Post Week 4 Look
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
