An interesting approach is going viral on the internet for all fantasy football fans, giving many players a new strategy for the fantasy draft.
by Mike Stiefelhagen
The thrill will soon begin again. For many, fantasy football is a nice management game to play on the side. But enough football fanatics define a season full of (mis)success and fun in this way.
There is a lot of malice among friends, acquaintances or work colleagues when things aren’t going well. And an important foundation for a fun or stressful fantasy year with your friends and family is laid in the fantasy draft.
There are countless articles about possible draft strategies, but the iron rule is: don’t draft a quarterback too early and, above all, go for running backs in the first rounds, as they are harder to get.
After all, almost every team only uses one, maybe two RBs per offense on a regular basis, while each offense needs significantly more receivers. Therefore, a running back seems to be more valuable – perhaps for now.
The so-called “ZERO RB STRATEGY” is circulating on the Internet, which is said to promise statistically proven success.
Fantasy Football: Was ist die “Zero RB Strategy”
The strategy comes from a self-proclaimed fantasy expert from the “RotoViz” platform, but this approach, which is statistically backed up by many numbers, spread rapidly on the Internet. The strategy is said to have been tested – successfully – in over a hundred leagues. The origins of this strategy date back more than ten years, but it was almost forgotten and has now been dug out again.
Accordingly, four wide receivers and one tight end should be signed in the first five rounds of the fantasy draft.
Only then should you focus on possible breakout candidates, receiving RBs or, in an emergency, backup running backs.
The background: the susceptibility to injury and the distribution of points. While RBs only get yards through touches, receivers would bring much more through catches and runs. RBs are also more susceptible to injury and choosing a 2nd RB could pay off in a long season if the starter gets injured.
It would therefore be more lucrative to take 4-5 top receivers than to take two starting RBs at the beginning, who are more likely to be out at some point than a WR.
Fantasy Football: What the statistics say
The predictions in the game are statistically more likely to match the receivers’ points than the running backs’. At least according to his theory.
If you want to implement the strategy correctly, you can actually not draft a RB at all and only then get two players via the wire or through trades, since the rest of the roster has so much good material. Statistically, the most effective fantasy RBs in most leagues were second or even third round picks, which at least underlines the fact that you don’t necessarily have to draft a RB in the first round, as many people think.
In addition, receivers selected after the 100th pick in the draft have only had a five percent chance of being among the top 20 receivers in the league over the last four years. In summary, this means that the probability of drafting an unknown or easy back-up RB in the late rounds who will take off is higher than for receivers.
The strategy also says that if everyone else is fighting over the RBs, you could go for the WRs and position yourself for the long term. It should be noted that the bigger the league, the more difficult it is to implement this strategy, as many RBs are gone more quickly and you might not even get the backups in the end.
An “X” thread by Eric Moody even lists possible players for this strategy this year.
