How to Use Your MVP Board

Draft Sharks installed the customized online MVP Draft Board to give you an advantage over the competition. But the MVP Board won't guarantee you a winning team by itself. Time to add some strategy and outwit the other fantasy owners...

By Lenny Pappano, DraftSharks.com

Don't bury your face in a laptop at the draft. Keep your eyes and ears open. Chat people up, look for tells, spot the trends. Study the big board. Drafting is as much an art as it is a science – it's not as easy as crossing names off a board and picking the highest rated player remaining. Drafting a championship team is more of a finesse game. Here are 7 basic draft guidelines that will help you build an air-tight fantasy roster:

** Disparities in MVP totals of less than 10 or 15 points are insignificant.

This is true (and important) for one simple reason. Nobody -- including yours truly -- can count on their player projections being 100% on the mark with every single player. In fact, you should be glad if you get a disparity of only 10 or 15 points between your projections and the actual final production of a player. That's some pretty good prognosticating. In any event, your MVP Draft Board might have 5 or 6 players separated by only 10 or 15 MVP points. You should consider those players to be practically equal in value when drafting. The question of which of those 5 or 6 players you should draft when faced with that choice is a bit more subjective. In those cases, look first at your team needs, and try to fill out a starting player on your roster -- IF there is a "tier" between a particular player you need, and the rest of the players at his position.

Here's what I mean. Let's say you're in a league that starts 1 QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs and 1 TE. You're in the 5th round and you've already selected 2 RBs and 2 WRs. You're looking at the next 5 players -- and only 10 points separate them all. It's seemingly a toss-up. You study your MVP Draft Board and you notice that the #6 guy still on your board is Jermichael Finley. Rob Gronkowski, Jimmy Graham, Antonio Gates, Jason Witten, and Aaron Hernandez are all gone. Finley is head and shoulders above his remaining TE peers as indicated by the "tier" you see on your Draft Board. Even though he's the 6th guy on your board behind a handful of RBs and WRs, Finley is your pick. That's because there will be a much greater drop-off (tier) between him and the rest of the remaining TEs. In other words, if you pass on a top-tier TE at this point you're not as likely to get another top-tier TE with your next pick. However, if you pass on a RB like Cedric Benson or a WR like DeSean Jackson at this point, you're likely to get a comparable player at either of those positions in the next round.

** Weigh the intangibles.

Let's assume again that you're looking at 3 or 4 possible players for your 5th round pick. In this example, you've decided to take a WR -- and your Draft Board tells you that 3 WRs are within 10 MVP points, which is to say they are virtually identical. Should you always select the guy with the highest projections? Not necessarily. At this point you should weigh some intangibles regarding your 3 prospects. Look at their age, their team (winning vs. losing), injury history, attitude (are they a head case?), their schedules, their surrounding personnel (new coach, coordinator or playbook to adjust to?), etc. When you start to look at the intangibles, you'll probably find one guy that distinguishes himself.

** Draft for upside.

This is an important point. Again, say that you're looking at your Draft Board, and you have Anquan Boldin and Denarius Moore rated within 10 points of each other. In fact, let's assume you have Boldin ranked ahead of Moore. Here is a place where you might want to ignore the board and draft for upside. You can assume Boldin is good for 800 yards and 6 TDs this coming season. But he's probably not capable of producing much more than that. By contrast, say you've projected Moore to get 750 yards and 5 TDs. But maybe - just maybe - he punches out 1,000 yards and 8 scores. Moore is not the clear go-to guy in his offense, but he has the talent to bust out. In short, Moore could flop and wind up below the more proven Boldin, but he also has more potential for a breakout year. Yes, you'll need some safe "blue-chip" picks to give your team stability. But you also need a few "growth stocks" or upside picks to increase your chance for higher returns.

** Know where players are ranked by Yahoo, CBS, ESPN, FF Index & other mags.

The science of drafting is as simple as this: You want to get value at every pick; you want to select a player BELOW his prior final season ranking. If you got QB Matt Stafford in the 7th round last year, you got great value for your pick. That is to say, you drafted a player far below his final preseason ranking. But if you took him in the 3rd round last year (hopefully you didn't) then you didn't get much "value" out of that pick. Of course, it's easy to make this observation in hindsight. But by doing player projections, you are in essence saying Player X will finish the year as the # 5 QB (or whatever the case is). Now, to draft for value, you have to select him after 5 QBs have been taken. And the farther he falls in the draft, the more valuable he becomes to your team. But to get the most value out of a pick, you need to know what others are thinking. Study where the magazines have these players ranked. For the most part, the "herd" will follow these fantasy books that went to press in May. That gives you the chance to steal players in later rounds.

WARNING: Don't always reach for players and ruin value. For instance, if you have Julio Jones ranked as your #8 WR, but you know that most magazine cheat sheets have him ranked around #15, there is no sense in drafting him after 7 WRs have been taken. You can probably wait until 12 or 13 WRs have been chosen and still safely get him. By waiting, you lessen the likelihood of hurting your draft in the event that you're wrong about Jones. The longer you wait to draft a player, the greater his value becomes.

** Track the overall draft and pay attention to other owners' needs.

This is a simple strategy to help your draft -- but so many people neglect to do it. If you're paying attention to the positions other owners have already filled (or still have empty) you can use that knowledge to your advantage by either selecting or passing on a particular player. Here's a simple example. Let's say you're picking 8th in a 10-man league. You're on the clock and you're torn between taking a RB or a WR who are roughly equal in MVP points. You're leaning toward the RB, but you're worried the WR you're considering won't be there when you pick again 5 slots later. You take a look at who the #9 and #10 owners have already drafted and you see each already has their starting RBs - but neither has a WR. The smart play for you at this point is to take the WR knowing that the owners who pick next will very likely pass on RBs and take WRs. Chances are that the RB you are coveting will fall to you at your next pick. It's easy to track a draft in most leagues because they use a big board to display all the players taken in each round. Even if there's not a big board, you should privately track selections and hope some guys in your league aren't paying attention to what others picked. You'll be surprised at how many guys are forced into "panic" picks because they're not paying attention to what position needs their opponents have or don't have.

** Kickers have high point totals but low MVP point totals.

Historically, kickers score a lot of points, but their relative value (MVP points) is low. In most seasons no single kicker typically performs head and shoulders above the rest. David Akers thumped all the other kickers pretty good this past year, but that's more mirage than trend. Furthermore, kickers are the hardest position for which to do accurate projections. For example, in 2011, based on average draft position, the top-5 kickers were projected to be Nate Kaeding, Sebastian Janikowski, Mason Crosby, Steve Gostkowski, and Alex Henery. At the end of the year, the final top-5 kickers were David Akers, John Kasay, Steve Gostkowski, Mason Crosby, and Dan Bailey. And it's usually not even that close! A lot of you sit back in your chair after the first 9-10 rounds and say to yourself, “I'm going to zig where they zag, I'll take the #1 kicker so that I have a top guy at his position.” Please don't do that. Not only is your #1 rated kicker not going to be the #1 rated kicker, but even if by some miracle he does finish #1, he will only have maybe 20 more fantasy points than the 10th best kicker. Bottom line: Draft kicker(s) with your last couple picks, and then monitor the free-agent wire for a hot one coming out early.

** Grab those valuable backups.

This is a sort of no-brainer move when you're dealing with mega-prolific offensive teams. Everyone who drafts Arian Foster should strongly consider Ben Tate. He's fairly cheap and we know he'd be a productive player if Foster went down. But the real fun starts when you start taking OTHER people's backups. Whoever drafts Chris Johnson will be eyeing Javon Ringer to cover his rear end – but that Johnson-owner might hate to spend a 10th rounder on insurance. So he might wait a round to see if Ringer slips to him. Knowing this, you could snap Ringer off -- take him just before the other guy does. Do that and you'll have some nice trade bait. I'll guarantee your league rival will overpay to get Ringer "back" on his team if Johnson gets dinged. Plus it's great fun to see your buddy get ticked off!

Remember, "Championships are won on draft day!" So I hope these tips help you and -- Happy Drafting!