The NFL preseason wraps its second week on Sunday, which means the fantasy draft window is slamming shut faster than a Bill Belichick press conference. If you're still doing homework, good. If you haven't started, you're not late yet, but you can see late from where you're standing. The latest ADP numbers on the sleeper market are out, and as always, the gaps between where guys are going and where they should be going are where leagues get won.

I wrote a couple weeks back about not paying full price for last year's box scores, and the ADP board right now is a perfect example of why. The market leans on recency like a crutch. A guy pops for four touchdowns in December and suddenly he's being drafted two rounds ahead of the guy who was starter-quality all season and just happened to get hurt in October. I've been drafting fantasy teams since before half the league commissioners were born, and that recency tax never changes. Only the names do.

So what do you do with the current board? A few rules that have survived three decades of drafts at my kitchen table and in my league's group chat, which is somehow more hostile.

First, target the guys whose situations changed even though their name recognition didn't. A new quarterback, a new offensive line, a departed veteran eating into carries last season. The market punishes players for the crime of a bad supporting cast, then is slow to forgive them when the cast improves. That lag is your discount window. Dave Morgan, our analytics guy, would tell you to just compare the projection spreads, and he's not wrong. But the spreadsheet doesn't know the coordinator change matters until somebody tells the spreadsheet it matters, you follow?

Second, stop treating round three like a shrine. The best managers I know walk into a draft with maybe eight names they love and a plan for the rounds in between, and they're willing to reach a round early for a guy they believe in. Reaching gets mocked. Reaching also wins titles. Ask anyone who grabbed a second-year receiver in the tenth round, caught grief for it, and rode him to a championship.

Third, and this is the one I'll defend at the bar until they turn the lights on: the sleeper lists everyone's reading are worth less than the film you watched yourself. If a sleeper is in an article, he's half-sleeping already. The name of the game is finding the guy two spots down the depth chart from an injury-prone starter in a good offense. That's the old-school definition of a sleeper. A sixth-round pick with a breakout article written about him is just a popular guy with a nickname.

One practical tip as the preseason closes: watch the final week of cuts, not the games. The fourth preseason game tells you almost nothing. The roster decisions after it tell you everything. A team keeping three running backs it probably didn't need to keep is telling you something about how it plans to close out games in December.

Draft season is my favorite two weeks of the sports calendar that don't involve an actual game being played. It's the one time of year every fan gets to be a general manager, and every August I'm reminded that most general managers are just fans with expense accounts. Do the homework, trust your eyes over the crowd, and don't be afraid to be the guy who took your sleeper two rounds early. The trophy doesn't ask which round you drafted him in.