IDP Analysis: Planning for the Draft

Welcome back to our weekly IDP article, which will run through the end of the NFL regular season. As always, the July and August articles will give advice for draft preparation while the in-season articles will help owners identify players with potential for elevated performances in their weekly matchups.

To kick off our preseason series, draft strategy is a great place to start. As always, this is an article that will try to help as many IDP players as possible, but with varying league sizes and rules, it's not always possible to serve everyone equally. It goes without saying that it's vital to be fully cognizant of your scoring system and roster requirements. If you're in a situation that these articles fail to address, feel free to post a question below or reach out to me on Twitter @jimcoventryNFL.

For those who are in the most common type of IDP league where each team drafts a defensive lineman, a linebacker, a defensive back and a flex, you may consider going with the streaming approach all season. In this case, you'll realize there are plenty of  defensive linemen and defensive backs available at the end of drafts, and there's no need to reach for any of them. The one position you may choose to draft a bit earlier is linebacker because most owners will also use a linebacker as a flex, so potentially 24 of the top linebackers will be drafted. That could cause the pool of top backers to dry up more quickly than we'd like.

If going this route, you will find that other owners often have to cut their solid IDP starters when the bye weeks begin because they can't afford to drop offensive players, and if you're aggressive on the waiver wire, you often can add high-level IDPs after their bye week and have them on your roster for the rest of the season. Many IDP leagues with this roster configuration don't allow for deep benches, and you'll find that it's much easier to drop a defensive player on their bye weeks than it is to drop an offensive player. If that's the case, and if you spend higher draft picks on defensive players, you'll want to put a premium on drafting IDPs with bye weeks that fall later in the season, so you don't have to drop them a few weeks after drafting them. It's a terrible feeling when an owner realizes he can't afford to drop an offensive player and therefore cuts an IDP with a Week 4 bye, only to sweat out the waiver wire the following week, hoping to reclaim the player (and some leagues won't even let owners put a claim in on a player they dropped within the week).

In leagues where many IDPs are drafted — usually multiple players at each position — you'll want to pay close attention to future editions of this article and/or load a RotoWire cheat sheet. The articles will be especially helpful because we'll go over ADP data and show where we have players ranked significantly higher than the consensus. The last couple years, fantasy owners have been able to take advantage of these values to wait on addressing IDPs while using higher picks to address other roster needs. If you don't use our upcoming ADP articles, a cheat sheet from the RotoWire site will be helpful, as you'll be able to identify players who aren't household names that we have ranked to perform well.

Also, this preseason is obviously going to be odd. Not only is there a chance that no preseason games are played at all, but the NFL has already put limits on the numbers of reporters who can be at team facilities. In addition, there are very restrictive guidelines as to what information reporters will be able to share. The main issue is that it'll be difficult to know if any players are making moves up the depth chart, especially rookies who were drafted in the later rounds who are off of everyone's radar. We usually can count on rookies playing in the preseason games, which normally helps fantasy owners to identify these players on the rise. That said, RotoWire is very well equipped to make the most out of any information that is provided, as we have fantasy beat writers for each team, and their knowledge of the depth charts will help this article provide the best updated information possible.

Thanks for checking in this week, and we'll kick off our ADP series with the defensive linemen next week.