Fresh Off The RotoWire: How to Avoid Last Place in Your 2023 Fantasy Football League

This article is part of our Fresh Off The RotoWire series.

Labor Day Weekend is the final opportunity to celebrate summer, and it's also a pretty ideal time to hold a fantasy football draft -- or several. 

Do you want to win your 2023 fantasy football league(s)? Perhaps more importantly, do you want to avoid last place?

Finishing in the cellar generally includes more than just embarrassment these days, and if you mess up your fantasy draft you are going down a path of no return. Sure, you might want to focus on the draft-day festivities, but do you really want to go out for a night on the town wearing an outfit of the league's choosing?

No matter your fantasy experience, heed the steps below before and during your draft and stay out of the basement.

Pre-Draft

You can't go into your draft without doing any research. A small investment, measured in both minutes and dollars, will get you where you need to be when the action kicks off.

Download RotoWire's 2023 Fantasy Football Draft Kit app or 2023 Fantasy Football Draft Software.

I'm sure you're shocked to hear a RotoWire writer plug his company's products, but the small cost spent on the app or software is entirely worth it. Would you rather pony up the price of a light lunch or put on a pair of JNCOs and run a 5K? The Draft Kit app and Fantasy Football Draft Software allow you to create custom rankings using your league's settings, a key advantage for beginners and experts alike. They can be used offline -- Pro Tip No. 1: download the latest data if you're drafting without WiFi -- and take the stress out of sifting through a magazine or a stack of papers.

Learn from past drafts.

For snake drafts, check where players were selected in previous years, or for salary cap drafts, find out how much players went for. This analysis gives you extra intel on your leaguemates -- particularly those close to you on the draft board. Does the friend picking right behind you like to draft quarterbacks early? How about where the top rookies went in a keeper league? If you are joining a league for the first time, ask someone who was in it before if they have past draft results handy, and even reach out to last year's loser to find out what went wrong and why they had to post a dance on TikTok every day for an entire month.

Make your own list of rankings by position in the Draft Kit app or in a spreadsheet.

Now the real work starts. Both ADP and default rankings are available to guide your decisions and provide a baseline to go off. But you hit the 'Draft' button, and before you do so it's best to know who you want. Predraft rankings account for positional scarcity, but that goes out the window to some degree after picks have been made. If you already have five wide receivers and the top remaining player is a wideout, you'll probably want to look elsewhere. Pour through NFL Depth Charts, create tiers at each spot and don't be afraid to remove players from your list -- an injury-prone vet or a player on a bad team -- that you simply have no interest in. Trust me, no one wants to be forced to go to a comedy club and do a five-minute routine.

In-Draft

Preparation doesn't stop once the draft starts. To follow your personal rankings to a T and create a sense of ease, there are two more crucial steps.

Use the queue to your advantage.

When you enter the draft room, go through your personal rankings and add players you like to the queue or watchlist so you don't have to search for them later. A minute can feel like five seconds when the spotlight is on you -- it feels the same if your leaguemates make you do a calendar shoot -- so try to plan ahead. Your sleepers are probably someone else's sleepers, so make sure you have a couple options when the clock comes to you. Pro tip No. 2: Be careful in a salary cap draft if there is a player you want to keep tabs on but not put up for bid.

Track the picks in the Draft Kit app or Draft Software.

Well, we'll finish where we started and plug RotoWire's products once more. A simple search and swipe prevents you from searching for players on a piece of paper and crossing them off. In the app you can simply select the "My Team" and "Other Team" options in the settings to save even more of those precious seconds. You will always know who is available and can plan ahead. If you highlight sleepers, you will have a feel for where they show up in relation to everyon eelse, and you will notice if there are eight receivers left that you like but only three running backs. Sure, you can skip this part, but you might end up sporting a temporary Mike Tyson tattoo on your face for a month.

Hopefully by this point you're terrified enough to listen to the advice above. Even if you download the app and fire up a spreadsheet you might not win it all, because so much is out of your control. But chances are you will stay out of the gutter, and no one wants to stand on a street corner for an afternoon holding a sign that says, "I SUCK AT FANTASY FOOTBALL."