How late should you hold your fantasy football draft? When is the best time?
If you haven’t held your fantasy football draft yet, you’re not alone and it’s not too late! In fact, maybe now is indeed the best time.
We are already heading into the final week of the NFL preseason and if you haven’t held your fantasy football draft yet, don’t panic. In fact, I am of the opinion that after the last preseason game and before the first regular season game is indeed the best time. So not only don’t panic - don’t rush. If you’ve already held yours, well then…best of luck and I hope you didn’t pick Antonio Gibson.
Players can get injured at any time, of course. But it’s an even bigger shame to hold an entire draft only to have one of your players get injured before the regular season even starts. Plus, you can get at least a small idea of who will be worth the risk and who won’t (i.e. Gibson). Of course, that thinking can also be dangerous as preseason stars may flop completely come regular season and preseason flops may break out in the regular season. One just simply never knows.
A perfect time in the US is Labor Day weekend, September 2-5. Everyone has a long weekend, preseason is over, regular season hasn’t started, and you pretty much know who is still healthy to start the season.
How late is too late to hold your fantasy football draft?
If you’re doing a season-long league and not just a daily, I would say you can pretty much hold your draft as late as the day before the regular season starts, but actually, most websites and applications have their own rules about this. It varies a bit, but the general rule is that you can start a season-long league as late as four weeks into the regular season. At that point, I consider it cheating, but I digress. If for some reason, you never got around to it and you still want to play along with what’s left of the season, you can. After the four weeks though, most websites will cut you off and you’ll only be allowed to play daily fantasy football at that point. I don’t recommend starting after the regular season starts - it takes a lot of fun out of the draft plus makes your season even shorter.
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