The FFL Guru is OFFICIALLY back

Yes -- i have been waiting and holding this exciting news, but as football season kicks off so does another season the The FFL Guru. This year our role with our Radio Partner, 790 The Zone (www.790thezone.com) has expanded and our website will now be housed there as well (www.790thezone.com/fflguru). Additionally, we welcome a new Production Partner, The Raw Report (www.rawreport.com). Our first production was on Tuesday of this week and should be live on the site by Friday (9/4) morning! We are very excited about the new elements the gang brings to the FFL Guru!!!

Also, Jordan and I are finalizing contracts with Yahoo! that will air our show on their new Internet TV Property called Yahoo! Connected (http://connectedtv.yahoo.com/).

Lastly, we will be blogging on our site at least twice a week, so if you are into Fantasy Football make sure you are checking out the site, www.790thezone.com/ffluguru often. As a sample, here is my first blog that went up the other day:


Draft Preparation and Cheat Sheets
Posted 9/2/2009 4:00:00 PM

Go ahead and call this my Fantasy Football Manifesto, my Jerry Maguire moment. if you will.

From this moment forth, I will not purchase another Fantasy Football Magazine!

What purpose do they serve other than taking up space in my bathroom, where two months from now I will peruse them and laugh about their inaccuracies and dart board projections. Look, I understand, Fantasy Sports is a BILLION DOLLAR industry and that magazines were an essential element in the early growth of Fantasy Sports. And from a pure entertainment and basic information standpoint, the content in those magazines is ok. But the thing that kills me in them is the ‘Cheat Sheet’ they all insist on providing. Actually, let me retract that previous statement, what really PISSES ME OFF are the Cheat Sheets, which pretend as if they are supposed to help you in any league regardless of the league’s scoring system.

The fact is magazine Cheat Sheets don’t help you because they can’t help you. How could anything written in May, i.e. pre-Memorial Day, possibly help you pick players at the end of August or beginning of September? Today’s NFL is a fluid, ever changing league where a team or player may be highly thought of in May, but considered a bum in August. Those Cheat Sheets are worse than putting up Christmas lights in July or wearing white in October!

So, why the rant? Clearly I’m not shilling my own online site that sells information. And I’m not a tree hugger frustrated with the number of trees being cut down for these magazines. No, I’m ranting because I’m just another frustrated Owner with three drafts in five days with three different scoring systems and three completely different sets of rules.

It is impossible for a magazine or any static mechanisms completely help you prepare you for YOUR draft. If you rely on nothing but projections, cheat sheets and someone else’s rankings you are doomed to fail.

Remember back in College and High School? How did we get by when studying was too difficult or reading took time away from a party? We bought Cliff Notes and other study aids that assisted you in bypassing the actual learning involved in studying. In fact, with minimal effort, many a drunken and lazy Undergrad was able to make it through.

But did the Cliff Notes’ users excel? Were they top of the class? Of course not.. Doing the minimum might be fine for college. Heck, it might be fine at your job. But in Fantasy Football if you do the minimum, i.e. printing out cheats sheets and rankings, you can expect the same average result in every league you play in-- a 5th-7th place finish, notable for it lack of glory and embarrassment.

Sound like fun in the FFL world? Not to me. I’d rather go for it, on my own, with some knowledge in hand and my own system and notes relied on. Sink or swim, it will have been my choices and I won’t spend the offseason blaming some stupid magazine or online site for my playoff-less finish

Ok, so what’s important in crafting your own personalized pre-draft strategy ? (FWIW – make sure you utilize available websites for updated player information and comparisons of players based on your particular league’s scoring system and number of teams)

1. Draft order – duh, right? Well, in one of my leagues we don’t use a snake system. We actually draft randomly through the entire draft in an order that was picked ONE week prior to the draft. Mock if you want, and many do, but it is fun and unique and eventually things even themselves out over the years and it is actually pretty rewarding finishing ‘in the money’ when saddled with a poor draft position. The point here is where you pick is not the only important thing. Where you pick relative to those around you is just as important in analyzing your draft order, which leads me to strategy #2.


2. Know thy Competition – the longer you play with the same people the easier it will be for you to pick up their tendencies and behaviors. In poker we call this a ‘tell’. In Fantasy Football you should be aware if an owner likes to draft QB’s early or another owner has to have a player from a certain NFL team. Be sure to gather as much of this subtle information as you can. It will help you determine where to grab certain players and when to pass on certain players that you can be believe you’ll be able to get later in the draft.


3. Have a Flexible Plan – in general I know I want to come out of Round 3 with a stud RB and 2 top flight WR’s or flip flop that. What I can’t predict is who they may be OR what ‘reach’ another Owner may make that could throw my strategy out of whack. For instance, my plan is to wait on drafting a QB (like many others do). But if there is a top-tier QB (think round 1 or round 2 quality) available when it’s my turn to select in round 3, then I need to be mentally prepared to shift gears. Don’t get stuck on certain positions in the top rounds just because of the 27 mock drafts you created. Odds are they are all wrong!


4. Let the ‘run’ on a position happen without your involvement -- Drafts are moving, living organisms. Invariably human nature takes over and panic steps in. Often it happens around Tight Ends (no jokes please). There are very few high quality TE’s (again, I am open for humor or a nice picture of Jessica Alba), so when one goes it often starts a run on the remaining TEs in the top tier. But if all of the players you consider to be top tier in a position are gone, then pass on participating in the draft run, especially in the early rounds when there is still a ton of value on the board. On the flip side, if you pay attention to knowing your competition and being flexible (as discussed above), then you very well could create one of these runs and take advantage of some undervalued talent in the very next round.

I hope these four ideas are helpful as you prepare this week. Good luck in your drafts and I would love to hear your thoughts, feel free to send them (or Jessica Alba photos) to gwolchock@gmail.com.

Don’t forget to catch us on the air every Friday Morning and Sunday before kickoff on 790 on the AM dial in Atlanta or streamed live on www.790thezone.com.


Gilly Gator