Annual Fantasy Football Callout & Advice

Good morning/afternoon/evening to all wherever this finds you! Do you know a Colts fan that plays fantasy football? Share this with them?

It’s your good friend Jared Malott (who was almost late to work trying to type this up — I looked down just in time) and if you’d like, you can send an e-mail to jared.stampedeblue@gmail.com and I will add you to an upcoming Stampede Blue fantasy football league of your choice. Here’s how I’ll do it. I like to be a part of each league so you know you’ve one person taking it seriously (I didn’t say I’m the ringer!). Our Staff draft is Wednesday, September 7th AKA the night before the first regular season game and a holy day for me. I use these leagues to prepare for that draft, so how about we do a draft a day for a week leading up to my Staff draft? We’re only playing for pride here.

If I was loaded, I’d just buy and give Stampede Blue swag to each league champion. Maybe one day the site will give me a budget for fantasy football league champion trophies and prizes. I’ll ask the powers that be. Unless you find out from me otherwise, plan to play for free and for fun!

I’m offering to do one draft per day from August 31st through September 6th either before or after work meaning after 7am EST or after work for me which is after 7pm EST. You can absolutely leave your preference in the comments, but please don’t leave your e-mail in the comments. Send me and e-mail and let me know what day works best for you. Until I have more information, your options are morning or evening one of the days below. If I have to do 14 drafts to get everyone in, I’ll do it! For now let’s work on getting 10-11 people per day!

All you have to do is send me an e-mail with the day you’d like to be added to and whether you’d like the morning or afternoon on that day.

Wednesday, August 31st

Thursday, September 1st

Friday, September 2nd

Saturday, September 3rd

Sunday, September 4th

Monday, September 5th

Tuesday, September 6th

I try to keep the leagues to 10-12 members each year to year and try to keep the league members rotating to avoid it getting stale. I figure we are about a month away from regular season games. This is a good time to decide whether you want to be a part of a Stampede Blue PPR fantasy football league with fellow Stampede Blue, Indianapolis Colt and fantasy football fans alike!

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, please let me impart some advice for those of you drafting for the first time that maybe some of you that are veterans of this game will pick up a tip or two.

First things first, the key to success is repetition and coordination. This means yes, the more you draft, the more little things you’ll notice like if the same player keeps getting overlooked draft after draft, you can use that knowledge you gain from experience to get a leg up on your fellow league members. I encourage you to practice drafting, to try different leagues and not to get too tied to a team, a player or players especially if you’re participating in multiple leagues.

In terms of coordination, I implore you to know the time, date and style of fantasy football draft you’re doing so that the information you use to suggest possible picks can be based on the material you have handy. I’d like to add this: you don’t have to use the default draft order on the application your draft happens on! Hopefully I’m not introducing you to https://jayzheng.com/ff/#/draft-aid and http://www.borischen.co/ for the first time as I write this article every year. I like having the highest quality information available to me. You know what’s way better than a default draft list you get on ESPN that isn’t built for your league specifically? What if you just had the list based on the data over millions of drafts in your format as a cheat sheet? Look no further.

Keep in mind I’m not telling you what site to draft on. They’re all terrible and I’ve found ESPN to be the least so. I’m telling you that the information you’re using to make your draft picks could improve. Use these aids I’ve linked above. Additionally, please heed my warning. Don’t draft a kicker or defense until the last two rounds of your draft. You probably don’t need to draft a 2nd TE or QB unless you waited too long to draft one and are willing to play those positions by committee (you will lose by doing that just FYI). Again, no K or DEF until the last two rounds. No duplicated TE/QB unless you don’t believe in drafting relative to average draft position and have doo-doo at the position otherwise (think Drew Lock and Carson Wentz). I can’t help you if you don’t listen/read and then use the info I give you. As a general rule, priority should go RB/WR/TE/QB/DEF/K and it has a lot to do with the amount of productive touches a player gets. This year looks like RB heavy in the first round.

I’d like to produce more fantasy football content along with my DFS and sports betting content for the site and turn that into a podcast of its own or at least make some short videos. Would you like that? Let me know in the comments below!