If you’re doing research, checking news, reading FantasyPros articles, and doing mock drafts, you probably don’t just participate in one fantasy league. In fact, you’re probably not limited to only two leagues. Most serious fantasy football players are in multiple leagues. This year, I plan to do seven leagues. I have two keeper leagues, three snake redraft leagues, and two auction redraft leagues. If I sat here, writing this article, and told you that I treated each league independent of the others, I’d be lying. There’s a method to the madness of managing multiple leagues.
View real time recommendations for each pick with our Draft Assistant
League Settings
This one is pretty basic but needs to be said anyway. There are a number of reasons as to why you should never treat two leagues the same but first and foremost is the league settings. I just mentioned above that I do three different types of leagues; keeper, snake redraft, and auction redraft. Even within just those three types, the leagues vary greatly. Some are 0.5 PPR. Some are full PPR. One is 14 teams (the rest being the standard 12). How you approach your draft changes based on scoring, format, league size, and league members, among other things. Enter every draft equipped with as much ammunition as possible. That starts with knowing your league settings.
Draft Strategy
I am in three snake redraft leagues. I will most likely attack all three in completely different ways. Aside from the scoring variations and the people, there’s another important reason to take differing approaches. You don’t want one failed strategy to cripple your entire fantasy season (meaning across all leagues). Let’s say I’m a Zero RB enthusiast. I’m quite confident in this strategy. I still shouldn’t implement it in every league. If I get it correct, that’s great, and I do reap the benefits across all leagues. But, if I whiff completely, I could derail multiple teams quite early in the season. Yes, you can both succeed and fail using many strategies. The focus here should be on the success part, though. Giving yourself multiple avenues to succeed is a recipe for an enjoyable fantasy season. If you go Zero RB in one league, try and go RB-RB in the next. Obviously, this comes with the caveat that doing so is possible. Sometimes the draft room operates in unusual ways that force you to adapt. If that leads to you repeating strategies, don’t resist just because of this article. Always play the room as best you can. This part is purely designed to advise against deciding on one strategy for the upcoming season and utilizing it in every league.
Drafting With The Same People
This is an aspect of drafting that I don’t see talked about much. Many of us have multiple leagues with some of the owners overlapping. That’s a very important thing to be aware of. If you’re entering the second or third draft with some of the same people, you can bet those people have been paying attention to what you did in the previous drafts. You have no choice but to take this into account in your draft approach. This may mean reaching a round early for a particular sleeper. It may mean accepting the fact that you won’t get a certain high-round player because your friend picks before you in round three. Knowing what other people have done and that they know what you have done allows you to adjust your plans accordingly.
Shared Players Part 1: Diversify Early
For me, this is the most difficult aspect of multiple leagues. I am a man of conviction. Despite completely understanding the pitfalls of putting all of my proverbial eggs in one basket, when I get something correct, I’m greedy. I want the benefits to be as widespread as possible. I also enjoy rooting for my players. For those reasons, I tend to try and build similar teams to the best of my ability. This is bad. Do as I say, not as I do.
The way to give yourself the highest probability of success is to – and tell me if you’ve heard this one before – diversify your portfolio. Players are not stocks, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t similarities. Particularly in the early rounds, unless you’re doubling or tripling up on a sure thing like David Johnson or Antonio Brown, you are better suited to draft different players in different leagues. You don’t want one bust or one injury to sink all your teams. If you picked at the back end of the first round last year and went Adrian Peterson – Brandon Marshall in multiple leagues, how soon were you kicking yourself for not taking Mike Evans in one or Jordy Nelson in another? This game we play is full of randomness and unpredictability. Do not make it easy for the fantasy gods to smite you!
Shared Players Part 2: Don’t Diversify Late
There is a time where you should try and take the same player in every league… the latter stages of your draft. If in the 10th round there’s a guy you really like and really believe will provide a substantial return on investment, take him everywhere. The later in the draft you get, the lower the risk. I’m not suggesting you take the same exact fliers in every league, but, say you were a Spencer Ware guy in 2016, why not take him in the back half of every league? You believe in him and he’s a guy who had the potential to either save your season from disaster or catapult you over the top depending on how your early rounds went. If you have one or two late-round guys you are really high on, try and get them in as many leagues as possible.
Lineup Management
There’s an argument to be made for hedging your bets across leagues. In this instance, I do not support it. For weekly lineup decisions, you should treat each league as its own isolated entity. Your goal every week is to put together the best starting lineup possible. That goal applies to each league individually. Do not start a player in one league just because you already decided to bench him in another. There will be situations where that happens just because you have better options in one league, but “well I did this in my other league” should never be a reason you make a decision.
A Helpful Tool
FantasyPros has thought about the complexity of managing many leagues and has an excellent solution in the form of the My Playbook Tool, which assists fantasy owners in organizing multiple league rosters. The My Playbook Tool allows you to see all your players across all your leagues in one spot and provides features such as news on your players and the availability of free agents across your leagues.
Other features include:
- A Start/Sit Assistant which provides a suggested lineup for each league based on the expert consensus
- A Trade Finder which helps identify trades to be made and a Trade Analyzer that allows you to evaluate trade ideas and proposals received
- A League Analyzer to see how you stack up against the rest of the teams in your league, including a look at team strengths and weaknesses and a playoff outlook predictor
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Google Play | TuneIn | RSS
Jason Katz is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Jason, check out his archive or follow him @jasonkatz13.