Another important thing is to keep track of players; bye week. When a team is on a week off from the field, the players cannot score with those football players in the fantasy football game. Above all, practice is the key and breaking few rules to check what works is essential. Players should prepare themselves to take the risk along if they intend to win. To make things easy, one can use apps to play the fantasy games such as DRAFT. The apps are a great way to keep track of opponents and make playing fun and intuitive.

Fantasy Football Trends for 2017

The training camps for fantasy football have started by July, and many players are doing mock drafts week after week. Players who want to have maximum exposure are playing against fantasy experts. PPR is the choice of format for mocks among the players.

For 2017, the predictions point that the quarterbacks are deep and hence players should avoid picking them early. To pick quarterbacks the safest time is after the third round. For 2017, there is still uncertainty with running backs. It did not work for 2016, and same holds true for this year as well. Therefore, before selecting running backs make sure of addressing quarterback and tight end first. Deciding on the kicker and the defense early on will bring good results for the year 2017. Placing these players appropriately will stand as a good strategy. There have been some injuries off and on fields. Hence, the players need to keep an eye on the health of football players before selecting.