Five Ways To Win Your Home League
21 August 2018 Fantasy Football
Fantasy Football season is upon us. Real NFL teams are grinding away at training camp, and that means your home league draft is happening soon. Here are five tips for the casual fantasy player that will help you bring home that championship.
1. Wait. On. Quarterback. I know you want Aaron Rodgers. Maybe you’re a Russell Wilson type. I need you to understand that it’s not worth drafting any QB early, assuming you aren’t in a two QB league. The reason being in a given week QB5 is relatively close to QB10. It takes a rather awful performance for a QB to not provide a floor. Andrew Luck is currently the ninth QB off the board. Young players like Marcus Mariota and Patrick Mahomes are out there in the teens. You will be fine at QB. Wait until at least the double digits, if not your twelfth or thirteenth pick.
2. Try out ZeroRB. You’ve probably heard of this strategy that peaked a couple years ago. It involves spending your early picks on WRs. This year is prime ZeroRB territory. Drafters are going RB crazy, pushing great WR values down. This is what the strategy was built on. Any of the top 6 RBs can outscore the top WR, and that’s attractive. Running backs carry greater injury risk, however. Starting WR-WR-WR or WR-WR-TE should set the table all season. Then you can focus on breakout RBs with your waiver moves and stashes.
3. Abuse your hosting site’s default rankings. This is a bit harder if you do a live draft, but chances are your leaguemates still printed their cheat sheet from the site. If it’s online, the default rankings are staring everyone in the face. Rich Hribar of Rotoworld does an article on this every year that is pretty thorough, so look for that. You can simply find a better source to be different. You can find mine on FantasyPros (just select ‘Pick Experts’).
4. Don’t rely on rankings at all. Using a linear list of 150 players will make you a slave to the number next to someone’s name. If you don’t want Frank Gore, don’t draft him because your sheet says “139. Frank Gore.” Use tiers instead. Aim for x amount from certain tiers. I use a spreadsheet printout with boxed grouping for each tier. It’s amazing how much more clear decisions become when player A isn’t listed above player B. At the very least, remember this when making a call between two players.
5. Focus on one position with your bench. First, don’t bother drafting backup QBs or TEs unless you have a very, very shaky starter. That is a wasted bench spot. The best lottery tickets are running backs who just haven’t found playing time yet. This is doubly true if you went ZeroRB. Stash rookies who could shine given the chance. Some names I like to pop should the starter go down are: Jordan Wilkins, Kallen Ballage, Chase Edmonds, and Corey Grant.
Follow Mike Alexander on Twitter: @Roto_Wan.
