Draft for the league is an AUTOMATED process. To make your draft picks, click on the Draft Picks menu choice. Players begin "auto-ranked" based on our preseason rankings.
Each team ranks their players in the the order that you want to draft them, with a set of rankings for each postion (QB, RB, WR, TE, K, D). You can change the rankings as often as you like up until draft day.
At draft, the computer starts with a random team and dishes out the players based upon a delivery algorith that is used to "even out" the distribution.
The algorithm used to determine the draft works off the concept of a individual player's "value". A player's value is a product of their position's value multiplied by the rank given to them by you when you create your rankings:
Value = Per Pick Positional Value * Per Team Ranked Value
Per Pick Positional Value: The system uses a set of base weights per position that determine the relational value between positions in this scoring system and the relative depth at each position. To determine the base weights per position
we take the top 10 scoring players from last season, per position, and find their average points scored. The average points scored by a top 10 player is then divided by the total points across all positions, and then subtracted from 1 to get a fractional number that represents the position's value.
Here's an example:
If the top 10 QB's last year scored an average of 291.80 points last season.
The sum of all the average per position scoring for last season is 1169.79
291.80 divdided by 1168.79 = .249
1 minus .249 = .751
So a QB gets the base weighting .751. This process is done for all positions. The lower the number, the more valuable. In addition to the historical scoring, adjustments are made to consider the depth at a given position with respect to other players. Because the fifth and tenth ranked QB tend to score a similar number of points, but the 5th RB scores significantly more than the tenth RB, the value of the QB is lowered in relation to accomodate the depth.
For this coming season the weights fall out like this, in order of most valuable to least valuable:
RB = .100
QB = .800
WR = .950
Def = 4.844
K = 7.879
TE = 8.55
Per Team Ranked Value: This value is the highest ranked player who is still available when it's your turn to get a player. When it becomes your turn, the system will find the highest ranked player, per position, that you can still take. Remember, you can not draft more that double the number of players you start at a particular position
For the sake of this example, lets assume that your turn comes around and your #3 QB, #2 RB, #1WR, #1TE, #1 K, and #1D are all still available. The system runs the above value equation for each position:
QB = .751 * 3 (your rank) = 2.253
RB = .773 * 2 (your rank) = 1.546
WR = .830 * 1 (your rank) = .830
D = .844 * 1 (your rank) = .844
K = .879 * 1 (your rank) = .879
TE = .925 * 1 (your rank) = 9.25
So the lowest score would be .844, the #1 ranked WR. Your team would be assigned that player, and then process moves on throughout the rest of the draft.
Bottom Line: So do you really need to understand all this? ABSOLUTELY NOT! This information is provided for those that are interested in the intricacies of the drafting program.