So, How Do You Use Draft Analyzer

[Bisbo]

I'm interested in how people use Draft Analyzer to take maximum advantage of its capabilities. Do you weight the various positions to come up with an entire draft board? Just use it to search for specific groupings of attributes by position? I don't think I'm getting the most out of this program that I could - thoughts and tips would be most appreciated.

[gstelmack]

There are some thoughts in the UtilitySuite thread. But I also think you'll find that everyone uses it differently, you just have to work through a few drafts to figure out what's working for you. First you need to decide HOW you want to draft, then you figure out how to make Draft Analyzer help you. Draft Analyzer should not force a particular drafting strategy for you, it will just help apply the strategy you've already come up with.

[Ben E Lou]

What Greg said.


I set up my weights by simply doing this.

1. Opened up a past draft class.
2. Ranked the top 15 guys the way I would have ranked them.
3. Started messing with position and combine weights as to how I "think" I weigh them in my head.
4. Tweaked position/combine weights accordingly until Analyzer's top 15 was a very close match to my top 15.
5. Double-checked positions like FB, P, K, and C that didn't appear in the top 15 to see if they showed up where I thought they should (i.e. stud FB in late first/early 2nd, stud P/K in last 2nd/early 3rd, etc.)

[Firefly]

That's a pretty nifty method, Ben!

[flair1234]

I set the combines and the bars per each position to match the types of players I like.

Then I weighted the combines 60% and bars 40%.

[aston217]

I don't like using position weights. I figure if I'm making a list, I can look at the players I am interested in at various positions and then stack them in the draft utility based on my particular situation at that point in the draft. I haven't really gotten the hang of using dA, so I try to use it in a rather limited way, just to supplement.

Mostly I sort by position, and then by bar or combine, or ratings. Then draw my own conclusions. e.g, dA thinks this player is good, but he's all bars and no combine. Or, "these are the top 5 combines for ILBs this year. Let's look at their bars."

So I haven't really changed the weightings of anything - except for K/P for example, as even if I want to draft one, I like them not to be in the way when I'm looking through players. Another thing I like to do, which I hope is a good idea, is remove things like Broad Jump from contributing to the combine scores of WR, etc, where all they do is dictate KR/PR. I'm looking for players first, and don't want to have to figure out if this guy really has a good combine, or if he's just a 30/30 punt returner. I can always look for return guys separately.