Why You Should Draft After Thursday's Kickoff

Photo: USA Today Sports

In fantasy football, there is an unwritten rule that your league's draft has to happen before the season starts.

This makes complete sense -- on the surface. After all, there aren't that many games in the NFL season. With only 16 normal weeks of play (let's discount Week 17 since there are a good deal of starters who don't play), we want to get a full fantasy season in as well.

Following that train of thought, since Week 1 starts on Thursday, September 10, with the Texans and Chiefs, most league drafts have already happened.

But the time between Thursday night and the large slate of games happening on Sunday, September 13, is ripe for a fantasy draft for a couple of reasons:

• It's not Labor Day Weekend, so fewer people are trying to hang out at the lake
• Football is here, which means more people are absolutely stoked for the Sunday games to arrive

You might be asking, "So why does no one ever draft after the Thursday Night Kickoff Game?"

Well, people do. Our friends at The Fantasy Football Players Championship have been doing this for years.

Read what FFPC co-founder Alex Kaganovsky has to say about drafting after the season has already begun:

Drafting after Thursday’s game has completed adds new wrinkles to the drafts since you have the ability to draft players knowing their Week 1 stats. Then you can either start or bench them in Week 1 based on that knowledge. There are three big advantages here:

1. 1. It allows you the flexibility of drafting a stud player for value who underperformed on Thursday and then bench him. You can use this strategy effectively with a quarterback and draft a Week 1 fill-in (who has a good matchup) at the very end of the draft (someone like a Teddy Bridgewater).
      
      
   2. On the flip side, you have the ability to go get a lesser-regarded player who exploded on Thursday specifically to put him into your Week 1 starting lineup, knowing that he may never start for you again and may end up hitting the waiver wire quite soon eventually. Guys like Darren Fells or Kenny Stills or Demarcus Robinson -- if one of them goes off Thursday night -- could be interesting options. The question becomes when in the draft does it become a value to reach for such a one-week filler.
      
      
   3. And finally, I personally like to look beyond the actual stats and see what type of tendencies were visible during the game in terms of using certain players or formations or rotations or whatever else. I then use this knowledge to possibly draft an overlooked player later in the draft. For example, if Duke Johnson Jr rotates in with David Johnson on a regular basis but doesn't have a statically productive Thursday game, I still may want to go get Duke Johnson Jr because I felt that his overall usage was a good indicator of things to come.

Kaganovsky really just scratches the surface here. The extra layer of strategy available can make an after-Thursday draft even more interesting. This weekend is your chance to get in on the fun.

Actions

If your local league never got around to drafting, get them together and hold a draft on Saturday night.

If your local league already drafted (or if you're ready to take a shot at a half a million dollars), spend some time this weekend and play in The Fantasy Football Players Championship.

Even better, if you haven't played in the FFPC already this season, and for a limited time, get $100 off your first entry in the 2020 Online Fantasy Football Players Championship. All you have to do is enter promo code FBG100 on the checkout page. Draft online and take your shot at a record $500,000 Grand Prize and over $3.9 Million in total prizes.