The Draft

How to Draft
The draft is arguably the most fun aspect of the game. It is not a live draft, but one where you look through and rank all of the rookies. Then on draft day, you will face 31 other teams in the draft and all of the picks are chosen by how people’s draft boards are set up. Here is a quick tutorial on how to set your draft. When you open up the “Draft Strategies” page, the information may seem a little overwhelming. On the left hand side there is a small table, this shows you all of the draft picks and the draft numbers you have. Right next to each pick is a drop down menu. This allows you to select a specific position each round, or have the draft pick select by your top rated player (the top rated player is the highest ranked player left on your list). Next to this small table is an even larger table, which is deemed the “Pick Limiting Strategies”. This handy table allows you to limit the amount of players chosen from 1 position. For example, a player can set “Max of 2 QB thru 5 Rnds, Max of 2 in all; Earliest Rnd 1”. Okay, now onto setting the actual draft. There are 384 rookies to choose from, and the amount per position varies per draft. To start setting the draft, you may want to go by each position, and rank the players. To rank players you can “move them” up and down the board. To do this, there are buttons next to every player that allows you to move them up or down a certain amount. After you rank all of the positions, you can move on to the main board. To go to the main board, click on “1-100”, “51-150”, etc. At the main board, you decide which players you feel are the best/most useful for your team. You can choose to rank 20 players or 100 players, there’s no specific amount. During the draft, the pick number you have will effect who you get. If you have the #16 pick in the 1st round, 15 other coaches will be picking before, and may pick the players you want. For example, at pick 16 you may get the 13th ranked player on your main board.

A Draft Strategy (Initial draft order)
There are plenty of different techniques to the draft. Here is one that I've developed recently that allows me to reset my draft strategy based on overall player potential.

The CPU sets each team's order initially based on what it perceives as your depth and needs. This may or may not be what you actually want to draft, it's just a start. The problem I have found is that whatever position(s) the CPU thinks you need will all be rated higher on average than what it perceives you do not need. In effect you might have lots of players at one position with low ratings being ranked higher than other, better players. This has always bothered me so I came up with a simple fix.

Download the CSV file of your draft and open with Excel. Sort the players based first on overall potential then on current overall. Highlight, copy and paste the player ID column into "Modify Draft Strategy Using Player Ids" page which is a link on your regular draft strategy page. Save it and it will reset your draft order using overall potential as the basis for ranking.

From there you can adjust based on your actual needs, with a fallback based on their overall potential.

Post Draft Notes
If the draft does not go as planned and for whatever reason you wind up picking players you don't want, you still have the oportunity to cut them without having to pay dead cap if you act before your first preseason game. Keep in mind that rookie deals are typically well below the players market value, so don't be too quick to cut a rookie who you think is good but overpaid.