It’s time to get into your preparation for the draft. For every draft I do whether it be face-to-face, online or via Skype I ALWAYS make my own draft book.

So what is a draft book you ask? It can be whatever you want it to be. For me, I take a standard three ring binder and a set of tabs and go to work. I keep my draft book real simple. All I include in it is basically items I have already included in this Draft Guide you are reading. These items include: Up to date NFL Depth Charts, a breakdown of the league scoring system, a copy of the NFL schedule and my own personal rankings with bye weeks listed. Then I punch holes in them, put them into the binder and voila! My draft book is complete.  Nothing too fancy or elegant. But then again, I am an old school type of fella.

If you are a modern man or woman and would prefer to make a draft book online, I say go for it. I would recommend a simple Excel spreadsheet or Word document that you add pages to. Since it is very easy to copy/paste into those programs you should have no trouble putting them together. Most of your favorite fantasy sites including ours have buttons that you can click and download data into Word, Excel or PDF file formats.       

At this point I absolutely know that you are not impressed with this strategy and may have already skipped ahead to the next one. Good. This strategy is for those of you who are willing to spend that little bit of extra time to be ahead of the competition. You have to know that there is no bigger strategy than preparation. The more you prepare for a draft, a season or contest the better you are going to perform.

So why should you make a draft book? There are several very important reasons. For starters, you absolutely MUST have a copy of your own rankings or if you are going to use mine be sure to print out the latest ones from the online guide at Fantasy Alarm. Whatever you do in this life PLEASE do not rely on the default rankings on the commissioner sites. These are absolutely awful and will lead you down the path of destruction.

Making your own rankings allows you to become familiar with the players and to actually form an opinion on which players you like in what spots. This is incredibly useful because each draft is like a snowflake in that no two are exactly alike. By going through and doing your own rankings you are basically training yourself for every potential decision that you will have to make. It will also save you so much time and help you draft the team you REALLY want by following along on your own hand made rankings (or those of your favorite fantasy analyst). Plus as you mark off the already drafted players on your own spreadsheet you become more aware of the trends and runs happening during your draft. 

Also, make sure that your rankings are deep. Your rankings need to be at least 220 players deep for a standard 12 team league. A basic rule of thumb for this is 35 QB’s, 50 RB’s, 80 WR’s, 25 TE’s, 15 Kickers & 15 Defenses. I usually go much deeper than this even in a 12 team league but this breakdown would be enough to at least get you by.

Feel free to improvise with your draft book as well. I always include the latest depth charts, a copy of the full season NFL schedule and a copy of my leagues rules & scoring system. But other data points can come in handy as well. Last year’s PFF advanced player ratings or Football Outsiders DVOA tables are a couple that come to mind. If you think any bit of information will help you make one selection better than it is completely worth the effort.

Sure you can open up multiple windows with this info for online drafts but having just these basic items in front of you vastly slows the draft down for you. Plus, what if you are at a live draft and they have limited or God forbid no Wi-Fi? Or if you are doing an online draft and you keep getting kicked off or have lag issues? If you are doing live drafts you should consider putting keeper lists, consistency rankings, target reports and anything else that you may want to look at before putting that sticker on the board.