Fantasy Football Advice

The time has come in the world of Fantasy Football where the more experienced and serious fantasy owners separate themselves from those who simply joined the league for S & Gs. That’s right my friends, the bye weeks are upon us. Some look at the bye weeks as if it were a drought period where they do little but scrape the bottom of the waiver barrel to get by each week in hopes of hitting a fantasy geyser to push them through their matchups. However, to the more cunning and wise fantasy owner, they seize the moment and take the opportunity to build their team into an unstoppable machine.

It may seem like just yesterday you were drafting your workhorses, signal callers, spectacular catchers, and the deep sleepers that now sit in free agency. But by now you have a better understanding of which players on your team are doing you more harm than good. This opens the door for many trading opportunities as league-mates are desperate to fill gaps in their starting lineup. Therefore, your main objective is to TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THEM, and I don’t mean slipping something in their drink and trading all their players. Let’s look at the bye week schedules below:

 Week 5: Browns, Cowboys, Dolphins, Rams, Ravens, Redskins

Week 6: Broncos, Cardinals, Chargers, Chiefs, Seahawks, Titans

Week 7: 49ers, Bengals, Bills, Eagles, Giants, Patriots

Week 8: Bears, Buccaneers, Falcons, Jets, Packers, Raiders

Week 9: Jaguars, Lions, Panthers, Vikings

Week 10: No Team

Week 11: Colts, Saints, Steelers, Texans

The first thing to notice is that weeks 5-8 are stacked with 6 teams sitting while weeks 9 & 11 have only 4 teams on byes each week. There are differing opinions on which is better, to have a player with an earlier bye or a later bye week. Supporters of the early bye weeks suggest that getting the bye week over and done with is most advantageous so that they can move forward with their season. Others believe that having a player in the later weeks gives you the advantage earlier to get your wins in until your players sit in the latter weeks of the season. Both have their upside and both have their downside. It all really depends on where you rank going into these byes.

If you’re sitting near the top of your league, you’ll want to look at the bye weeks as an opportunity to make your team stronger by making some sacrifices. There will be teams in your league that are 0-4 or 1-3 that have to make these next few weeks count in order to have a shot at the post season. Your best bet is to find one of these teams that may be willing to let go of a RB1 in order to get a win this week. For example, a Ray Rice or Peyton Hillis owner will let him go at a lower cost in order to fill their gap this week, or week 6 has a slew of players to buy low; Larry Fitzgerald, Dwayne Bowe, Vincent Jackson, Ryan Matthews, etc. The point is that the bye weeks weaken every team, and if you’re willing to bite the bullet for a star on bye, it should pay huge dividends towards the end of the season.

Now if you’re floating somewhere in the middle or towards the bottom of your league’s rankings, you know how important a win is during these bye weeks. You also know that you need to make your team as strong as possible to hold on after the bye weeks pass. If you’re willing to sacrifice the first few bye weeks, then deploy the same strategy above. But if you have to win this week, then you’re only hope is to do exactly the opposite. Consider trading your players on their bye weeks to stronger teams in order to replace them with immediate help. This way, if you are facing someone who is losing some power due to the bye, you’ll at least have some sort of advantage. For example, you could shop Hillis for a Fred Jackson or Ahmad Bradshaw perhaps. And don’t be afraid to trade multiple players for a big name that will boost your team down the road. You need to have a sense of urgency about your team’s situation and now is the perfect time to fix it.

Do not fear the bye weeks my friends, learn to use them to your advantage and take control of your league. The opportunities are out there to improve, you just need to make the right moves, at the right time, in order to take the reins of your team, and your league.

The five day wait between weeks 1 and 2 can be a lonely time. After months of fantasy anticipation, countless hours of research and time spent crafting your league trophy acceptance speech, 0-1 can feel a lot like 0-4. However, this is NOT the time to panic.  That’s what the dummies in your league are doing, and obviously you’re the genius of your league because you’re here at Razzball right now. Four days ago, you were certain that you had just assembled the greatest team of fantasy monsters in the universe, so don’t let a week one defeat at the hands of Kenny Britt lead to any rash decisions. Hold onto your studs, but don’t be shy about capitalizing on the panic of others.

Week one was a bit bi-polar and the awesome/crappy performances of a handful of teams have created some nice windows for potential trade value. Here are a few teams to scope out and one trade strategy you’ll be putting to use this week…

ATLANTA: Wow, 12 points. Everyone’s favorite preseason offense managed to play an entire game without getting into the end zone. Hopefully this performance dimmed some of the glow from this offense in the eyes of your competition. All of the pillars were there: 8 grabs for Roddy, 300+ for Matt Ryan, and Turner ran for 100 while catching 3 passes in a game for only the third time in his career. All that was missing were the points, which is where fantasy players feast.

PITTSBURGH: Yes, it was against the Baltimore defense, but this performance was beyond ugly. Throwing 3 picks and a single touchdown is not how we envisioned the season beginning for Large Ben, but that’s all about to change. Check out the Pittsburgh schedule. After consecutive 42-6 beat downs of the Seahawks and Colts, you won’t see a Steeler anywhere near a trade block. Now is the time to strike.

Try this: Scan the rosters of the 0-1 teams in your league and look for those that contain Falcons or Steelers. These are the people in your league most likely to buckle and give up on Mendenhall or Ryan after their week one bombs. Strike up a dialogue with your targeted team and make sure to remind them how nice it feels to start out with a win. I’d throw out the names of buzz backs like Beanie and Hightower to anchor a package for any of the top Steelers or Falcons. (more…)

My mantra is all about value- get as much as you can in every round. RBs, WRs, and TEs fly off the board in different spots each draft, but quarterbacks tend to be relatively stable in groups. Keeper, Dynasty, and multiple QB Leagues get a lot more complicated and we would be glad to answer those questions specifically. This framework is intended for the most common format- 12 team re-draft.

What I like to do is commit to a certain tier, at a certain place in the draft, depending on where I am slotted to draft from. You should always have a plan B and I will be discussing this as well. If there is one mistake I see most commonly, it is people over reaching for Quarterbacks. This disrupts your ability to get optimum value and lessens your chances of winning. Let’s talk about this year’s Quarterbacks, then move on to strategy based on draft position.

Tier 1

Aaron Rodgers: total stud, not worth the 1^st round price tag to me

Michael Vick: ditto, plus I am worried about him staying upright for 16 games

Drew Brees: reduced price, favorable schedule makes him tempting

Tier 2

Phillip Rivers: no longer undervalued in fantasy… less likely I will own him now

Peyton Manning: gets a free pass from me on the health concerns

Tom Brady: more weapons than last year, very fair price (more…)

Want to win your league?  If your answer to this question is yes, then keep reading.  Now that I have your attention, bear with me through this as things are about to get dicey.  Turn off your TV, your Vengaboys CD, your wife, and your baby monitor, and devote your next 15 minutes entirely to Razzball.  I promise you won’t regret it.

Is it just me, or does it always seem like your first round pick is the hardest?  You will probably spend most of your time debating this pick more than any other pick.  However, the truth is, you should be concentrating on the later rounds rather than the early rounds.  For this walkthrough, let’s assume that you have the 6^th overall pick in a standard 12 team non-PPR Razzball Commenter League (by the way, you can still sign up for an RCL here.  If you’re looking for a more competitive, active league, sign up now!).  Anyways, you’re now debating between taking a QB, RB, or WR as the top 5 RB are off the board.  You look at your cheatsheet, and at the top of their respective positions are Michael Vick, Rashard Mendenhall and Andre Johnson.  What’s the best approach?  Well, read below and find out.

It’s called value based drafting (VBD).  From my experiences, this is by far the best strategy to employ when going into a draft.  As long as your draft picks don’t poop the bed, I can guarantee your team will be a contender all season.  I applied this strategy for the first time two years ago in a 16 team dynasty league, and I walked away with the regular season points record, finished first overall in the regular season standings, and ultimately won the championship.  And I will admit, a large part of this was due to my draft, not necessarily my in-season moves.  Ten out of my twelve drafted offensive players (not including kickers or defense) finished the year on my team.  Not too shabby eh?  This should be more than enough motivation for you to use VBD in your leagues this year.

Okay, okay, okay, enough bragging, I get it.  Let’s move on.  What is value based drafting?  All in all, it is very simple and logical.  Understanding it is easy, applying it is the hard part.  Rather than drafting the best name available on the board, you should be drafting the positional player that will ultimately give you the best value at that point in your draft. (more…)

So you just got into your uncle’s start up league and are taking on the brain trust of Cousin Jed, Aunt Loretta, and Grandpa Joe. So you are pretty sure these will be easy pickings and there are inheritances to win, but for some reason Uncle Red set it up as a 2 QB league and now you have to actually think about what you are doing. So I’m going to try to do some thinking for you and maybe you can do a little and then I’ll do some and we’ll just pass the thinking around until we are all hopped up on thinking.

So when facing a league with a roster or scoring you aren’t used to, you’ve usually got to reprogram your fantasy brain.  The good thing is that your league mates are also in the same boat or at least the majority of them are.  Take our subject today, how many of your run of the mill leagues have 2 QBs?  Not many.  Yes, you could be getting into a league that has been playing with 2 QBs for the last 20 years, but that isn’t often the case, but even if it is, don’t worry too much. Unless you are just a worrier and then I’m not qualified to assist you.

The only reason I like to wait on quarterbacks in your standard leagues is because when you draft just 12 starters you know you are going to get a solid quarterback even if you wait. Your league mate isn’t going to draft Brees in the third round and then screw you up by drafting Manning in the 4th. That person is dunski with QBs for a long while. But if s/he drafts a RB in round 1 there is nothing stopping this wo/man from drafting another in round 2 and quickly narrowing the RB player pool way down. I will feel great getting Tony Romo in the 5th round in a 1 QB league and going about my business, but all of this stuff I’ve just talked to you about? It goes right out the window in 2 QB leagues.

Let’s take a look at the top scorers from each position and where the points drop off:

QB: 1. Michael Vick 300, 12. Matt Cassell 217, 24. Jason Campbell 148

RB: 1. Arian Foster 313, 12. Maurice Jones-Drew 186, 24. Tomas Jones 126, 36. Marshawn Lynch 103

WR: 1. Brandon Lloyd 203, 12. Mike Williams (TB) 151, 24. Derrick Mason 117, 36. Michael Crabtree 103 (more…)

(Doc’s note: First off I’d like to thank everyone for sending in entries for the first round. I had an extremely difficult and rewarding time narrowing these down. As the chief honcho here at Razzball and a nerdy English professor, I found good stuff in every entry and feel like all of you have the ability to improve and become bad ass fantasy writers. In this business it takes passion, perseverance and practice. I’ll go out on a limb and call them the three P’s. I think ya’ll have the foundation to make it happen, so I highly encourage you to keep it up! Write, write and write some more. That’s the secret. And I can’t wait to read your next batch of entries! Now I’d like to introduce our first round winner Greg Smith. Check it out! Oh, and follow him on Twitter @gregsauce.)

The Book of Job, benevolent dinosaurs, cosmic swaths of color and flame, a flock of birds, Brad Pitt playing the piano, drafting a wide receiver in the first round, The Universe!  If there’s one thing I learned from Terrence Mallick and his crazy love for voiceovers, it’s that everything is connected.  A force of action must meet an equal, opposite, and collinear reactive force.  That’s physics, son.  Physics is the only non-cash currency that TO accepts.  Or is it physiques?  Regardless, for every lock, there is a crock and for every crock, a lock.  Let’s move on lest it dawn on the irate estate of Dr. Seuss to take the chance to sue off my pants.

LOCK #1:  Some jerk(s) in your league will pick a quarterback or a wide receiver in the first round of your draft.

CROCK #1:  You need to draft a running back in the first round of your draft.

Last year it was Andre Johnson, Aaron Rodgers, Randy Moss, and Drew Brees.  This year it will be some combination of AJ, Vick, Rodgers, Megatron, and Roddy White.  Ever since the cosmos were born in a dazzling dispersion of energy, matter, and 80-yard TD passes, experts have intoned that thou shalt draft a running back in the first round.  Still, there are many who just cannot resist the siren song of those 80-yard bombs.

Call me one of the deviants, because I’m going to recommend passing on first-round running backs again this season.  It may seem like heresy, but as Aristotle believed in a spherical earth, I believe in taking a wide receiver in the first round.  With the ever-growing number of teams employing a committee at running back and the general amount of turnover at the position, it’s relatively easy to find value at RB later in the draft.  The top-tier guys at WR are a more valuable commodity when last season guys like Arian Foster and Jamaal Charles could be had later in the draft and perform on par with the RBs taken in the opening round.  With all that said, I’m probably not taking AJ in the first five picks, but I would definitely consider him in the latter half of the first round.  As for quarterbacks, I’m still not sold taking one in the first round, but a full season from Vick would probably be worth the investment.  (more…)

If you aren’t a Twitter user and you are a dedicated fake footballer, you are missing out.  If you are worried that Twitter is a bunch of self involved idiots telling each other in 140 characters or less what they ate for breakfast, you are wrong.  Well, you may be right, but that hasn’t been my experience.  If you follow the right people, use the right tools and follow a few simple rules, you can get a lot out of this Twitter thing.

As fake sports players we need a couple things, information and the ability to bounce ideas off of other fake sports players.  Those two things keep us on top of what is happening injury/roster-wise and helps us evaluate our own understanding of players and situations.

There has never been a forum like this before.  You can communicate with hundreds of people from all facets of the game — fantasy football writers, beat reporters, national journalists, sometimes actual players, and a load of people eager to argue and converse about the game we love.

Yes, you may worry that your league mates will steal your fantasy info, but there is just too much info to steal! Don’t limit yourself to one person or site to listen too. That’s what is so great about Twitter; the information is continuous and from all over the place. The work you have to put in is being a good filter. It does take time to become a good filter I know, but if mollusks can do it I know you can!

So I’m going to take you through some of the ins and outs of the Twitter for you, the fantasy football enthusiast.

1. Sign up for a Twitter account and follow some of the best guys and gals out there for NFL info.  At the end of this post I’ll give you a starter’s kit of must follows.

2. Download a Twitter program like TweetDeck.  There are others and I’m sure people would argue about which is better, but TweetDeck has always worked fine for what I use it for.  And what I use it for, is to separate the people I follow into separate columns.  This allows you to group them so you can filter the type of information you want into categories.  I currently have a group for beat reporters/national journalists/fantasy writers/fantasy focused people/tweets directed toward me.  These groups change constantly as I add and subtract people, so I am always fine tuning my Twitter experience.

3. Be a helpful Twitter type person. Yes, you can just follow some key people and gain fantasy knowledge, but interaction is the best way to learn and become a better fantasy player.  If you read a tweet that you find helpful, then RT it to your followers so they can get that same info.  RT stands for Retweet and all of your Twitter programs including TweetDeck will have an easy way to pass along RTs.  And help people out.  If they are asking who they should start or sit, give them your opinion and maybe why you think what you do.  The main thing, don’t be a dick.

I have had an amazing run on Twitter with very few d-bags cluttering up my experience.  There is a laid back, insightful and helpful fantasy football community to join.  And the best thing about it is, it isn’t insular or exclusionary.  There isn’t a cool kids table that you aren’t allowed to sit at.  So get in there and ask and answer and pontificate and have a good time.  One of the best parts about fantasy football is sharing our experiences and knowledge.  Keep up the tradition. (more…)