We’re ready for the biggest fantasy football draft weekend of the year. You need some quick advice, some peppy shouts if you will. Here’s the easy-to-understand but useful advice you should hear before you start building your masterpiece.

General strategy draft

ADP has a bad reputation. It’s a rough estimate of what players cost in drafts, and that matters. I never adjust player order in a draft applet, although I might maintain a list on the side; I want to know what names my rivals are paying attention to.

If you can choose your draft slot, focus on something near the top of the first round. The talent pool quickly becomes empty in the second round, as most players can no longer be separated from one another. In the first round, there are more clearly defined small talent clusters.

Come up with a design, but think of it as a pencil sketch. The first rule is to stay flexible. You never know what great opportunities might unexpectedly arise during the draft.

For me, weeks without games are just a decision criterion. It’s usually a mistake to let off weeks influence the draft decision. If you want a tiebreaker, take the player with the later off week. Your roster will look very different in the second half of the year.

Most of the time, I find the “strength of the schedule” analysis to be of little value. Too much is unknown. Too much changes throughout the season; it’s a snow globe league. If I’m going to apply any SOS analysis to my drafts this weekend, it’s only going to be on the extremes, the outliers. Atlanta’s schedule looks like marshmallows — we should definitely take that seriously.

If a player is already dealing with a serious injury, I will probably have someone else step in for that player. Injury optimism is not your friend, and in fantasy football, you shouldn’t be looking for injuries – they’ll find you anyway. I realize you may have IR slots and they’re probably free right now, but that never lasts long. Nick Chubb and TJ Hockenson are basically off my draft list. It’s not fun to draft like an actuary, but it’s smart.

Try to recruit players who are in the first nine games of their careers, players on the escalator, players who probably haven’t played their best season yet. Occasionally I’m open to a boring older veteran if the price makes sense, but you don’t want a roster full of back-nine players, especially at the non-quarterback positions.

Listen to everyone you respect, but make your own decisions. It’s your team. You know your league and the situation better than an outsider.

Remember to update your player queue regularly during the draft. This will protect you if you get knocked offline in the middle of a draft (but don’t let those “sleepers” from the last few rounds go to the top) and will ensure you keep track of the names you want to keep an eye on.

Partnering up is one of the best fantasy cheat codes out there, provided you find someone with a similar NFL worldview. If your interests and knowledge aren’t roughly the same, it probably won’t work out. But if there’s a good match, it’s very powerful. Plus, you always have someone who’s committed to the team, someone you can share the experience with.

It’s OK to have a few picks that are mostly based on the bottom, but for our purposes, the upside is probably more important. Nobody wins the Masters with 72 pars.

The best league format is the one that you and your friends enjoy the most. There are no right answers here. If I’m tasked with setting up a league, I prefer a league that starts more players because I think it rewards depth more and balances variance more. But please, do that yourself.

I also prefer salary cap drafts to standard snake drafts because I like anything that allows for more variety in roster construction. I also want to have a chance against every player in the pool and am looking forward to the challenge of having to defend and bid directly against the entire room.

Select or bid on players that fit your squad. If you focus more on confusing your opponents, especially in a salary cap draft, it can blow up in your face very easily. I’m not saying confusing your opponents can’t be fun, but if you don’t really know what you’re doing, it’s a dangerous game. You’ve been warned.

Positioning strategy for 2024

I’m not taking a vanity quarterback this year. The pool is absurdly large and there are so many interesting candidates. In superflex formats, I’m often the last to draft my QB1 but the first to draft my QB2. That’s not a bad idea, even if you only start one quarterback per week.

At the draft table, I generally do not take running back insurance. Of course, I’ll pick a handful of running back lottery tickets — whatever setup you prefer, any smart manager does that. But don’t double-team. Early on, you want to play for the big inning. Later in the season, when teams’ RB rooms are better defined and your personal situation is clearer, hedging might make sense. That’s not something I’m chasing in August.

(Jordan Mason could be a rare safety pick for me, as he’s clearly the No. 2 pick in San Francisco and the system is great, even if the offensive line is a question mark. For me, that’s an exception in the preseason, not the rule.)

If your league starts with at least three wideouts (or maybe more, considering flexibility), I probably want the best WR room in the league. If your starting needs are something like two running backs and two wideouts, the RB position becomes more important. Most of my builds focus on the hero RB approach, where you land a signature runner somewhere in the first 3-4 rounds but focus on the other positions with early picks. I will deviate from this if the overall starting needs are low.

The tight end stands deeper than usual for the first 10 players or so and then falls off a cliff. That doesn’t mean you have to fill the position early, but you do need to give it at least some priority. If your league has 12 or more managers, you don’t want to be the last team to take care of the tight end position.

In the middle of the summer, it often makes sense to forgo a kicker or D/ST pick in favor of another pick with conditional upside potential. But this close to the start of the season, you should forget about this move. There is not enough time in a week to publish a lot of important news. Just fill all your slots.

My tips, pans, goals, transitions, advice

We’ve been working on it all summer. Here’s my playbook.

— My boys

— Big names fade

— Quarterback Levels

— Running Back Levels

— Wide Receiver Levels

— Tight End Levels

— Team Power Rankings (with lots of player comments)

— Salary cap draft tips

Draft like a champion today. Make this the season you’ll never forget.