Fantasy Football Strategy #1: Tiering Positions

I'm finally all moved in, and things are starting to get back to normal.  I now have the Internet at home (2 weeks seems like an eternity), and can now go on a Fantasy Football binge until the season starts.

I'm not going to go into specific rankings, as they are very subjective based on the league.  I know we have one draft tomorrow night (friendly reminder to those in the Stampede Blue league), and its scoring is much different than the draft I had on Saturday.  What I will do is go through some strategies to help you along with creating the best team possible, hopefully to win you some money, if you are in to those sorts of things.

The first strategy to remember is to Tier Each Position.  Each position will have its own tiering structure, and each tier can have anywhere from 3 to 8 guys in each one.  Having this information will make your draft much easier.  Here are some examples from my draft this past weekend:

• Quarterbacks seemed relatively easy to tier.  This league is a keeper league, and the 4 Tier 1 QBs were already kept from last season (Brady, Peyton, Romo, and Brees).  The second tier included Palmer, McNabb, Roethlisberger, and Eli.  I wanted to make sure I grabbed one of those guys, but didn't want to to grab one too early.  Knowing ahead of time that those 4 guys would all be relatively similar, I was good getting any of them.  As each round went on, 5, then 6, then 7, and only Palmer had been chosen.  In the mean time, I got to load up on RBs and WRs, which is always a good idea.  I then grabbed Eli after Roethlisberger was chosen.  Had I not tiered guys, I probably would have taken a QB 3 rounds earlier, when there was no need to.
• Tight End is also very important to tier.  There are only a handful of TEs that are viable fantasy starters.  After I had taken Eli, there were no longer any Tier 1 or 2 TEs left, which I was ok with.  There were 4 guys who are still decent plays, and again I wanted to make sure to grab one, but not too early.  I got to wait until Round 12 before taking Greg Olsen.  Again, had I not tiered, I probably would have taken a TE way too early. Instead, I got to pad my lineup with more RBs and WRs, which (hopefully) will help my team later on.

Tiering is really easy to do, and is extremely helpful when your draft comes around.  It helps make your picks for you, at least position wise.  Your league scoring will tell you which guy to take (more on this later this week).