Know your preliminary order. Having the first pick in the first round and the last pick in the second round will require a very different strategy than picking near the middle of each round. Prepare for both possibilities.
Know how many teams are in your league. Eight, ten, twelve, even fourteen team leagues provide different depths of available talent. 196 players will be selected in a 14-round 14-team league versus 112 in an 8-team league.
Learn about the first three rounds of your league’s draft. Hint: They’ll look pretty much the same for any league, so let’s cover the first three rounds of a standard 10-team draft.
Quarterback Aaron Rodgers plus running backs Ray Rice, Arian Foster, LeSean McCoy and Chris Johnson will be, in some order, the top five picks. Franchise RBs are scarcer than ever, so forget picking WRs early. The QB pool is also deep. RBs Jones-Drew and Trent Richardson, plus QBs Brady and Brees, are deadly locks to round out the first round. WR Calvin Johnson sneaks in.
If you own the “switch” picks (last pick on the first, first on the second), make the most of them – take talents that complement each other. A better QB or WR plus the best remaining RB would be a huge compliment to each other. So would a formidable backfield duo of Matt Forte and Darren McFadden.
RB Forte, McFadden, Fred Jackson and Ryan Matthews come out in the second round of any competitive league. Quarterbacks Cam Newton and Matt Stafford have proven to be elite and go to the second round of any ten-team league. WRs Julio Jones, Wes Welker and Andre Johnson finish the round along with RB Ahmad Bradshaw.
If you only have one RB after the first two rounds, you should get one in the third round. Expect DeMarco Murray, Frank Gore, Marshawn Lynch and probably Michael Turner to be available in leagues of 10 or fewer teams. Gone are the elite QBs and WRs worth skipping a RB for, and after this round, so will be the RBs you want in your lineup.
If you have two RBs and a WR or QB after the first three rounds, focus on the WRs. Five teams already have quarterbacks, so their competition for remaining talent is light. Opting for an elite TE in the fourth or fifth round will do wonders for your roster. He can still come back for Romo, Rivers, Dalton, Cutler or any of Manning later.
Pick a RB like Mark Ingram or Darren Sproles in the middle rounds, but be smart in these rounds and trend, don’t chase. If you can’t get a higher TE, get a higher D/ST. Most people won’t pick two TEs, so the second tier players will still be around. Likewise, if you don’t get top D/ST or a kicker, leave those positions until the later rounds. They’ll probably be on waivers for week 5, anyway.