We’re about three weeks away from preseason football action and less than nine weeks away from the regular season. But, who’s counting? Anyway, that means our fantasy football redraft leagues will be drafting before we know it. At this point, you should be pouring over the Fantrax 2022 Fantasy Football Draft Kit. You may be completing mock drafts and getting all of your draft prep ready, but do you know your league’s draft order or which draft slot you will be making your first pick from?
If not, then it’s time to stir up a conversation with your league and figure it out! Maybe you’ve been determining it the same way for years and want to spice things up. Either way, there are a handful of great ways, that I present below, to decide upon your league’s draft order.
Beyond the ways I list below, if you have any other great ideas, I would love to hear them! Send them my way on Twitter @Colin_McT or direct message our new Fantrax podcast, “The Fly Fantasy Football Podcast” @TheFlyFFpod and we’ll discuss them on an episode!
The Top Methods for Determining the Draft Order
The Classic: Picking Out of a Hat
It’s simple. First, get a hat, perhaps one representing your favorite football team. Next, write down each league manager’s name on a small slip of paper. Then, fold each slip of paper, to hide each name, and place them into the hat. Have one person, usually the League Commissioner, shake the hat thoroughly then reach in and pull each manager’s name out one by one. The first name selected earns the last pick of the draft. Then, continue on until the last name selected is awarded the first overall pick of the draft order.
It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s an absolute classic way to determine your league’s draft order.
Selection by Sporting Event
Go beyond fantasy football and let another sporting event determine your draft order. If this is how your league chooses to decide, then timing is everything. For instance, your league may assign each manager to a horse in the Kentucky Derby. That takes place in May, so you have to be on top of that before it passes. While it may seem early to decide the draft order, it provides ample time for everyone to mock draft from their assigned draft slot!
You can also look within other major sports for creative ways to select your league’s draft order. For example, choosing a Major League Baseball player prior to the baseball season and seeing who has the most home runs by your fantasy football draft. Maybe randomly assigning each league manager to an NBA playoff team and drafting based on how they finish their season. While they only come around every four years, incorporating Summer Olympics events is also a fun idea!
Compete For Your Spot
This is hands-down my favorite way, and arguably the best way, to not decide, but rather earn your spot in your league’s draft order. We all love friendly competition. Why else, well, besides bragging rights and a cash prize, would we play fantasy football? So, in the spirit of competition, have your league battle it out to earn the first overall pick!
Whether it’s golfing, a corn hole/baggo tournament, poker, a home run derby, or some other competition, it makes determining the draft order more fun. There are countless ways to compete with your league so make sure to go with one that’s relatively fair with an even playing field and something everyone agrees to.
The most important aspect of this method is getting together in person. Especially if you can’t draft in person, this is a great excuse to get your league together for a good time. Sometimes that good time involves adult beverages and, if you decide to involve said beverages in your competition (pong, flip cup, etc.), make sure you do so responsibly!
Draft Your Draft Order
Now, this may seem confusing, but hear me out. A bit of strategy comes into play here. You can incorporate the first idea, of picking out of a hat for this one, or the method that follows this one, of draft order reversal. Either way, you decide to move forward, and you give each manager their choice of what pick they want in the draft order.
You then draft your draft order!
So, whoever has the first pick in the draft order draft, can choose any of the 10, 12, 14 or however many slots you have in your league. Some managers may prefer a certain spot over others. Having the first overall pick in your fantasy football draft grants you the choice of any player out of the gate, but then it’s a long while until you pick again. Maybe you would rather have a pick in the middle of the draft because you’ve won there before. Either way, it adds just a bit more strategy and preference to the process.
Draft Order Reversal
This is the most cut and dry way to determine your league’s draft order as it mimics the NFL. If you are last year’s last-place finisher, then you draft first the following season. That means the defending champion of your league ends up with the last pick. Your league can work out the finer details for deciding the middle picks, such as who had more or less total points the year prior. This way of choosing the draft order is a little silver lining to last year’s losers and gives a bit of a challenge to the playoff teams to draft from the back of the order.
We do a bit of a combination of the options listed. Our 12 team league is a money league, paying the top 5 teams at the end of the year, with 7 finishing out of the money. So we put the 7 non-money winners in the hat first and they select their draft spots before anyone else gets to choose. When they are done, the 5 money teams go into the hat and they get to choose from what is left.