What is the Fantasy Football Draft Buddy?
The Draft Buddy is your PDA (personal draft assistant). If you're like the estimated 80% of players out there who simply look at the rankings of sites like ESPN, NFL.com, and Yahoo, you're at a disadvantage right from the start. Those sites are great and offer exceptional content, however there's a better way of doing this. The Nerd aggregates all those rankings as well as quite a few from some other incredible sources you may not be familiar with to produce a cumulative rank. The value for you is a significant time savings!
YES - it's a free tool for you to use.
Where Do I Begin?
To begin, make sure you've created a free acount (or sign in if you've already created an account).
Visit the Draft Buddy and create a buddy. You can create multiple draft buddies if you like (ie, one for testing, one for your Yahoo! league, one for your FleaFlicker league, etc). You create a Draft Buddy by telling us how many starters you have to have on your team. This helps the Draft Buddy know what to look for when analyzing bye week coverage for the season.
My Draft Buddy has been created. Now what?
Now select the "Draft Icon" next to the draft you just created. This will launch the Draft Buddy for this particular draft.
The Draft Buddy is designed to assist you during your draft regardless of which league software you use. The key is to keep up with all the picks being made in your draft. This allows the Draft Buddy to help make recommendations to you.
Familiarize yourself with the Draft Buddy
Section 1: This is the holding area for available players to draft from. You can sort by position or show the top 20 available players. The rank of the players is based upon the cumulative rankings from multiple fantasy football sites across the web. As other players in your league make their draft selections, find that player and click on the "Pick" link. A new highlighted area will display beneath the player's name asking who drafted this player. Select the appropriate answer. Selecting "Someone Else" will remove that player from the available list. Selecting "I did" will move that player onto your roster and the Bye Week Analyzer kicks in to determine how this player's addition affects your team during those crucial bye weeks.
- Section 2: Your Bye Week Analyzer is here. Have you ever been in the middle of a draft and realized that your last three picks are all studs...and all on the same bye week? Ouch. The Analyzer displays a color-coded chart to show you whether or not you have sufficient coverage over these weeks. It will always start out red, however, as you add players to your roster, you'll notice certain positions and weeks turn green to display that you have sufficient coverage that week for that position. The top will display the number of players at each position that you have currently drafted.
- Section 3: Here's your team. Every player you draft will be listed here.
That's It!
It's a simple concept (slightly more complicated behind the scenes) and it's free to use for as many drafts as you like!