Plan your attack, and attack your plan: "When & Who to draft IDP"

By: Bob Kirlin aka: the IDP GURU

For many of us, our Fantasy Football Leagues Draft is but a mere 2 months away. Already magazines have hit the stands and we are paging through them to gain the extra bit of insight to give us the strategic advanatage over our opponents, we marvel at how clever we are and chuckle as we think how we are going to pull off the coup of the century and that no one but “I” will ever see this coming… And of course the first pre-season game the guy tears an ACL and is done for the year. Don’t get me wrong now, there is nothing wrong with planning your attack, but just remember when you plan your attack, you have to attack your plan. What does that mean? Well lets take for example the magazine I’m paging through right now, ESPNs’ Fantasy Football magazine, it has a lot of interesting articles in it, and a lot of good insight, but this information is already weeks old, as an example, they still have Cedric Benson as a member of the Bears, sure they predict he’s going to be a bust this year, but a bust for who? The other reason I like this magazine is that they do have a list of the top 50 IDP players at each position for D-Line, Linebacker and D-Back, but like I had mentioned in past fantasy football IDP articles, they really seem to take the popular players and not really look at how it affects your team or scoring system.

I will have my Top 50 out at each IDP position in August, mine will be different than the others because I’m looking at it from the standpoint of an owner, and how I’ll help my team, and in my efforts, hope to help yours. My main reason though for writing this article is that many who are new to IDP and are unsure as to who and when to draft an Individual Defensive Player is to give you an idea on in my eye is the best strategy to use.

First and foremost, in a fantasy football IDP league, it is never a good idea to draft an IDP player in the first round, or for that matter the second or the third. You must know that your bread and butter players are on the skill side of the ball, so your running backs, quarterbacks, and wide receivers will always be the players you should target. It’s getting harder and harder with the 2 back system that most teams are employing these days to be comfortable with grabbing defensive players early.

Using a fantasy football tier rankings (i.e. “Tiering”) approach is probably one of the best ways to evaluate when to take a defensive player, usually I look at the top 4 or 5 quarterbacks, then the top 5-8 running backs then the top 4-6 wide receivers on the board, after that, there is usually a drop off and the next “Tier” of players are usually ranked fairly close together. If you’re playing in a 10 or 12 team league, you should start thinking about targeting a defensive player around the 5th or even 6th round. Don’t get flustered if someone panics and grabs the top defensive player early, if you use the “Tiering” system that I mentioned, and evaluate each player, you will find that the drop off is not that great and will have time to come up with a quality defensive player to fit your roster.

Remember, running backs are a needed commodity, and it’s okay to grab a solid number 2 back for your team before thinking defense. Okay, so now you have an idea as to where to take a defensive player, but which position to take? As an example, I will use my league which is a 30 round draft and requires us to draft 4 D-Lineman, 5 Linebackers and 4 D-Backs, we start 2 at each position each week. The defensive players you need to target first are the Linebackers, in many cases they can rival a running backs production from week to week, they are tackling machines and can pile up the points for you, they are also generally more reliable than most tight ends save the top 3 or 4 you may use in your “Tiering” system. The next group you want to look at are your Defensive Backs, again Safeties usually have the best tackling numbers but probably should not be taken before the 8th round.

My early analysis on this years NFL Defensive Backs show that all are very similar in numbers, even at the top, so panic shouldn’t set in because there is a run on “D-Backs”. RELAX, there are plenty of good ones out there. Finally, the last group of IDP players to target is “D-Lineman”, usually I target one about rounds 10 thru 12, they are usually the lowest scoring of the bunch, but if a run does go on them around round 10, you may want to grab one that you had targeted, after the first 10, there is a drop off and it’s fairly equal on down the line.

I usually finish up the last rounds of my fantasy football draft with kickers and D-Lineman, this allows me a better opportunity to target needs on offense as well as other quality linebackers who still may be out there. Finally if you are one of those who likes to look at sleepers, especially rookies, it is probably you who will know the stud rookie linebacker or D-Lineman in this draft, but don’t be in an overly huge hurry to take him, build your team with solid veterans who will help you, your research will pay off like mine did last year where I drafted some kid at linebacker with my 30th overall pick, some linebacker from San Francisco… Oh, what’s his name now… lets see, he lead the league in tackles…

Look for my fantasy football IDP article in August where I will reveal my Top 50 at each position for IDP. I already have my Top 100, now it’s a matter of narrowing it down.