Draft day checklist: twelve things to do before your first pick

Why a checklist

A draft is ninety minutes of decisions made under a clock, and every one of them is easier if the facts were gathered before the clock started. This list is the hour before. None of it is strategy. It is the set of numbers you should have on the page in front of you, with the reason each one matters on Sep 3, 2026, so you can see whether it still matters on your draft day.

Know the league

1. Read the scoring settings. Reception value, quarterback slots, any tight end bonus. Josh Allen's average pick was 34 in PPR drafts and 2 in two quarterback drafts on Sep 3. If you do not know which league you are in, you do not know whether he is a third round pick or the first.

2. Count the lineup slots. How many running backs, receivers and flexes start each week decides how many of each you need by round six. A three receiver lineup with a flex wants five receivers who can start; a two receiver lineup wants three.

3. Read the waiver rules. On Sleeper the default FAAB budget is $100, bids are blind, ties go to rolling priority, and waivers clear at 12:05 a.m. Pacific on Wednesday. If your league runs FAAB, the last three rounds of the draft are cheaper than they look, because the wire will refill them.

4. Write down the draft order and your slot. The turn is different at slot 1, slot 6 and slot 12, and knowing how many picks pass between your turns is the whole game in rounds three through eight.

Know the board

5. Pull the ADP column for your format, that morning. The board moves daily. Josh Jacobs went from an average pick of 32.0 to 55.8 between the two board days on file, and MarShawn Lloyd went from 139.3 to 125.1. A sheet printed last week is a sheet that will make you reach for a player the room has already repriced.

6. Mark the tier breaks. The rankings page marks the end of tier 1 at rank 24, Omarion Hampton, with three picks to the next shelf. The board movement page lists the gaps it treats as breaks: Jonathan Taylor to De'Von Achane, Drake London to Derrick Henry, Hampton to Zay Flowers, Cam Skattebo to Davante Adams, Adams to D'Andre Swift. When your pick lands just above a break, take the last player on the shelf. When it lands just below one, the reach is free.

7. Mark the designations. The injury report on Sep 3 listed Puka Nacua, Ja'Marr Chase, Christian McCaffrey, Ashton Jeanty, Zay Flowers, Malik Nabers, Jeremiyah Love and Breece Hall as Questionable and Jacobs as Out. A Questionable tag in early September is usually noise; an Out tag is a price change, and the board already made it.

8. Mark the byes. A cluster on your own roster is the mistake that costs a week.

Source: Parlae rankings page, Sep 3 2026.

Six of the top thirteen players on the board sit out Week 6. Two first round picks from that list is a fine roster with a bad week; three is a problem you drafted on purpose.

Know the sample

9. Check the drafts count behind any price you plan to lean on. On Sep 3, Saquon Barkley's price rested on 3,066 recorded drafts and James Cook's on 2,782. Drake London's rested on 348, Rashee Rice's on 330, and Rice's ECR spread ran from 11 to 68 among experts. A thin price moves fast. When two players are close and one has ten times the sample, the sample is the tiebreaker.

10. Know which players the board and the experts disagree on. Trey McBride went at 29 in PPR drafts while experts ranked him 17th; Brock Bowers at 35 against 19th. Derrick Henry went at 15 against 38th. Those are the players where your draft order and your ranking order should differ, and you want the list in front of you, not in your memory.

Know the week

11. Know the Week 1 clock. New England at Seattle kicks off Wednesday, September 9, at 8:20 PM ET, and San Francisco and the Rams play Thursday, September 10, at 8:35 PM ET from Melbourne. Any player from those four teams locks days before the Sunday slate, and a draft on the weekend of September 5 gives you four days to set them. Waivers also clear before Sunday, so a claim filed in Week 1 is a claim on no snaps.

12. Open the assistant before the room opens. If the draft is on Sleeper, the live draft assistant finds your drafts from your username, follows every pick, and shows the board with the tier breaks and the movement already applied. It reads; it never picks. Have it open on a second screen, and have the ADP column from step 5 on paper in case the room's wifi does what draft night wifi does.

What to do with this

1. Do steps 1 through 4 the night before, in the league settings screen. They do not change on draft day and they decide what every other number means.
2. Do steps 5 through 10 on draft morning from the ADP page and the board movement page, and print them. Every number here is dated Sep 3, and the board will have moved by the time you read it.
3. Do steps 11 and 12 an hour before the draft. Then close every other tab. The hour before the draft is for the numbers you have, not the ones you might find.