Draft Types

A draft is one of the most important (and fun!) aspects of playing Fantasy Football. Whether you want to practice your skills in an NFL.com Mock Drafts or pre-rank your targeted players with information from the NFL.com Draft Kit, NFL.com has the information to make sure you are prepared from start to finish of your Fantasy Draft.

There are three easy-to-use Fantasy Draft types on NFL.com Fantasy Football: Live Online Draft, Autopick Draft and Offline Draft.

Live Online Draft:

The Live Online Draft feature allows you to select a full fantasy team, LIVE, round-by-round in an interactive environment. The draft client features comprehensive stats, analysis and chat functionality, all packaged in a user-friendly interface. In this draft application you will be able to rank your players in real-time, adding them to a queue that will update as players are taken by other teams in the league. You have the ability to search for players or filter the available players by position so that you can make fast, easy and informed decisions to fill out your roster. When you have found the perfect selection, click “DRAFT NOW” and the player you selected will be assigned to your team. You will be able to track all of the action by round and by individual team, all in one place inside the draft application.

Can’t make the start of your live Draft? Have to step away from your computer for your fifth-round selection? No problem. In the NFL.com Live Online Fantasy Draft you can select the “Autopick” feature, which will strictly follow either your established queue of pre-ranked players, or select for you in your absence based on NFL.com's Fantasy rankings. Either way, you will have full ownership of your team after the draft and can make the trades, adds, and drops to craft your team exactly how you prefer.

The NFL.com Live Online and Autopick Drafts operate with either a “snake” or "linear" drafting order.

• Snake - The team with the first overall pick selects, followed by the team with the second pick, third pick, and so on. At the end of the first round, the team that just drafted (with the last pick in the first round) will have the first pick in the second round, as the draft order reverses until the end of the second round sees the team that orginally drafted first overall makes another selection.
• Linear - The team with the first overall pick selects, followed by the team with the second pick, third pick and so on. The draft order that is established in the first round will be the order that picks are selected throughout the entire draft. In other words, the order in the first round is used in all rounds and never changes.

The draft order is reflected at the top of the Live Draft application (Live Draft only) and will also be featured on your Draft Results page accessible from your League homepage after your draft is complete.

Note: The 2011 NFL.com Fantasy Football Live Online Draft requires a Flash-enabled browser to operate correctly.

Autopick Draft:

The Autopick Draft operates based on NFL.com Fantasy experts default rankings or a team owner’s established pre-rankings. This draft type is an excellent choice for both beginners as well as leagues that can’t agree on a live draft time. In an autopick draft, players are assigned to your team automatically. NFL.com helps you fill your roster either by going strictly off your Pre-Rank Draft list and Excluded Players list or by selecting the best available player at an open position of need on your roster. Select a day and time for your autopick draft and that is all you need to produce a league full of fantasy teams for each owner to manage as they see fit.

The NFL.com Autopick Draft operates with a “snake” drafting order. What that means is the team with the first overall pick selects, followed by the team with the second pick, third pick, and so on. At the end of the first round, the team that just drafted (with the last pick in the first round) will have the first pick in the second round, as the draft order reverses until the end of the second round sees the team that originally drafted first overall makes another pick. This process repeats until all teams have filled out their rosters. The snake draft order helps ensure fairly balanced teams - whether you are the first overall pick or the last, all teams will receive equal number of picks and will have an advantage during various rounds of the draft. If you are curious, the draft order is featured on your Draft Results page accessible from your League homepage after your draft is complete.

Offline Draft:

The Offline Draft is a draft type in which the League’s teams draft their players without use of the drafting tools provided by NFL.com (Live Draft client, Autopick option, or Pre-Rank Lists). Whether the draft is held in a conference room, restaurant, basement, backyard, on the phone, or by e-mail, the Offline Draft offers additional draft flexibility for fantasy fans.

Once your league’s rosters have been finalized, the League Manager must enter in the draft selections into the “Edit Draft Results” page, which can be found on the “Manage” tab of your NFL.com Fantasy Football league. Once everything is entered, your league is eligible to execute all normal NFL.com Fantasy functions, including add/drop, trades, set lineup, etc.

Note that when you are entering your Offline Draft, all roster spots must be filled on each team before you can start the season. There can be no open roster spots or the season will not begin.