Skip to main content

Offseason Football Guide

Title Image

This piece is part of our article program that features quality content from experts exclusively at FantasyPros.
For more insight from d-RX, Stagg Party and Houdini head to Pyromaniac.

The offseason is a time of reflection, on things you did well, on areas you struggled, and players you were right or wrong on. The offseason has a lot of different pieces happening at different points of the year. It is a long process, but we have 5 months or so to accomplish them all as owners. To be the most knowledgeable fantasy owner, we recommend checking in on the league on a daily basis for at least a few minutes, but there are days when more work is required. Consider this the guide to your offseason and first step to fantasy football domination.

Know your league (Houdini)

This is the starting point for building your strategy. Every league is different, and those differences are why some owners are more successful than others. When you look at rankings for a position, do those rankings truly reflect who the biggest scoring players are at their respective positions in your league? Most often they do not. Leagues have gone to specialized scoring where each league chooses what’s best for them. Some leagues are PPR (Points Per Reception), and others give bonuses for long touchdowns. There are leagues that don’t allow trades, while others restrict the number of moves you can make. Therefore, knowing your leagues rules, changes how you look at players, and should be the starting point for your offseason preparations.

Review your leagues draft (yours included, notice trends by your league mates) (d-Rx®)

I love to print out the draft of the previous season while the happenings of the previous season are still fresh in my mind. It’s always a painful experience, continually scratching your head as you go through the serpentine draft saying, “how in the hell did I draft that guy in the 5th round, what was I thinking – I thought I didn’t start getting really buzzed till the 8th round!?” It’s a tough pill to swallow reviewing draft strategies from as recent as 6 months ago, but better to gauge what happened from draft day to the championship hardware being hoisted. Print out the draft, start with your picks, and evaluate the great picks and why they were great.

How did the league champion win last year (d-Rx®)

It’s important to review the latest season, right after the fantasy championship has been won (hopefully by you). I call this the fantasy football audit, and it has a few different tentacles. Below I will list a few of them that have helped me carry the good and the bad from the most recent season, in each league I’m playing in. If you listen to our Pyro Podcast, you hear me talk about doing a team/league audit for each league you are in during the playoffs or immediately after the Super Bowl. When you know the subtle details of your previous season while studying for the next one, it’s a huge advantage. It falls into a deeper minutia of Houdini’s “Know your league” mantra, it’s just know more about knowing how current statistical trends, great and terrible draft picks and pickups, and position value works against the leagues you are playing in – really look.

Statistical review audit (Stagg Party)

After the season fantasy players should go back and do a review of last seasons numbers. Fantasy numbers are the most meaningful thing in the game so knowing them inside and out gives you a big jump on your competition. Some of the major statistics we like to review are targets, touches and looks, snap counts, and touchdown dependency. Knowing how a team distributes its rush and pass attempts really gives you an idea of what players a team is trying to feature and who they are making a concerted effort to get the ball to. Knowing snap counts will give you an idea of who did the most with the least amount of snaps, and in turn is likely to see a jump in snaps next season. Finally, touchdowns are the hardest piece of the puzzle to evaluate from season to season, so knowing a guy who scored all his points on touchdowns or yards will make for an easy way to move him up or down in next season’s rankings.

Career year beware (Houdini)

Identifying players that had a career year, and avoid them the following year is a strategy that always pays off. The game of football is so challenging, that when a player has more success than he has ever had before, it usually results in a regression the following year. A big part of the reason for regression is the focus that defensive coordinators will now put on that player. The other major factor is just how difficult it is to repeat on such a successful season. Players that are coming off a career season will always be overrated and over drafted the next season, which is why it is important to identify these players and let another owner experience the disappointment in their lower production.

Power in numbers (which teams score the most fantasy points) (Houdini)

Another key to success in fantasy is identifying the power teams. Power teams are those that have multiple players that are top performers. The bulk of the fantasy points scored during the season usually come from nine of the 32 NFL teams. These are teams that usually have three players in the top 60 of fantasy production. The players are spread amongst multiple positions, but usually have strong quarterbacks. The strategy tells you that it’s better to take the #2 receiving option on one of these teams as compared to the #1 options on many other teams. Every season there are always less than 1/3 of the teams that generate the bulk of the fantasy production.

Follow the coaching changes (Stagg Party)

Coaching changes can have major implications for all players involved. We like it when guys hire people with experience because then we have an idea of what to expect out of their teams. For fantasy players the most important coaches are the head coach, offensive coordinator, and the play caller, who could be the head coach or offensive coordinator (or have another title like run game/pass game coordinator). Knowing the guy who calls the plays is all-important because it affects the flow of the entire offense. Read up on his tendencies and especially their run/pass splits as it dictates who in the offense will see the ball. Once all the coordinators have been hired, that is a good time to go through this as most of the player movement is in hiatus.

Watch the combine and NFL Draft (d-Rx®)

I watch the underwear Olympics in my long underwear; it’s a Ninja Suite actually. I do this to get a gauge on the guys who show up in a big way and to get the first glimpse as to how this guy could perform in the NFL. The combine is in no way perfect; especially for evaluating quarterbacks, but it is a weapon at your disposal. I usually have the combine on full blast on the big screen, while playing highlights of guys I want to know more about on another screen. College football is so large in terms of players that it’s hard to know everyone, and guys who lit it up statistically are in no way the best NFL talents. Watching the combine gives a fantasy football owner his first sort of gaze into a prospect and if he likes what he sees, he can begin to dig deeper. One important thing to consider about the combine is not everyone is completely healthy during it, so some injury caveats do apply and can cause a player to have a performance below what his true talent is. With these guys, it’s especially important to get pro day information. There are a few big fast receivers to watch out for this year, and since they haven’t really separated themselves, now is the time for that to change and I will be watching in my long underwear, intently. Follow that by finding out where all the guys you liked ended up being drafted, evaluate them again on how they fit that team, and rank your rooks!

Player movement (Stagg Party)

Free agent movement is one of the more glamorous parts of the NFL offseason where free agents with big names are wined and dined by prospective suitors while smaller named guys end up in the perfect spot for them to have a big impact fantasy wise. Every year players will make a decision to leave a team in a great situation in order to chase the money, or leave some money on the table to join the perfect situation. Free agency is a boom or bust proposition but it can’t be ignored when following the offseason happenings. Trades are also more likely to happen in the NFL during the offseason as players have plenty of time to get acclimated to the playbook rather than during the season where they are left scrambling. Following player movement is a huge part of a fantasy player’s offseason as it affects not only the player, but also the team he leaves and joins.

Make your tiers early, and redo early and often (Houdini)

Tiers are the key to success on draft day. Using tiers allow you to know where the big drop offs are at each position, and becomes your most important piece of information when drafting. A key to success in using your tiers is to start them early, and continue to refine them up until your draft. We encourage you to create your first set of tiers once the previous season ends, as all of the players are fresh in your mind. Then, as free agency, the draft, and injuries happen, it is easier to adjust those tiers. This will also allow you to have a better idea of the players that have impressed and moved up your tiers, while also identifying the players whose value have slipped in the offseason. Tiers are your major tool of success, but if you are updating your tiers all offseason, your success rate will grow exponentially.

Understand depth at each position (Houdini)

It’s very important to understand the depth at each position, as this will help you refine your strategy on draft day. For example, if you are entering the season and see a lot of depth at the quarterback and wide receiver positions, then this is going to prevent you from jumping on one of those potions too early. Understanding the depths at each position is a MAJOR component when you are creating your tiers. If you are able to have a good understanding of the depths of each position, when you are in your draft and are stuck deciding between players at different positions, you will make the correct decision.

Strength of schedule (Stagg Party)

Strength of schedule is created based off a litany of factors from last season and also looks at how a team’s offseason moves affect the overall piece of the pie. We determine strength of schedule by a combination of fantasy points allowed to a position, the number of yards allowed, the number of touchdowns allowed, and the offseason changes to that team in terms of draft and free agent transactions. Strength of schedule is a huge component in finding sleepers with great matchups on the season that other people might not see coming.

Identifying risers and fallers (Houdini)

The teams that win in fantasy football are the ones that do a good job of identifying which players are risers, and which are fallers. There are owners who strictly go off how the player performed the year before, and they are destined to fail. There are important factors that happen in the offseason that cause a player to be a riser or a faller. You should be paying attention to players whose teams have either drafted or signed a free agent to cause competition for that player, and conversely those signings and draft picks that will create more opportunities for that player. A wide receiver that goes from a team with a poor quarterback to one with stud at the position will impact that player positively. You also must pay attention to coaching changes, or teams that are going to go with a different offensive philosophy from one season to another, as this greatly affects the potential players output the next season. Following all of these movements in the offseason allows you to be able to better identify which players have the best chance to be risers and fallers, and will give you a leg up on draft day.

Who are you liking in the 8-12 money rounds (d-Rx®)

We said we wouldn’t make this piece about actual players, more of a collection of strategic approaches – so I want to frame this in a way that is more about the strategy in these 4 rounds more than the guys you should focus on in them. They are half breakout, half-lottery ticket guys who are the make or break guys on your roster. To win a league, you need one or two of these guys who will exceed their draft status for you because someone in your top 4 rounds is going to fail, get injured, or miss the season for some unseen reason. Think of guys who suddenly put it all together and make a leap, those are the guys you want here. Rounds 13-14 can be used to pick up those upside lacking veterans, but the money rounds are where you win money, and identifying players who can help you make that happen is what we are trying to do. Look for guys with breakout potential. Maybe they have been battling through injuries in their career, maybe they changed teams in a way that could help, or maybe the team finally surrounded him with more talent. Whatever the reason is, those are the guys you need to draft here in order to win yourself some cash next season and stop being a money donor to your league.

Mock drafts (Stagg Party)

One of my favorite parts of the offseason is participating in mock drafts to hone your draft day skills. No one wants to be scrambling on draft day, so as they say, practice makes perfect. Mock drafts can help you decide between players in your mind and also help you determine a player’s value in the public’s eye. My general rule of thumb for mock drafts is to do one per number of players in your league. If the draft order is preset then draft from that position or the position you are considering moving to in a trade. If the draft order is set just a few minutes before the draft, do a mock in each of the slots (1-14 or however many teams) and it can give you an idea of the litany of options to expect.

d-Rx®, Houdini, and Stagg Party make up the team at Pyromaniac. You can follow them on Twitter @pyroman1ac.

More Articles

3 Dynasty Fantasy Football Trade Targets: Running Backs (2024)

3 Dynasty Fantasy Football Trade Targets: Running Backs (2024)

fp-headshot by Anthony Corrente | 2 min read
Fantasy Football Mock Draft: FFPC Best Ball Picks (2024)

Fantasy Football Mock Draft: FFPC Best Ball Picks (2024)

fp-headshot by Tom Strachan | 3 min read
3 Fantasy Football Draft Picks to Avoid: Tight Ends (2024)

3 Fantasy Football Draft Picks to Avoid: Tight Ends (2024)

fp-headshot by Mike Fanelli | 2 min read
RB3s with RB1 Potential (2024 Fantasy Football)

RB3s with RB1 Potential (2024 Fantasy Football)

fp-headshot by TJ Horgan | 3 min read

About Author

Hide

Current Article

7 min read

3 Dynasty Fantasy Football Trade Targets: Running Backs (2024)

Next Up - 3 Dynasty Fantasy Football Trade Targets: Running Backs (2024)

Next Article