Playoff Football – Fantasy Style

I can’t say it enough- build depth. If you’ve gotten to the Fantasy Playoffs, a good bet is that the deciding factor will be who has the best depth. The key here is to have all your starters (behind your Studs) with favorable match-ups for the remainder of the season.

This is not the time of year to outwit yourself and over think your starting lineups. Go with the players that have gotten you this far and mix in players that have great match-ups. This is a surefire recipe for success.

However, one pitfall that must be avoided is starting players who may get rested and not play an entire game in Weeks 16-17 (like Peyton Manning and Donovan McNabb were last year). But if you are lucky enough to ride the horses that got you this far and have filled your roster with productive role players, you’re going to strongly increase your chances for being a Fantasy Bowl Champion.

I wish you the best of luck and hope that we can help you accomplish those lofty goals of taking home your high stakes league cash or local league bragging rights, because either way one things is always for sure- The Road to Fantasy Bowls is different every time. If it wasn’t, we all wouldn’t be here doing what we love to do, which is watching football.

Help with Fantasy Football by Months
Intro | June-August | August | September-November | December

It’s a Marathon, not a Sprint

Nobody has ever won a Fantasy Bowl Championship before December, and nobody ever will. I’ve often said that you can only put yourself in a position to win a Championship. About one-half is skill, but another one-quarter is luck and the other one-quarter is timing. You need two things more than anything else- Patience and Determination.


Get a Solid Start….

The first four weeks of the season are basically an extension of the Draft. It is paramount to examine the results of every game (The Box Score Bandit), so you can find a player or two that comes out of nowhere to post consistent numbers throughout the season. Your goal is to find that player or two before anyone else does, while strengthening your roster at certain positions and filling holes in other areas.

It is a fact of life that every year there are players who were not drafted, who go on to become starting Fantasy Football players by mid-season. Last year there were many players that fit this mold, especially WRs that became top 10 players (Bradon Stokley, Drew Bennett).

….Then Get into a Stride

You should get into a routine by mid-season, by constantly reviewing your roster on a weekly basis to see if there is either a trade that could help your team and/or a free agent that has favorable match-ups coming up that may help him start to produce better numbers. Always look to build depth- it’s really the most important aspect of Fantasy Football.

As the November nears, you should set your weekly starting lineups 3-4 weeks in advance, based on your players’ match-ups. A good time frame to do this is before Thanksgiving hits, when your opponents start to get distracted by the Holidays. This insures that you will not be left with a roster full of players with unfavorable match-ups as you enter the Playoffs.

The Art of the Trade

Another approach you can do during the Draft is to go heavy on RBs or QBs and hope that you catch somebody later on in the year desperately looking for a player to fill the void left by a season-ending injury or unproductiveness to one of their key players.

More often than not, this works out well with QBs. If somebody has their top QB go down and all they have to replace him with is Kordell Stewart (yikes), they’re going to be looking around the league to see who they can make a trade with.

The other key to trades is to look for Fantasy teams that have just lost 3 or 4 games in a row and are looking to make major changes to stop the slide. Find out what positions they have depth at and what positions they could use a productive player in. If you offer them an enticing trade, they’ll be more inclined to give up on a high profile player, such as a Terrell Owens or Randy Moss, because they’ve had 2 or 3 bad games.

Help with Fantasy Football by Months
Intro | June-August | August | September-November | December

Drafting a Champion

The basic rules the night before the Draft are much like that of a night before an exam. Go to bed early, don’t indulge in evening drinking activities, look over your rankings and cheat sheet one last time, relax and watch a football game on TV. It sounds rigid, but there will be plenty of time during the season to let lose when you have a top-notch team competing to get into the Fantasy Playoffs.

Wherever your Draft is being held, get there early and find a spacious spot off to the side so you can organize yourself and not be in the middle of the crossfire. During the Draft, while you watch others flipping through pages of magazines and papers to find a player that they want, you will be able to look at the best players available at each position when your turn is up easily, because it will all be organized on your Cheat Sheet.

And again, hold off on drinking until the Draft is over. You’ll be able to keep a clear head through the mid-late rounds when others start to lose focus. The late-rounds of Drafts have as much to do with who gets crowned the Champion than the early-rounds.

Building Your Roster

I like to draft my starting line-up first, because these are the guys that you’re going to start every week. With that said, use your first two picks on RBs. Take the best two that you feel are available. You will not be alone with this strategy as most others are going to at least grab a RB with their first or second pick.

The 3rd, 4th, and 5th picks should be your two starting WRs and your starting QB. Although you shouldn’t take TEs, Ks, or D/STs until later on, a top TE or a great D/ST is going to look good on your Fantasy roster, especially if your league gives a good amount of points for defense. There is more on this in our Draft Matrix as part of our Draft Central.

When in doubt, the two things to keep in mind are this: draft players that score TDs and draft players that are on teams with good offenses that move the ball and score TDs. Keep it simple, because football is simple when you score TDs- you win.

Special Teams of Fantasy Football

The major positions are going to score points each week, so it’s the little things like getting extra points out of your kicker and defense that sometimes helps you win games. Think of these positions as the Special Teams of Fantasy Football. Most NFL playoff contenders have great special teams, well the same goes for Fantasy Football Champions too.

With that being said, I usually will draft a good TE and will wait until there is a run on kickers and defenses before I hit them. Keep in mind that the longer those runs go, the longer you can key in on getting quality backup RBs, WRs, and QBs.

Chapters
Intro | June-August | August | September-November | December

Intro | June-August | August | September-November | December

Prepare with Mock Drafts

Perform Mock Drafts with your friends & colleagues to find out how the
top five rounds (60 players) are going to shape up. The more Drafts you perform,
the more insight you will have going into the deeper parts of Drafts (mid-late
rounds). This is absolutely CRUCIAL, and where the importance of analyzing Mock
Drafts comes into play. That is their purpose- for you to see where certain
players are being taken, so you don’t reach or hold off too long on players
that you are targeting.

Watch How the Preseason Develops

You must keep a close eye on the Preseason games to look for players that have
developed and come out of nowhere, or players that are coming off of injuries
and are supposed to be 100% once again.

Most importantly, this is the time to watch the younger players and rookies
to see if they are worth grabbing. They are usually the players that are showcased
during the Preseason, because they must prove themselves to crack the Regular
Season lineup. The idea is to have specific players in mind that you want to
have on your team beforehand- that way you can pay special attention to them
from the get-go. This theory works for both the early and late rounds of the
Draft.

Cheat with Cheat Sheets

Lastly, rank each position from top-to-bottom by making a list of your top
QBs, RBs, WRs, TEs, Ks, D/STs all on one sheet (aka Cheat Sheet). Remember to
use this in conjunction with the stats from the previous seasons (we recommend
the last 3 years). All these materials are part of our Draft Central.

Cheat Sheets are not supposed to be etched in stone. The key is to
understand the dynamics of the rankings you are using, because the Draft will
almost certainly throw a couple of curves at you, and the better you adjust
on the fly with your Cheat Sheet, the more likely you will end up drafting a
roster full of quality players- giving you solid depth.

Help with Fantasy Football by Months

Intro | June-August | August | September-November | December

Intro | June-August | August | September-November | December

The Road to Fantasy Bowls is a long one. Many will agree that there are bumps
and bruises to be dealt with before glory can be had. Hours of digging into
box scores and breaking down play-by-plays will only get you so far, because
the road begins long before the games are played.

Draft Day: The Blueprint for Success

So you are entering the big day and you’re wondering who might be available
with your pick in the Draft. Or maybe you’re hoping to get lucky when
the hat is being passed around minutes before the clock starts ticking, and
you’re crossing your fingers for a top five pick. Either way, it is a
stressful, but beautiful day in Fantasy Football Land.

The Draft is HUGE and you must be prepared. For those people who gather their
materials an hour or two before the draft, I will guarantee you that 9 out of
10 of them will not make it to their Fantasy Bowl Championship (unless, of course,
its a cheat sheet from The Fantasy Football Times.com materials).

The reality is that the Draft is the foundation of your team. Trades and pickups
will most certainly help your team, but if you don’t draft the right players,
you’ll lose quickly and be out of it before the season even gets started.
So let’s go back a bit to see the road leading up to everyone’s
favorite part of Fantasy Football- Draft Day.

Chapters

Intro | June-August | August
| September-November | December