Fantasy Football is Won on Tuesdays

A relatively uneventful week in that there were no season ending injuries or emerging stars to grab and hold so lets talk about a couple guys who started the season injured.

First of all, there has been some buzz this week about rookie running back Ryan Torain (RB Den) who looks to be back in action November 2nd. If you have a spot being wasted on your bench grab him now. At this moment, I would rate him as THE top prospect of the waiver wire fodder to become a fantasy star in the second half of the season.

Why? Well I’m glad you asked. Lets look at Mike Shanahan’s history. He has a system whereby he can take a running back of a certain mold, plug him in and produce a 1,500 yard rusher. Obviously the backs that are there in Denver are not of the proper mold

I held onto Selvin Young (RB Den) for a few weeks thinking he could emerge but that was not to be and he has since been dropped.

Torain is by no means a sure thing but he is the most likely guy, who is also available in most leagues, to become a must start down the road at running back. The alternative is to circle with the other vultures waiting for a starting running back to go down to injury and buy a ticket on the waiver wire lotto to grab his replacement.

Secondly, it has been a long and frustrating wait for Kevin Curtis (WR Phi). Every week has been a tease and now they say after the bye week he could be back. What makes him seem worth the wait is that he is coming off a 1000 yard year and Donovan McNabb (QB Phi) was lighting up defenses earlier this year with sub par talent (exception DeSean Jackson WR Phi) catching the ball.

If, like me, you have clogged up your bench with him all year, now is not the time to bail. Patience my friend. If you don’t have him and he is available, pick him up now if you can.

Good Luck
-Chris

Keep playing the system, we are in the thick of things.

One question that
arises is what if you have a bench spot to play with and there is no one worth grabbing (based on the FFIWOT System)?

FFIWOT Rule: Serving up the Reactionaries. When a bench spot is open and there is no one worth grabbing, claim the One Week Wonders (OWW Pronounced OOOOOO this week and Ow as in an expression of pain the next week when they put up a goose egg) and offer them in trade to the reactionaries for some slumping good players or players with potential down the road.

A Reactionary Owner: One who drops a player as soon as they have a bad week and picks up another player because they have had 1 good week. Reactionary owners live in this week only and don’t track trends, potential or match ups but only see the fantasy point output of the last game played.

These folks are easy to spot. Pull up the transaction history for your league. They will be the ones with a lot of transactions and the ones who dropped people after weeks 1, 2 and 3 who are now doing well or better.

They are the ones who picked up Austin Miles (WR Dal), Brandon Lloyd (WR Chi) and JL Higgins (WR Oak) after OWW performances in week 3

Reactionary Owners may be willing to trade some diamonds in a slump for some of these OWW’s. Even if they are ahead of you on the waiver list there is enough here that you should be able to grab one to then dangle in front of them.

Reactionary Adds
DeAngelo Williams (RB Car)
K Faulk (RB NE)
Bernard Berrian (WR Min)
Sinorice Moss (WR NYG)

In my experience, the Reactionary owners are very focused on WR, RB and QB. There have been many times where I picked up a OWW and traded them to upgrade my Defense or Kicker . The funny part is seeing the OWW you traded be dropped in one or two weeks as the Reactionary chases their tail again.

These same Reactionary Owners will be dropping the following players because they had a bad week. These folks should have never been picked up to begin with.

Reactionary Drops
M Pittman (RB Den)
Rudi Johnson (RB Det)
Amani Toomer (WR NYG)
K Walter (WR Hou)
Derrick Mason (WR Bal), who they just picked up last week.

Good luck and remember to do two things that Reactionary owners don’t do, see past this week and be patient.

-Chris

Another exciting week of Football and now it’s time to plan for week 5.

From a FFIWOT strategic point of view this is a slow moving week. Lets face it, our strategy is to pick diamonds in the rough at running back and sell them later int he season when their stock is high and other players have few viable options.

Another strategy is to wade through bye weeks and key injuries and offer solutions to competitors in a challenging position. If this were real estate they would be motivated sellers selling off their prized assets at a discount because of market and personal conditions.

Looking at the former strategy, we have already had a lot of play on the up and comers of the league. Good luck trying to get Aaron Rogers (QB GB), Matt Forte (RB Chi), or a DeSean Jackson (WR Phi).

There aren’t a lot of surprises from here that we don’t at least have a suspicion about. Lets face it, the first couple weeks of the season is all about discovering new talent and we have all been discovering. Most of the emerging talent yet to be spotted are sitting on benches waiting for an injury to happen. We’ll be ready for that but not right now.

So we are going to take a different tack. Before we get into that, lets look at our second main strategy above of being the right guy with the right offer when some poor sap is hurting because he didn’t prepare for his bye week or a key injury hit and his bench is thin. There isn’t a lot of that happening this week.

Byes for week 5 include: Cleveland, New York Jets, Oakland, St. Louis

That roughly translates to B Favre (QB NYJ), J Cotchery (WR NYJ), L Coles (WR NYJ), and S Jackson (RB STL) as key players sitting the week out. Yes there are other names but if you own Cleveland players you probably have them on the bench this coming week any way until they can prove something.

The bottom line is that there are just not enough key players effected by the bye this week to motivate a lot of sellers out there unless they did a really bad job of preparing after a bizarre alignment of players came their way.

So at first glance it would appear that we are screwed this week. Not really. When they zig we zag. People in the leagues I’m in seem to be grabbing the best talent available based on 4 weeks of performance. That sounds like a good strategy on the surface but it is the last thing you should be doing and not just because everyone else is doing it.

FFIWOT Rule: Every week, do an analysis of your running backs and wide receivers. Find the week you will be at your thinnest which will undoubtedly be a bye week. Plug in your substitutes and then look at the remaining (if any) players at that position. They should be diamonds in the rough. If they are sub par players, be ready to drop them if they are good players you should be looking for opportunities to trade them every week.

What I’m seeing with people picking up the best talent available is people picking up players who they would never start unless there were major injuries on their team and even then they would start them reluctantly on a team destined to loose.

Example: If you have a league that starts 3 wide receivers and you never have more than 1 on a bye from here on in and you have 4 good receivers, why in the hell would you pick up Ike Hilliard (WR TB) as your 5th? That is a wasted bench position as he is not suddenly going to be a consistent top 20 receiver.

In all likelihood he would remain on your bench not good enough to trade or even to start in your bye week. If you claim you are hedging against two injuries or an injury plus a bye then you are playing to loose. It is better to loose that week you are afflicted with bad luck than to tie up a valuable bench spot with dead wood.

You are much better off betting on a long shot in this position. Find a guy on a bench behind a talented wide receiver who has a history of injury or who your crystal ball says is going down. Maybe its a rookie who you think will become this year’s Calvin Johnson (WR Det).

The point is, while everyone else is picking up the Ike Hilliard’s and Derek Mason (WR Bal) because he had a good week, you need to look for people with huge upside. That brings us to my next point.

If you have no more up and comers to scout and grab, then pick up some down and outers. If you have some Ike Hilliard types (sorry to pick on you Ike, I’m a old Giants fan who grew up in Tampa so I like Ike, he just works for my example) then you should be looking to make deals for some of the following people:

Wide Receiver:

Randy Moss (WR NE)

Braylon Edwards (WR Cle)

Andre Johnson (WR Hou)

If you get an impatient guy then Marques Colston (WR NO)

and if you are a really optimistic gambler Chad “Ocho Cinco” Johnson (WR Cin)

Running Back:

Ryan Grant (RB GB)

Laurence Maroney (RB NE)

Selvin Young (RB Den)

Sure, probably none of the guys above are going to give you an immediate return and most are not (yet) on the waiver wire but if they are, grab them. If not you could trade your Ike Hilliards for some of them at this point.

These are proven entities that are having a bad start. Even if they take until mid season to turn things around think about what you will have at crunch time by taking a gamble with a bench seat now

One final word.

FFIWOT Rule: Most leagues will let you sort all players by some stat like fantasy points scored YTD. Do this for kickers and make sure there isn’t a much better kicker than the one you have sitting as a free agent.

This is of the most neglected positions in fantasy football and one of the most unpredictable. Just because a guy was good last year and so you ended up with him in the draft based on this doesn’t mean he is good this year.

With kickers, it depends a lot on their offense as well as their range and accuracy. Shop around.

Repeat the above exercise with defenses. I just picked up Tampa Bay as a secondary defense in one of my leagues without a competitor bidding.

Good luck

-Chris