Dissecting Your Fantasy Roster Down The Stretch

Posted On Tuesday, November 10, 2009 by JakeTrain |

Week 9 is in the books and many fantasy leagues begin the playoffs in week 1. That leaves four weeks to push your fantasy team into the playoffs. Also, trading deadlines are creeping up and owners are getting awfully desperate these days. So I figured I would serve up a few helpful things to keep in mind. Read More

BLOG NOTE: I am in the middle of several higher priority tasks right now. As a result, I just haven’t been able to devote much time to this blog. The good news is things should subside a bit by the end of the month. The bad thing is that there are still a few weeks remaining in November. I’d like to post more but right now my energy needs to be used elsewhere. I’ll try to post when I can but don’t expect much until December.

What CAN a player do vs. What HAS a player done

Preseason and even early season opinions on players need to be cast aside. Review your ENTIRE roster and determine what each player is worth to your team. Break it down week by week and list the match ups. Without bye weeks to worry about there is no reason you can’t forecast your starting lineup for the remainder of the fantasy regular season. Dissect that roster and probable starting lineups!

What is the value of a Beanie Wells in week 10 vs. Beanie Wells in Week 14 and 15? We don’t know exactly, but I think you can safely say it’s going to increase. Forecasting is not an exact science but one would think 10-15 touches against the Rams and Lions during the fantasy playoffs has more value than 8-12 touches against Seattle. Will Felix Jones, Darren Sproles, Brian Westbrook or any other RB on your roster have similar value at that point in the season?

I could right pages of details on this but the key principle is that you need to look for budget lotto tickets. If you are a middle of the road team who needs to win now, cash in Wells (by playing up his playoff schedule) for some immediate help. If you have things locked up, go get Wells so you don’t end up losing to the team who squeaked into the playoffs who had Wells on his bench.

Trimming Fat vs. Storing Fat

Aright, now don’t confuse this with what I outlined above. Finding the right fantasy fat content on your roster can go a long way towards your success heading into the colder weather. If you have quality depth on bench you should look to make a trade with a must-win-now team. However, if you don’t have quality depth, you can still use your bench to help your playoff chances.

Using essentially the same type of thinking as above, dissect your league’s waiver wire to find potential one week adds that have some value. If you are holding guys like Devery Henderson, Cadillac Williams, Kyle Orton-players that likely will not be options for most teams’ starting lineups the rest of the season-you might want to consider using your roster space differently.

If you play in a league where at least one team is streaming defenses (or you are the team streaming defenses) you might want to shed one or more players that don’t offer much value to hoard a couple of defenses. Take a look at the NFL schedule and gobble up anything that looks tasty. Drain the pool from which that team has to pick (or create your own if you are streaming) and make their choices less appetizing. The point is that even though you might not have any players to help you win on your bench you can still use those slots to make it tougher for another owner to win. After all, defense wins championships right?


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