Advanced Strategies for Success Aug 15, 2008 | More

Draft Strategies

Don’t draft a kicker or a defense if you don’t have to
Some providers don’t actually require you to fill your starting lineup with the draft, so I’m saying take the old adage “don’t draft a kicker or defense until the last two rounds” a step further by not drafting either at all (again, only if it’s possible). This is especially useful if your draft occurs relatively long before the season starts because you can see how questionable players pan out in those last weeks leading up to the season.

If you think about it, not many in your league will probably use this strategy, and most that draft a kicker or defense will almost always use that kicker or defense in week 1. Therefore, if there’s a nice matchup you see in week 1 for a kicker or defense that you know probably won’t get drafted, you can feel pretty safe about not taking that kicker or defense in the draft.  Then, pick up that kicker or defense closer to the start of the week 1 games.

If you draft a kicker or defense in the last rounds, analyze the week 1 matchups
This strategy is many times overlooked. If you take a kicker and defense in the last two rounds, and you plan on playing matchups with these positions throughout the season, why not do it for week 1 as well? In other words, don’t draft a middle-of-the-pack defense or kicker if they don’t have a good week 1 matchup.

Listen to your provider
I first wrote about this a few weeks back, and you can read all about it here.  I just can’t stress enough how important it is to pay attention to your provider’s default list, especially after seeing the dramatic effect it’s had on the countless mock drafts I’ve done through the many different providers.

In-season Strategies

Watch your opponent’s players listed as questionable
It’s very common for a player’s status to be questionable until about an hour before kickoff. Many managers with these questionable players will hold off on picking up a replacement from the free agent pool because they don’t want to drop any of their bench players (for whatever reason). Perhaps your opponent has another RB on the bench, but that RB is on bye that week. Managers with questionable players should always have another suitable option on their bench ready to go, but not everyone is as smart as you and I. Anyway, there are plenty of scenarios where you can take advantage of this, so listen up.

On Sunday morning, scour the reports of your opponent’s player(s) in question, and check to see who would be his most viable options out on the free agent pool if he needed to go there. Once it’s known that the questionable player is out that game, it might be worth picking up his best options yourself so that he can’t make use of him (even if you don’t need to use these pickups yourself). In some cases, it might even be worth picking up more than one or two of the most viable options, putting your opponent in a very tough situation. Of course, you’ll have to make a decision on whether you think it’s worth dropping any of your bench guys for a guy you won’t end up using, but it’s quite common that you’ll have a few disposable players on your roster throughout the season

As in real football, you sometimes have to play fantasy on a week-to-week basis, especially if its crunch time and you’re fighting to get into the playoffs. If you’re near the end of the season, and you’re still holding on to a handcuff for example, it might be time to let him go if you need the win.

I still remember the days where you could pickup a player, then immediately send him to waivers by dropping him, and then repeating that process until your opponent has practically no options. However, those days are long gone in most leagues. Nowadays, if you try to do this in the same day, the player you picked up and immediately dropped won’t go to waivers just to prevent this practice. You can still do this once a day though, so use it to your advantage if you can.

With add/drops, timing can be crucial
There are many different scenarios that apply here. As an example, if you’re thinking about dropping a player that you don’t want this week’s opponent to pickup and use against you (or, if that player has a great matchup and you don’t want any manager using him that week), use the waiver period to your advantage by making sure that player will be on waivers until after that week’s games are over.

Take advantage of the waiver release time
Just about every league implements some kind of waivers, and many of them also implement Sun-Tues. waivers. Let’s say you want to pickup a guy on waivers who’s not an obvious pickup that week (as opposed to an obvious pickup, like a backup to a starting RB that just got injured). You may or may not want to put in a waiver request for this non-obvious pickup because if you’re the only one who puts in the request, you’ve effectively wasted your waiver priority when you might not have had to. Of course, other managers might be thinking the same thing about this non-obvious player, saying to themselves the same thing you are: “I’ll just pick him up when he clears waivers”. If the waiver release time is fixed at a specific time and/or at a time most managers are waiting around for it (especially for Sun.-Tues. waivers), this strategy is difficult to implement. For Sun.-Tues. waivers, some leagues have a 1-2 hour timeframe early Tuesday morning, usually starting anywhere from 3:00 – 4:00 AM, when in a split second, all unrequested players clear waivers. The exact moment can vary over different leagues and providers. It’s usually determined randomly by the system each week in an attempt to prevent what I’m telling you to do right now, but at least you have a window to work with. The safest thing to do is stay up all night and throughout the early morning refreshing the free agent pool until players clear waivers, and if no one put in a request for they guy you want, you’ll get him. Sometimes you’ll kill yourself doing this though, since players might not clear waivers until the last possible instant, and you might have an early meeting for work that morning. If you can’t handle doing this, then just set your alarm for 3:30 or 4:00 AM (or whatever the waiver release time/window is), wake up, and check if players have cleared waivers. If not, set your alarm for 4:30 or 5:00 AM, go back to sleep, and repeat. You might be sleep deprived the next day, but at least you’ll get the player you want without wasting your waiver priority, and you’ll probably only do this at most once a week!

Still, some are probably thinking to themselves that the effort would be completely wasted if anyone else actually put in a request for that player.Believe it or not, some providers have what is called a “processing period” of somewhere around 20 minutes (I can’t remember exactly, maybe because it’s different every time, but it’s definitely not documented anywhere) during which the system “processes” the players who have been requested. During this “processing period”, only those players who’ve been requested will still show up on waivers in the pool, and all the unrequested players will show up as free agents. So, if you haven’t requested the player you want and that player is still on waivers when all the rest of the pool turns into free agents, you’ll know that at least one other manager has requested him. Then, you can make a more informed decision on whether or not to make a request yourself. Of course, if he turns into a free agent, grab him with no waiver penalty! Again, I’m not sure how Sun.-Tues. waivers works with every provider, but you can figure it out the first Tuesday morning of the season by using similar methods.

Further, you can extend this strategy to any type of waiver period. Many times, the waiver release time for non-Sun.-Tues. waivers works in a similar way, if not the same way as Sun.-Tues. waivers.

Know when you can drop players who’ve played in your starting lineup the previous week
This is somewhat similar to the waivers strategy I just detailed. In many leagues, there’s a certain period of time after a given week’s games that you cannot drop a player who was just used in your starting lineup. This time period usually ends sometime late Sunday night or early Monday. Sometimes, this might be around the same time players clear waivers for that given day. The exact instance is usually fixed, and you can determine when exactly it is by using methods similar to those I just described for taking advantage of waivers.

If you want to immediately drop a player Sunday night that you just started (this can be for a multitude of reasons), you’re at an advantage if you know the first instant it’s possible.

Know the needs of your fellow managers and propose trades
Trading can help your chances of success dramatically, especially when you can pull off a trade that will obviously help you. I’ve always found it easy to trade a 2^nd-tier RB and a 2^nd-tier WR for a stud WR, assuming I’ve made an effort to stock up on RBs (which, granted, isn’t always easy to do). This is of course because starting RBs are the scarcest position in fantasy football, and there will always be managers in need of them.

Whisper
I wrote a separate article dedicated to this, and you can read it here.  However, be forewarned that while some would call it strategy, others might call it collusion. I don’t believe it’s a form of collusion at all. In fact, as I mention in the article, it doesn’t have much effect on more competitive leagues. As well, some methods of whispering are more subtle than others. For example, if you need someone in your league to win a game in order for you to make the playoffs, and he’s not as skilled as you, it might be worth taking him out for dinner or a few beers so you can talk it over with him. But again, whispering doesn’t have much effect in leagues where every manager already knows his stuff well and keeps up with it.