Little Cloud has its first special guest post! I’m super excited to share this awesome post written by the BF. He is a big sports fan (football, soccer, baseball, tennis - you name it) and knows his stuff, so he’s a great person to get sports advice from. So, in preparation for the American football season, here’s a smart, funny, and creative mega-post dedicated to drafting a passable fantasy football team the first time around. This blog is dedicated to any partner who is participating in a fantasy league to have fun and to spend some sporty bonding time with their boo. Without further ado...

Hi! Has Anna introduced me? I’m assuming Anna introduced me. So I’ll just introduce this guide. This is the girlfriend’s guide to fantasy football. It’s written for complete beginners who don’t necessarily have any understanding of how the game works or even how the real sport works. If that’s not you then feel free to just leave and carry on having a wonderful day (please don’t leave).

The general idea for fantasy NFL is to build a roster of real players and then your team scores points when they do well on the field. To understand who’s going to be on our roster, I’m going to go ahead and equate the team to a movie production, with each position playing a role. So let’s make believe that we’re trying to put together a successful film for a bit instead of focusing on sports.

• QB - Quarterbacks are the stars on the field, so the QB is our leading star in the movie. But here’s the dirty little secret - there are way too many of them for it to matter that much which one you get, as you can only really have one. Can’t get Leo? Just get Matt Damon instead. Can’t get Sandra Bullock? Just get Rachel McAdams. There are more than enough really good leading stars to go around - I mean, when was the last time you saw a Marvel movie and didn’t like the lead?

• RB - Running backs are like the villains in your movie. There explicitly are not enough good ones - I mean, how many Marvel films have actually had enjoyable villains? While they typically don’t get as much of the limelight as the leading star, really great ones can push your movie to new heights, and so this selection is what will make or break your movie. Are you making the Dark Knight or are you making Iron Man 2?

• WR - Wide receivers are your supporting characters - love interests and sidekicks. There are plenty of these to go around, but you also need plenty of them to fill out your film.

• TE - Tight ends are narrators. If you can get Morgan Freeman (Rob Gronkowski in fantasy-world) then he’s a game changer and you do it. Otherwise they’re all going to be just fine, but definitely worse than Morgan Freeman. But even Morgan Freeman narrating is never the most important part of the film.

• DST - Defenses are the score to your movie. Most of them are pretty much the same and you never know exactly how good they’re going to be. But there are a couple of composers (Hans Zimmer and John Williams, aka the Rams and the Jaguars) that are always good. For any given film they might get beaten by an unknown, but they won’t get beaten by too many of them.

• K - Kickers are the font in the ending credits. They just don’t matter.

The most important and most intimidating day of the season is draft day, but it’s actually not all that hard (as long as you’re doing a snake draft - if you’re doing an auction then this guide is too basic for you). The first thing to understand is that nobody wins their league at the draft, but some people do lose them. So we’re going to go over a strategy to ensure that we just don’t screw up. The first thing to do is to find some expert rankings to follow (my favourites are fantasypros, but make sure to use the rankings that match the ppr settings for your league). We’re going to base our picks off of these rankings rather than the much lower quality ones that your host site (yahoo, espn etc) provides.

Here are your basic rules to follow for the draft:

• In general, take players who are at least close to the highest ranked players available at that position. Taking the 2nd or 3rd ranked player is fine if you happen to like them more for some reason - and you should definitely try to take players that you like. But taking the 20th ranked player is not ok.

• The first 6 rounds are for RBs and WRs only. There are too many good QBs to justify taking one that early, and too few good TEs to worry about taking one that early.

• The good RBs will run out very quickly and you need to have depth as they’re the most injury prone position in the sport. Make sure that you have at least 1 by the end of round 2, at least 2 by the end of round 4 and at least 3 by the end of round 6. Selecting as many as 4 RBs before the end of round 6 is a-ok.

• From here on out you can select any positions. If you don’t know what position to look at for any given round, check the fantasypros rankings and see if any position only has a few players left in a given tier. If so, strongly consider taking one of them. If not, just try to keep a balance of RBs and WRs.

• Make sure you draft someone for every position in your lineup.

• Do not draft a kicker until the last round of the draft.

• Do not draft a defense until the 2nd to last round of the draft.

• Make sure that you’ll have at least 2 bench RBs and 2 bench WRs.

• Do not draft a QB for your bench (exception - Andrew Luck owners).

• Do not draft a TE for your bench (exception - Rob Gronkowski owners).

Follow these rules and you’ll do fine. And that’s exactly what we’re going for here.

During the season, your responsibilities are to maintain your roster and to pick a team every week. Picking the team is the easy part - pick the players that have been scoring the most or are ranked the highest on a site like fantasypros.com. The only thing that might trip you up is that each player has 1 bye week each season, so you’ll have to drop everyone at least once. Maintaining your roster means considering picking up new players from the waiver wire every week. Your league should provide some sort of projected scoring output for all available players, so you should be able to see who the good ones are (pay particular attention to backup RBs whose starters have gotten injured). If any of your players are playing like bums, remember that you aren’t stuck with them - trade up. Speaking of trading, hopefully your league is active and there are trade offers flying around. When evaluating trades you just want to remember two things. First, RBs are the most valuable position and you never want to lack depth with them until late in the year when injuries are less likely to strike. At some point in the season, at least 1 owner will completely run out of starting quality RBs and will have to massively overpay to trade for some - you know what side of that trade you want to be on. Second, it’s better to have a single dollar than 4 quarters. The value of two players who each score 10 points per week is much less than 1 who scores 20 points per week, because if you have the 20 point player then you also have an open roster spot and even if you have to pick up someone from the waiver wire to fill that spot, they’ll push the balance in your favour.

I can practically hear what you’re thinking by now. “This is way too much information”. “I’m never going to remember all of this”. “Your writing style is so distinguished and attractive <3”. “Can you just give me one thing to learn and I’ll make sure I get that right?” I sure can, imaginary beginner! The single most important decision you’ll make all season long, and to be honest it isn’t all that close, is what to name your team. There’s a lot of variance in a single season of fantasy football. Maybe you get lucky and win, maybe you get unlucky and lose - ultimately a lot of things are going to be out of your control. But naming your team is all you. I have no idea who won the first league I was a part of (spoiler alert - not me), but I do remember that the best name from that league was The Peeping Tomlinsons (if you don’t get this name, search for Ladanian Tomlinson on youtube and you might understand why some of us love this sport so much). “Being creative is fun and all, but can you boil this down to a set of numbers as well?”

Well since you asked, here’s the secret formula to what makes a great team name:

• 10% intimidation - Never let your opponents get too comfortable.

• 20% references to yourself or your players - If you have Jimmy Garropolo on your team, why not make a reference to that beautiful man? If you’re a die-hard Packers fan, why not mention the pack? If you’re a Browns fan, I’m so, so, so sorry - just stay strong and you’ll get through this. You get the idea.

• 15% originality - If somebody can google fantasy football team names and find yours linked from any result on the first page, you’ve let yourself down.

• 5% self deprecation - It’s ok to make fun of yourself, but don’t go overboard. We don’t want this to overwhelm the intimidation factor.

• 50% punnerificness - A quality pun is the single most important aspect of your name. I can’t stress this enough - no pun no fun.

Hit all of these notes, and your league mates will have 100% reason to remember the name.

So that’s it. That’s everything that you need to know going into your first season of fantasy football. Good luck, have fun and never trust a Patriots running back.