The Tier System: A Case Study

Well, with it being the offseason, there is not often new news worth commenting on. So, over the next couple of weeks (or months) I'm going to be working up a base of some more general overarching fantasy football topics. The first thing I want to cover is the tier system.

Most people have a general concept of the tier system, but I'm going to try to spell it out a bit, and more importantly, get across what this means to how you should go about doing your draft. The tier system is merely a way to think about your player rankings. Essentially, you take players that are all very similar as to their expected fantasy output and put them in a group together. For example, take a look at how I broke down the WR Rankings. Now this wasn't a strict tier system, since I arbitrarily took groups of five, but it does give the general idea. The idea when you are drafting then, is to take players from tiers that will not be around at your next draft pick. So if you are running low on tier 2 WRs, and there are plenty of tier 3 RBs around, then you should strongly consider taking a WR, since the quality of WR will diminish by your next pick, whereas the quality of RB will probably be similar.

Now how do you work with this in a draft. Let's take a look at a redraft league draft I was in last year with 10 teams, and let's look specifically at how I (Fauble) worked the draft using a tier system and how it turned out.

My tiers going into the draft had a 1st tier at RB of S. Alexander, L. Johnson and LDT (in no particular order, since that is kind of the point of tiers.) My 2nd tier of RBs included (T. Barber, C. Portis and S. Jackson). Then my 3rd tier which was much bigger included guys like (B. Westbrook, R. Johnson, R. Brown, L. Jordan, D. Davis (and quite a few others)). When my pick comes up at #8 I look at my tiers at various positions, and see that if I were to pick RB with my first pick (which many people claim is the only way to draft) I would have to pick from my 3rd tier of RBs, and try to figure out who the best guy from that tier is. However, I know with a pick coming at #13 I could pick up a RB from this tier (if I felt the need to) on the flip side. So then I start looking at my top tiers at other positions. I have P. Manning and A. Gates both in classes by themselves, and at WR I have a top tier of (S. Smith, C. Johnson, T. Owens and T. Holt). To me the clear choice is Manning, because this is the only chance to get a top tier QB (he wouldn't have survived past Josh the Colt Lover), and with my next pick, I will still have top tier options at WR, TE and still some guys from that 3rd tier of RBs.

So, sure enough pick 13 rolls around, and I've only lost one of those tier 3 RBs, granted it was my favorite of the group, but the point is, that I felt that those other RBs were similar enough that I did not have to have him. Now at this point I decided to be bold (mainly because I had a plan in place to take care of my RBs in later rounds). I do not recommend this strategy often, and it must be carefully thought out. Anyway, I'm still not that interested in these 3rd tier RBs, who have a way of disappointing (as L. Jordan, R. Brown, C. Williams demonstrated last year), so now I'm choosing between WR and TE. This was a tough choice, because I really wanted Gates, and I didn't know if he would fall to me at #28. However, I decided it was worth the risk, because I still had 2 top tier WRs on my board (T. Owens and T. Holt), and I absolutely knew that they would both be gone by next pick.

So, next pick comes around, and not surprisingly all of my tier 3 RBs are gone. Definitely not worth dipping into the quagmire of tier 4 RBs so I fortunately grap A. Gates (I was very happy and lucky he fell this far.)

Now my round 4 pick might have been a bit of a reach. However, at this point we're into the 4th tier of RBs which consists of guys drafted all the way from the 32nd pick (T. Jones) to the 72nd pick (C. Martin). If I can pick a guy from this tier anywhere in the next few rounds, no reason to do it now. Same thing with the 2nd tier of WRs who were picked anywhere from the 22nd pick (A. Boldin) to the 54th pick (D. Mason). Plus I already had T.O. to anchor my squad, and pretty much every year since I started playing fantasy football I've been able to pick up a #2 WR (or better) early in the season. With QB and TE taken care of and no desire for the RBs and WRs available, I reach a little bit for Chicago. I was worried that someone might go after the top defense on the board in the long wait I had from the 33rd to 48th pick, and Chicago was the only defense I felt confident would be a top 5 defense going into the following year.

Okay 5th round rolls around, time to stop ignoring the most important position in fantasy football, and sure enough my plan works. I'm thrilled to have W. Dunn drop to me in the 5th round. For whatever reason the guy is consistently underrated in our leagues (this is where knowing your league can play a huge part in draft strategy). I know he won't compete with most #1s, but with Manning, T.O., Gates and Chicago dominating whoever I am playing at those positions, the only teams I'm worried about Dunn going against are the ones with LDT, LJ and Alexander.

I got a bit lucky in the 6th round. I was hoping Droughns would fall through, but fortunately, I grabbed the last RB that I felt comfortable with in the current tier of RBs (I was worried about injuries with C. Martin and J. Lewis) and grabbed last year's L. Jordan, C. Taylor. Only 1 more pick of interest and that's because it relates to my strategy at RB. I grabbed C. Cooley in the 7th round. I was hoping to wait longer, but TEs were starting to get thin, and Josh with two picks before mine in the 8th hadn't grabbed one yet. My plan to have a decent backup, after going for all the non-RBs early was to grab Cooley who had been RB eligible in Yahoo leagues the year before. Then he could take Gates bye week as well as my RBs. The plan backfired when Cooley was only TE eligible, but oh well. The rest of the draft and season worked out okay. I ended up winning the regular season record and points title. (Let's not talk about the playoffs where I lost to a guy in the championship game, who had scored the 3rd least points of anyone in the regular season).

So, anyway, there is an example of using a tier system in action. It can result in many different drafts depending on where your picks fall. However, the principle is the same, grab guys in tiers that are thinning out before they are gone, and wait on the tiers that will still be around for your next pick. In a later post, I will discuss how to determine which tier is more valuable across positions.