This is a great time for fantasy players. There are new articles in the FantasyAlarm Draft Guide every single day, and everywhere you look, people are offering advice and opinions on how to win your fantasy league. Of course, with all of the good advice there can be a lot of nonsense, so we are here to help you sort through the things that sound good but have little basis in what we like to call reality.

Most of these myths can be summed up simply by pointing out the NFL season is far more unpredictable than we think it is in July and August. Teams that appear poised for a playoff run will finish at the bottom of their division while a few surprise teams will play well into January. Anyone who tells you there are hard and fast rules that dictate player evaluation or fantasy strategy is wrong. Here are some of the most egregious fantasy myths you will find perpetuated leading up to fantasy drafts.

He is clearly better than his competition and will get all of the playing time and all of the touches.

Anyone who has played fantasy for any length of time should understand good players get buried on the depth chart behind (or wind up in timeshares with) bad players all of the time. Just because every fantasy player has decided Kenneth Dixon is the best running back in Baltimore doesn’t make it so. And even if he is clearly better than Danny Woodhead and Terrance West, the Baltimore coaching staff could have any number of reasons for limiting his touches. Bad players get a lot of run every single year, and it is foolish to ignore the risk for shared time even in a situation where you think there should be a clear number one.

He looks great in camp.

This is basically just the stand-in for all of the garbage coaches feed local beat reporters in the offseason. First of all, everyone looks good in camp. Secondly, except for purposes of motivation, coaches have little reason to tell reporters anything that isn’t positive. Inevitably, some of it will turn out to be true, but that almost certainly makes up a smaller percentage than you think. More importantly, it is nearly impossible to separate what is real from what isn’t. Moving every training camp darling up your draft board is a good way to find yourself out of contention by Columbus Day.

They wouldn’t have drafted him so high if they weren’t going to play him.

It is awesome and hilarious to go back and think about some of the players who were overdrafted for fantasy on the back of this myth: Bishop Sankey, T.J. Yeldon, Eric Ebron, Paul Richardson, Cordarelle Patterson, Tavon Austin, Laquon Treadwell and so on. The biggest problem with this argument is a lot of high draft picks turn out to not be very good. All of the above players may have been penciled into big roles when they were drafted, but those plans would have changed when it became clear they weren’t good at football.

That, of course, assumes these players were drafted with a specific role in mind, which isn’t necessarily the case. Maybe the Bengals selected Joe Mixon because they thought he was the best player available. Maybe they drafted him because Jeremy Hill is an unrestricted free agent after the 2017 season. Yes, they could have drafted him with the idea he would clearly be the best back on their team and someone they would give the ball to 20 times per game, but we don’t know that and neither does anybody else.

Also, most coaches don’t care where a player was drafted. Mike Zimmer is probably coaching for his job. If he and his coaches think Latavius Murray gives his team a better chance to win than Dalvin Cook, then Murray is going to play. Maybe Cook’s draft status earns him more run late in the season if the Vikings fall out of contention, but that will be cold comfort for fantasy players who reached for him in their drafts.

They will be behind so they will have to throw.

This may be a more common myth during the season, when people look at a certain matchup and think they can predict how the game will go (they can’t) but it is a popular justification in the preseason for taking quarterbacks or receivers on teams we believe will be bad. Like most popular fantasy myths, there is some truth to this one. Sometimes teams get down big and throw in an ill-fated effort to catch up, and their quarterbacks and receivers rack up fantasy points as a result. Sometimes they don’t. This line of thinking was great for the Jacksonville passing game in 2015 but didn’t work out at all for those same players in 2016. Another problem with this myth is, as mentioned above, we don’t actually know which teams will be behind and throwing. Maybe the Bears defense will be good enough to keep the offense in games, so you don’t get many three-touchdown fourth quarters. The point is, we don’t really know.

Don’t Draft Players on Bad Teams.

This myth stands in direct contrast to the previous one, which is one of the great things about these myths. Obviously one of them has to be a myth, and the real problem is we don’t know in any given situation if it is a myth. For every DeAndre Hopkins, Allen Robinson or Todd Gurley who is held back by a bad team, you have an Adrian Peterson, Tyrelle Pryor or Melvin Gordon who produces for fantasy despite or even as a result of playing for a bad team. The Bears were one of the worst teams in the NFL last season, and that didn’t prevent Jordan Howard from rushing for 1313 yards and six touchdowns.

The list of good players on good teams is short, and after the first few rounds, there won’t be very many left. Pretty soon, you have to choose between good players in bad situations and players with less talent in better situations. It seems obvious betting on talent to win out is a better strategy than hoping the situation remains as good as we think it will be.

Guys in his situation haven’t done well in the past.

The poster child for this myth may be Jon Ross. The Bengals haven’t had a number two receiver go over 65 receptions or 862 yards since A.J. Green got there, and fantasy players will use that fact to devalue Jon Ross. The same argument has been leveled against Martellus Bennett because the Packers haven’t had a tight end go over 510 receiving yards since 2012. Any argument about how a head coach, offensive coordinator or quarterback likes to use his weapons falls under the purview of this myth.

The reason this is a myth is it presumes offensive weapons are interchangeable and NFL decision makers are dumb. Martellus Bennett is pretty clearly better than the tight ends Aaron Rodgers has had to throw to since Jermichael Finley left, and Ross doesn’t exactly have a high bar to clear to be better than guys like Brandon LaFell and Mohammad Sanu who previously held the number two spot opposite A.J. Green. Most quarterbacks and offensive coordinators are pretty smart, and if Ross is good, he will probably get the ball. The same goes for Martellus Bennett and countless other players in new situations.

Draft this position in this round, or not before this round, but definitely within this range of rounds.

One of the best things you can do in a fantasy draft or auction is to remain flexible. You never know when a good quarterback will fall or a run of running backs will leave the position barren. If you are locked into a specific strategy like going RB-RB at the start or drafting a kicker last, you will almost certainly miss out on some value picks as the draft goes along.

There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with waiting on quarterbacks and tight ends, but those strategies are becoming so popular, you can feel pretty confident at least one prominent quarterback and tight end is going to fall. If Jordan Reed or Andrew Luck fall to the seventh round, you should be prepared to pounce.

The same is true, to a lesser extent, of defenses and kickers. Waiting on those positions is usually the best strategy, but not always. In deep leagues with deep benches, taking one of the top defenses (but not the first one off the board) can be smart. The chances of actually getting a top-five defense may not be great, but there is value in locking in a defense you can start most weeks so that you don’t have to mess around with defenses on the waiver wire.

Similarly, there are situations where it is worth it to reach a round on a kicker. Let’s say you get to the last two rounds of your draft and you need to draft a kicker and a backup tight end. There are three tight ends you think are all virtually the same, and little chance all three will get taken before your last pick. In that situation, go ahead and reach for Justin Tucker or Matt Bryant and take your tight end last. You aren’t necessarily getting a better kicker than you would have in the last round, but there isn’t any opportunity cost when you don’t care which tight end you wind up with.

Avoid Players with the Same Bye Week.

A lot of smart fantasy players don’t even include bye weeks on their cheat sheets so they can avoid the temptation of succumbing to this myth in the heat of the moment. This myth makes a few suppositions that are just wrong.

First of all, we have to assume the players in question will all be on your roster and healthy when bye weeks roll around. Between injuries, trades and poor performance, there is a significant chance several of your draftees won’t even be relevant during bye weeks.

Secondly, it assumes you want to field as strong a lineup as possible every single week. There is a lot to be said for stacking bye weeks so that you (probably) lose once and then (presumably) have an advantage over your opponent during all of the other bye weeks.

Lastly, avoiding overlapping bye weeks presupposes the difference between the next player on your board and the next player on your board with a different bye week is insignificant. It certainly could be, but what if it isn’t? Wouldn’t it be much better to simply make the best choices you can on draft day and then worry about bye weeks when they get much closer?

They fixed their offensive line in the offseason

Offensive lines are messy and complicated. Throwing a lot of money and draft capital at an offensive line does not necessarily make it good. Just look at the Vikings or Broncos from last season. In a vacuum, it is probably better for a team with a poor offensive line to try to make improvements rather than just rolling with the same terrible team, but much like the strength of schedule, we have little idea which offensive lines will actually be better and which will be worse. The Browns’ offensive line should be improved, but by how much? Just as importantly, how long will it take? One of the reasons offensive lines are difficult to predict is because all five linemen have to work together along with the tight end and the running backs to open up holes and protect the quarterback. Simply adding talent doesn’t mean the line will work well together, and even if the line does gel, it may not be until your fantasy team is already out of contention.

Strength of Schedule

There will be an entire article devoted to the strength of schedule myth, but it is worth touching on briefly here. The NFL is wildly unpredictable from year to year, which is one reason it is so popular. Even so, fantasy players ignore that fact when they try to look ahead at matchups during the season. Most fantasy players expected Carolina’s defense to be a tough matchup last season, and they were, but not until they were run over by mediocre offenses for the first half of the season. This happens every single year. Don’t fall for it. And if we don’t know in August which teams are going to be good in September, we certainly don’t know who is going to have favorable playoff matchups. That shouldn’t even be a consideration before the season starts.