Now, BEFORE you do your draft(s), keep in mind that you need a good draft strategy! When you're done here, just remember that for only $9.95 I'm offering my personal Fantasy Football Draft Guide, which you can order TODAY from my website! Forget the magazines, forget the website printouts, this is the professional Fantasy Football Draft Tool that I personally use in every single one of my drafts! This Draft Guide is the best way to guarantee that you have a strong, smart, DEEP draft! Visit http://www.fantasyfootballaddict.com/ and click on the Paypal "Buy Now" buttons. Now, on to our site recommendations...
#1 http://www.rtsports.com/ - it's not the most robust site, or the most flashy site in the world, but it's not the worst either. I've used this site for a number of years, and I've never seen the site go down once. I am a BIG fan of reliability. So it's definitely reliable, and like I said, reliability is key. Online drafting works great. Stats are updated very quickly on game day. But one of the best things about this site is they have a "Pick em" option, or what they call "NFL Picks". This allows users to pick the outcomes of the actual NFL games each week. It's week 1, you go through all 16 games and pick the winner, nice and easy! So it allows leagues to find other fun ways to keep you involved. Let's say, for example, that $100 of league dues is set aside for the overall season winner of the NFL Picks. Or maybe each weekly NFL Picks winner gets $10, something fun like that.
Using it on an iPad/iPhone or other mobile device, they came up with a mobile interface starting in the 2012 season, so although it still goes through Safari (vs. an App), it makes it easier to use than just going to the main website. (The mobile address is m.rtsports.com) . The mobile app is not as robust, but whatever you can't do in the mobile app, you would click on "Full League Website", and that would take you out of the mobile site, and you'd then be put into the full site.
The downsides? This is not a FREE site, I believe it's $89.95 per season.
#2 http://games.espn.go.com/frontpage/football aka ESPN. ESPN definitely has the best "look and feel" of any Fantasy Football website out there. It's just plain "sexy"! Ease of access to player stats is unparalleled. It's also FREE. As I mentioned before, I like the NFL Picks concept, which is why RTSports tops my list. But if you don't give a darn about having an NFL Picks as part of your league, then it's a no-brainer, ESPN is the best site out there. It's hard for me to explain my reasoning other than "they did it right". It's true, ESPN spent the money to make a streamlined site that's ultra-slick and very easy to use/navigate. ESPN, keep up the good work, and please don't change a thing!
#3 http://fantasy.nfl.com/ NFL.com. This is a FREE site, which is probably the best thing about it. I don't like the live draft, it gets the job done but it doesn't really blow me away. They also have a free iPhone/Android app, this is HUGE! Most or all of us want to be able to update our fantasy teams on our phone during the season, so this is great news. The downside of NFL.com is that it's really confusing and hard to figure out where everything is. It takes a while to get used to the layout, and to find everything that you are looking for, like schedules, stats, etc.. But for a free site, it crushes the Yahoo's of the world.
HONORABLE MENTION - CBSSports.com (http://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/football/games/chart)
CBSSports offers a Free version, but the Free version lacks ability to have flex positions, waiver wire and roster limit options, etc.. So for the full "Commissioner" package, the price is $159.99, that's a bit rich for my blood. Haven't used the site, but have heard good things about it from people who've used this site. But for me, the price is not right. If you've got the money to spend, though, it's worth checking out, as you can create your league and run it as a free trial for a few days in order to see if it's the right fit for the league that you want to create.
So that's what I recommend, folks, ESPN.com is awesome, and iPhone/Android app is free, which is a great move on their part. NFL.com is getting better each year, they've thrown a lot of money at it, it's FREE, and they also have the FREE iPhone/Android app. RTSports.com is fairly "bare-bones", but it has NFL Pick Em included, and it is a very reliable site, BUT it's not free.
DON'T FORGET, in order to PREPARE for your fantasy draft(s), you should join some of the $30 entry fee leagues that most of these sites have (I use RTSports.com). Basically, I use these as my "mock" drafts. Why? Because actual Mock Drafts are horrible, only a few "real" people are actually in the mock draft, and after the first or 2nd round, everybody drops out and it goes on "auto-pilot". But in these $30 leagues, you have 10 or 12 real people actually in the draft, for the ENTIRE draft, and it gives you a chance to execute your draft strategy, to see the trends, and to also see if you're truly prepared or not. Plus, if you're using the Draft Spreadsheet Tool, it will give you an opportunity to get used to using it during a live draft! It's definitely worth doing a few of these paid leagues, even if you have no intention of actually setting a lineup each week. Again, think of them as PAID MOCKS. But it's probably a good idea to just log in once a week and adjust your lineup, because who knows, you might win a league or 2 (and some decent money)!
And lastly, as I mentioned earlier, if you want to try to draft like a pro, forget the magazines, forget printing out random rankings, go to http://www.fantasyfootballaddict.com/ and click "Buy Now" to get our 2016 draft tool, and do your draft from 1 excel spreadsheet that has everything right there in one place! No more messing up bye weeks, no more struggling to find which players of value are still on the board, no more shuffling through papers as time ticks away on the clock! If you pass on it, well that's fine, but just hope that nobody else in your league gets one!
Here's a sneak peak at the main tab of the draft spreadsheet, this is BEFORE you draft...
Here's what it will look like 4 rounds in... the YELLOW players are the player's that you've drafted...
And this is a quick look at the "Top 150" tab of the spreadsheet...
This is the STRATEGY window, where you keep track of what position you are targeting in each round, so that you can remember to stay focused on your STRATEGY for the entire draft!
DRAFT LIKE A PRO!
Go to http://www.fantasyfootballaddict.com/ and contact me today!
