Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - 10 Tips & Tricks to Dominate Your Fantasy League

players who you know they're going to contribute. And the way I like to do is actually with my last positional pick before I start doing my kickers and defenses, draft them. Because then I have the rights to that player and I don't have to worry about it. And other people, generally speaking in your league, they're not going to draft. They're going to see, oh, he's not going to be out.

for six games, eight games. So I'll try and pick them up later. Exactly. I'll sign them later. You just pick them up, throw them on your I-HR. Yeah, I did this with Marvin Jones, too, a while back. And guys will get hurt during the year, too, and go to O in some of the systems, ESB and Yahoo, those things. So the IRSTASH, that's the number 10 tip to win your league. Number 10. All right, let's kick it over to Mike, who's got our number nine. So number nine, I call this the running back hoarder. Now what this is all about is,

Stashing as many running backs on your roster as you humanly can. And I'm talking handcuffs, flyers. The running back is the most valuable commodity in fantasy football. Wide receivers are nice, but wide receivers are readily available on your waiver wire. There's always a wide receiver three. There is almost never a running back two on your waiver wire.

And the way that I look at this is every year there are so minimal amount of running backs who actually break out. There's going to be two or three that break out for a year long's worth of value. You want as many lottery tickets for that guy as you can possibly draw. Don't waste your time with wide receivers. You should never, ever.

have more wide receivers on your team than running backs. Yeah, I like that as a rule of thumb, because you might be late in a draft, and you're really high on a wide receiver, and you really like them, and you've got a couple blow-up potential guys, and you think, well, this guy's got potential to blow up too, but at that point, if you've already got depth on your wide receivers, you know, what do you think, you know, max, like four? Four wide receivers? I generally never have more than four.

Wide receivers on my team. You know, obviously it depends on the league. If you're starting four, then adjust accordingly. But, but yeah, I mean, that's where it's like, let the tiebreaker at the end go to even the smaller chance at a, at a blowup potential in a running black, in a running back, and select him over the, over the wide receiver. I think that that's a worthy. Well, and two, when he mentioned handcuffs, when those guys come in, they're the workhorse.

potentially. You know, when a wide receiver gets, you're not handcuffing wide receivers. Right. So somebody, you know, you're going to, if your wide receiver gets here, you're going to go find somebody else anyway. In this case, you have a chance of getting a, you know, Ben Tate a few years ago when Arian Foster went down. Somebody who gets a huge workload, Jeremy Hill last year who came in, you took a flyer on him late, just held him on your bench until they figured out how to use them. I've seen a lot of people saying they're just drafting the Broncos backfield on the same team. Yeah, I mean, that's the point, right?

Stash up on a home run hitter. And there is not much better fantasy feeling when you don't want to see people get hurt. But if your opponent's running back gets lost on the way to Disneyland or something and he's going to be missing for six games, when you have the handcuff on your team, oh, that post on social media, there is not much sweeter than that.

Would you just take a screenshot of your roster when he goes to sign the guy and he realizes he's on your team? Because he never realized you had him before. All right. Let's move on to number eight. So we had the IR stash, the RB hoarder. What's number eight, Jason? Scandalous. I call it the voyeur. My tips today are going to be draft focused because that's going to be what we're coming up for first. The voyeur means you're paying attention and peeking on other teams' rosters, not like it's, you know.

not allowed but through the window through the window behind the bushes when they make their pick you actually listen but seriously if you don't have I mean if it's an online you know if it's an online draft the tools are a little easier if it's a if it's an in person draft and you don't have a nice draft software or something write it down right and write it down in you know keep a piece of paper and write it down in roster form so you can say okay these two guys are drafting right before me and later on as as

the rounds go when the positions are what you're picking between, not so much the players, but you're like, you know, do I pick up my tight end here? One of the tiebreakers are my quarterback or another running back. You can look at the teams that are right in front of you and you go, oh.

they all have their quarterback right now. I would waste my pick right now. The guys that are drafting after me before this next turn, they all have a quarterback on their team. So if I draft my quarterback, I know for sure none of those guys are going to grab the quarterback I want before my next pick, but they need running backs. They need Y receivers. So grab the running back and Y receiver is such an unfair advantage because not as many people as you would think do this. And it's like a cheat code because you are grabbing the guys that

that everybody else wants, and you become the guy that's always having the guy after you go, no, you did it. I love being that guy. The lawyer. You love being the void. I love being the voyeur. The one caveat I will add is make sure you know your league and your league mates. Who don't want to destroy you. Yeah, when you have vengeful league mates, we had a recent situation where I was doing that, and I was monitoring the quarterback who I was targeting very late.

And there was no possible way I kept passing down, passing down. There was no possible way he wasn't going to make it back to me until the person I knocked out of the semifinals drafted right before me. He's his third quarterback, wasn't it? Something like that. Just ridiculous where they drafted him just in spite of me. So maybe by year three, yeah, by year three, keep an eye on this strategy because they might pick up on it. But yeah, that's a great tip. And it can be emotionally hard.

to let that guy go because you know he's right there sitting for you. But if, like you said, you're paying attention, he's going to get to the next round and you're literally wasting your pick if you don't peek through the bushes. All right, number seven, Mike. Why don't you take number seven for us? So number seven, I have every position matters. Now, what I mean by this is regardless of how you feel about kickers or defenses, if they're part of your league.

They are very important. You need to stream defenses with excellent matchups. You need to find a kicker. The way I take to a kicker is I try and get someone who's on a high-powered offense, or even more preferably, a team that can move the ball, but they struggle in the red zone or when they get to their side of the field. A perfect example of that was a couple years back, I believe Wilson's rookie year. So Haushka...

was just a fantasy beast because Seattle could kind of move the ball, but they had issues closing the deal and scoring. They had to kick tons of field goals. The similar was Lawrence Times a couple years back with the Giants. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they had a terrible red zone offense, but they moved it between the 20s. Exactly. So you get huge points from your kicker, which is, that's another rant. So how would you stream defenses in? So the way I approach a defense.

is you are looking toward the future for a good matchup. You want to find an opponent for that defense who they're a turnover prone team like the quarterback throws picks. They're known for fumbling. Another trick is if you're kind of torn on it, look to Las Vegas. Las Vegas, they have very, very...

knowledgeable sports people working Las Vegas. They don't mess around. You pick favorites. If you take a favorite, especially at home and they're favored, Vegas is rarely wrong on that stuff, and they're favored for a reason. Another thing I like to look to Vegas for is just total points scored. You look for the over-unders that are just really high because you know there's going to be a lot of points put up this game and that's just better for fantasy. Or...

worse for defenses. Yeah, I'm talking other players. Streaming quarterback. There's a lot of money on the line in Vegas, so those guys get paid a lot to get it right. To be correct. So at a minimum, that's a great way to break a tie in your mind versus just saying, ah, these guys are pretty good, these guys aren't pretty good. Either that or play the team against Blake Bortles last year. Oh, that was money.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I always look for. My number one thing that I'm always looking for is just the matchup. When there's an injury to the starting quarterback, you pick up that D that's going to be playing that guy getting in week one, and especially week two, the second week that a new quarterback comes in because there's a little bit of tape on them. Oh, they're destroyed in their second game. I love defenses playing against second game. It's very rare, but grab it every time you can't.

So pay attention to every position because you start them. So you better pay attention to them because the difference between those two positions could be, you know, five, ten points that week could get you a win or a loss. All right. Number six, this is one of mine, and I call it the Eliminator. That's so good. The Eliminator. This is a bit of a devious move, okay? I guess a couple of mine are more orientated towards how you structure your rosters. Yeah, your moves are all kind of morally questionable. Morally. The I guess.

Well, morally, ethically, whatever. Well, this one is more, you know what? I think if the other person's not playing as hard as I am, they deserve to lose. You play to win the game. So what the eliminator is is this. If you're playing an opponent that is streaming a position, defense, tight end, or they have an injury, something like that, and you're playing against them, sometimes it's advisable to go ahead and utilize your...

spare bench spots to eliminate possibilities for him to sign. I've done this a lot with tight ends where somebody has, they stream tight ends week to week. I get to Saturday and our waiver period in some of our, a lot of leagues they go through once a day. Others, you can sign them anytime. Either way, if I see three or four good tight end options out there that I am worried about him signing, I'm going to stash a couple on my bench. I'm going to take them too and make him sign the guy I don't like.

because he's not going to have anybody less. So I consider this taking advantage of another person's laziness because they waited too long to get the guy that they were supposed to get. And as a bonus, in a lot of leagues, if you drop a guy off of your roster, they go to waivers for a day. So if you don't want to keep him on through the weekend, drop him Sunday morning. He drops on to waivers. The guy can't sign him. And voila. You show your bench back up with guys that you hope.

Hit a home run that week. I've done it a lot of times, and I love it. And not only do I love it. I don't think there's anything. It's because as a voyeur, he's morally comfortable already. You know, I hold morality high, but I hold strategy. When you're playing a strategic game, you know, at the highest point of playing fantasy football, any avenue you can use to just, you know.

Punch your opponent in the face. Get under their skin a little bit. If they're not telling you that they're very annoyed by the way you're playing them, then you're not doing it right. Look, I hate, hate, hate when I wake up in the morning and found out that the guy I was streaming was picked up by the opponent that I'm going to play.

play against, and they've taken them off away from me because I didn't bid enough, and he doesn't even need him. It was just a move to keep away from me. But what I love is playing in a league that gets my emotions going. And so I like the strategy. I would never fault my opponent. I would call him up and say he's a jerk and great move. There you go. I don't mind being a jerk as long as I win. The one note I will say that relies on this strategy, make sure that your league, this is two all league.

managers, make sure your league does not put a dropped player onto waivers unless they've been kept for a certain amount of time. Because the strategy we're talking about is not the rapid fire. I picked up every single player and dropped them and now they're on waivers because that's... That isn't even... Yeah, exactly. That's garbage. Yeah, that would be taking advantage of the system to cheat, essentially. Bush League. Yeah, that's over the line. And the good thing is the default state of ESPN, Yahoo, and those things.

that's how it works. Yeah, they've got to be on your team, I think, for a day or so. Yeah, exactly. So we're not saying to do that, but yeah, take away, eliminate some of the possibilities for your opponent because now, you know, fantasy football is tough to predict. So there have been times when I've done that, and then they have to sign somebody terrible, and that ends up being the guy that plays better than the guys they took. It happens. But still, that's a good strategy, in my opinion. So the eliminator, let's move on to number five. Mike, this is yours. Number five, I call it the Gordon Gecko.