Eight tips for your first fantasy football draft, written the way we'd explain them to a friend running a draft for the first time. Each tip is an opinion from building draft kits and running boards, labeled as ours, with none of the ranking numbers you'll find elsewhere. Below the tips: a write-in planner for deciding when you draft each position, and three mistakes we see every season.
How to use this page: read the eight tips first, then fill in the draft planner table (pen and paper, or print the page and write on it). The planner has no pre-filled answers; what round you take each position is your call, and the table is where you make it before draft night. If you want a blank board to run the room, the free draft board template prints on one page.
None of these come with numbers attached on purpose. Rankings age badly and change with every league's scoring settings; mechanics like the ones below mostly don't.
1. Group players into tiers instead of one long list. Our take: a single ranked list turns every pick into a crisis the moment someone drafts "your" next name. Tiers work better: cluster the players you'd be happy taking in the same stretch of picks, and when a tier runs out, you slide to the next group calmly. The idea behind it is position scarcity: some positions have a steep drop between tiers and others don't, and noticing where the drops are matters more than memorizing order within one.
2. Watch for runs, and decide in advance whether you join. A run is when several teams draft the same position back to back. Our take: runs are where beginners lose the most ground, because deciding mid-run means reaching for whoever is left. Before draft night, pick the one position you'd join a run for and the ones you'd let pass. Write it in the planner below.
3. Take a backup at every spot. Starters miss weeks; that's the sport. Our take: the most useful bench pick you can make is the backup to a player you already drafted, because you know his situation, his role, and when your starter might miss time. A second starter at a crowded position gives you a decision every week; the right backup gives you a plan.
4. Draft kickers and team defenses near the end. Our take: in our own kits we pencil kickers and defenses into the final rounds. The scoring gap between the options at those spots is small next to the gap at other positions, so picks spent early there are picks spent where they do the least. Wait until the rounds where the room starts grabbing them anyway.
5. Glance at the bye-week column on every pick. Cheat sheets with a bye column exist for a reason. Our take: stacking two or three starters on the same week off is a self-inflicted wound you can only fix by cutting someone you liked. The bye column is a five-second check during the draft that saves a week of headache later; use the blank BYE box on our cheat sheet template to track it.
6. Write one line on why you took each pick. Our take: memory smooths over every mistake, and that's why the same draft goes badly several years running. One short line per pick ("waited too long at this position", "joined the run", "reached for a name I like") turns next year's prep into reading a page instead of guessing.
7. Keep one bench spot for a lottery ticket. A lottery ticket is a player with a clear path to a bigger role if one thing changes: a trade, a depth-chart move, a coach's decision. Our take: the ticket costs you nothing to hold and cuts nothing from your starting lineup. Check on him weekly; when he no longer has a path, cut him without ceremony.
8. Draft from your sheet, not from the room's noise. Draft rooms are loud and everyone has a reaction to every pick. Our take: the whole point of prep is having your answer written down before the moment arrives. When a pick surprises you, look down at your tiers and your planner, not across at the loudest manager.
Your first six picks shape the whole roster, so plan them before draft night. This table is a write-in template, not a recommendation: the rounds are yours to choose, and two managers in the same league can fill it out differently and both be right. Print the page or copy the table onto paper; drafts move faster than new browser tabs.
| Pick | Round I plan to use it (write in) | Position I'm targeting (write in) | If that run happens first, my pivot (write in) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pick 1 | |||
| Pick 2 | |||
| Pick 3 | |||
| Pick 4 | |||
| Pick 5 | |||
| Pick 6 |
Snake draft? Your pick number flips each round (last in round 1 means first in round 2), so write the round, not the overall pick slot. Tip 2 above tells you what to write in the pivot column.
Three we see every season, stated plainly:
One honest note: your league's rules beat any guide, including this one. Roster slots, scoring, keeper rules, and pick order differ from league to league, and a tip that works in one room can be actively wrong in the next. Check your league's settings page first. Everything on this page, and in our kit below, is a set of starting points; the settings page is the rulebook.
The tips above pair with the tools we print for our own drafts. The full draft kit bundles the 12-team × 15-round draft board, write-in cheat sheets with tier blocks and a bye column for every position, an auction tracker, and season-long roster sheets. Same philosophy as this page: blank boxes for your opinions, structure for the mechanics.
Full draft kit: 12×15 board + cheat sheets + auction tracker →one-time · 9 printable pages · A4 + US Letter · instant download · works with any league size and scoring