One of the many great things about our hobby is that there are so many different approaches to winning. You can formulate your own unique strategy to try and take down your league. Many ideas have been recycled and repeated but today, I’ll give you a few fresher innovations.
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#4) How to use your last two picks
Don’t even draft a kicker or a defense. You can pick one up at the very last second before Week 1 games begin for one projected point less than whatever DST or kicker you would have drafted in the 15th and 16th rounds. They won’t even survive your roster another week, which puts their total projected value over replacement at 1 point. Granted, if your draft is the day before the season you should of course draft one, but right now, we still have over three weeks until games begin. I would bet my house that one starting running back gets banged up during that time, and it could potentially be a season ending injury. Spend your 15th and 16th round picks on backup running backs like James Conner, Kareem Hunt, Jonathan Williams, D’Onta Foreman, Alvin Kamara and/or Tarik Cohen. If Le’Veon Bell goes down, Conner is an immediate RB1 every single week. You virtually get that production for free! Let’s say there is a 3% chance that Bell gets hurt before the season, which would lead to Conner becoming a projected +80 VBD player. Now imagine that you can simulate 100 seasons. This means that drafting Conner would warrant 2.4 points above replacement, which is ~2.5 times higher than the near-replacement-level kicker and defense you would typically get. The math is simple here, but because it is unconventional and may ruin your draft grade. few are willing to do it.
#3) How to maximize your final roster spot
I’ve already explained how to use your final roster spots before Week 1’s kickoff, but you should have an entirely different gameplan for the middle of the season. Some of the top fantasy defenses will become available in your leagues because owners typically release them during bye weeks. Every single week, four to eight coaches will be battling for the top defensive streamers because they are projected for 3 or more points above what will become replacement level following waiver claims. Now, you can wait with everyone else and try to outbid them all, but that wastes your FAAB that you will want to save up for the best waiver wire pick up of the year (think Jay Ajayi and Jordan Howard last year). Rather, there is another route to snagging these DSTs. Add them the week prior before anyone else takes notice. You won’t have to spend a single dollar of your FAAB and you’ll be earning 3 points above replacement per week, which if done eight weeks, is the equivalent value of a 6th round pick. Turning your 16th roster spot into a 6th round value is everyone’s dream and it is as easy as just saying “Yes, I’ll do it.”
#2) How to trade during drafts
Most people don’t even consider this as a possibility, but I see it as your best opportunity of the year to get an advantage on your league. When you are on the clock, 90 seconds is a long time if you are prepared. Your league mates are almost certainly not prepared, however, which is where the opportunity presents itself. In the third round, one of them will be shaking in his boots hoping that surefire bust, Isaiah Crowell will drop another five picks to him. When you declare before the draft that you are willing to trade during the draft in the right situation, they will not take you as desperate when your pick is coming up and you say “Hey guys, I’m open to trading down from my 3rd round pick.” At this point, you’ve got to move quickly, and in order to do that, you’ve got to know exactly what you want. When I enter a draft, I’ve studied the site’s rankings and ADP to assess which 25 or so players I’ll target as values based on when I could select them. I color code those ranges in green, and darker green if there are multiple targets of mine within the range. All other slots are color coded in red. From there, I bold my picks to determine which of them are in the dead red zones. Then I see where the darkest green zones are where I don’t have a pick. Those obviously become the ranges I want to trade for, but I won’t mention it until right before my pick. In-draft trades are typically executed with no more than two quick counters. Have your counter prepared regardless of whatever unreasonable offer they shoot your way. If you want a 4th and a 5th for your 3rd and 7th, offer one round worse (your 3rd and 8th), that way when they ask for a little more, you end up getting precisely what you had in mind. They will accept anything reasonable if they have a player they want enough to even consider trading up and you will always win because you’ve got a plan and they are acting on impulse. By the way, this is the exact trade I am focused on making this season, as Keenan Allen and Stefon Diggs are a much better combo than Isaiah Crowell and Eric Decker.
#1) How to plan trades a month in advance
This is basically cheating. You probably can’t get away with it in an expert league, but in a standard friends and family league, you can do this every single year. In 2014, Eddie Lacy began the season with an unimaginably difficult first four games on his schedule. As you would have expected, he struggled in those games, then “bounced back” on his way to becoming a top 6 running back. The same thing happened with Calvin Johnson in 2015 and Latavius Murray last season. In each circumstance, I avoided drafting the player despite their juicy backloaded schedule, then I allowed the owner three weeks of suffering before swooping in to buy low. Notice, I didn’t wait the full four weeks. This is because Lacy’s Week 5 projection was enormous with a great matchup in store. I would have had to pay a much steeper price at that point, or more likely missed out entirely, as the owner would have likely said: “I’ll just hold on one more week and see if he turns it around.” I grabbed them at their lowest point and planned on doing so all the way back in July. You should do the same thing, and I’ll give you two names to target this year: Alshon Jeffery and Mark Ingram. The Eagles begin their season against the Redskins, Chiefs, Giants, Chargers and Cardinals. While that might not seem all that daunting to you, consider that Alshon is not only learning a new playbook and quarterback, but is the clear-cut top receiver on the team so he will typically be shadowed by the likes of Josh Norman, Marcus Peters, Janoris Jenkins, Casey Heyward and Patrick Peterson. That is downright unfair and as a result, I can assure you the Alshon owner will pay you to take him off your hands. Ingram, meanwhile, may be in a split backfield situation, but he shared the workload with Tim Hightower last season and they were both fantasy relevant. The Ingram owner in your league may become hopeless after an opening month against four stout run defenses. The Saints draw the Vikings, Patriots, Panthers and Dolphins in that time before falling into a significantly easier rest of season schedule.
Thanks for reading and start clearing a space for that trophy.
Thanks for reading. If you haven’t already, please check out the FantasyPros Football Podcast (below) that I co-host with Mike Tagliere. Good luck this season.
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