Fantasy Football 2017 - 10 Tips & Tricks to Win Your League

Three for two trades. I love those. You know, you always get that benefit of adding the extra player. Another tip. Trade players when their production level is unsustainable. Sometimes you have multiple weeks earlier in the season where, look, if the player did that for three games span for the whole season, they would break NFL records. Most of the time, that's an unsustainable pace. And it's hard to trade guys at that point. Yes, it is. It's very hard because you...

You think, ooh, what if he does? What if he did? What if he did? What if he did break every record in the entire NFL and have 44 touchdowns? But it doesn't happen. So if you want to trade a player, trade them when a player, trade for players or trade players that don't have sustainable levels of production. And like I said, be persistent. You can help shape the opinion of your leaguemates about your players. Drop a little stat. Drop a little information. Talk about a guy. Look, it's.

an influential type of thing. You have to be persuasive when you trade. And that doesn't mean deceiving somebody. That means being persuasive and meeting another team's needs. Don't offer crap. There's no angle, right? You need an angle when you trade. So if you can figure out that angle, it's going to give you an advantage and you can become the master of trades. All right? Let's move on. Number two, you don't.

win your fantasy championship at the draft and you certainly do not win it with your first two round picks i've said this a million times before this is like my if i get a tattoo i just get that on my back

On your lower back, yes. Yeah, right over the butterfly that I have there. Yeah, you got to cover up the butterfly. Yeah, that's embarrassing at this point in my life. So here's a deal. You don't win the championship at your draft. You've heard me say this. This is personal to me because, you know, back.

in the, you know, when I used to run my old business, I'd get so excited for fantasy football. I would spend the time right now, just like you listening are doing. I'd listen to podcasts. I'd get my magazines, you know, and I would put in the work, and I'd be so excited, and I'd have a great draft, but then I would taper off, and I would stop paying attention, I would stop listening, you know, I would watch some games on Sunday, and I would finish, you know,

at or near the playoffs and then I'd, you know, lose week one in the, in the, you know, in the playoffs. What changed is the fact that to me. What's that? To me. You would lose to me. Yeah. Well, you are in my division and oftentimes it was to you a long time ago. And the reality is you need to change your approach and be consistent throughout the year. You can't just put in all the work of the draft. You don't win your championship there. You never do. Now you can lose it.

You can mess up and not have a foundation that is good enough to get you there. But it's about the trades like Andy was talking about. It's about the waiver wire pickups. It is so much about the start-sit decisions that you make week in, week out that get you the victories. You need to make sure that you're going long-term through the season and you don't bail out after draft season. But since it is draft season, I also wanted to remind people.

Don't care so much about your first two-round picks. You go over and over and you think, okay, should I go running back, running back, running back, running back, wide receiver, wide receiver. Who cares to a, whoa. I'm just saying, all right. I'm just saying if you want to build a foundation that will not lose your championship of the draft, then you need to go deeper. You need to look deeper at what?

Who are good values that you like in the eighth round, in the ninth round, in the tenth round, in the sixth round? Those are where at the draft level, let me read you some names here, okay? Let me read you some names, and you tell me what they all have in common from last year. Eddie Lacey, Jamal Charles, Dez, Gronk, Alan Robinson.

DeAndre Hopkins, Lamar Miller, Todd Gurley, Adrian Peterson. I'm going to go with these are top two round picks. First two round picks. Those are all top two round picks who sucked last year. And you know what's going to happen this year? There's going to be some top two. There's going to be that many top two round picks that stunk. And plenty of people who drafted those guys won their championship.

because they did well throughout the rest of the draft, and they paid attention through the season, and they picked up the right waiver. We want to bring people hashtag Foot Clan titles, so look deeper in your draft, be more prepared there, and then don't bail out after draft season. Yeah, that's good advice, and I think the thing there is, if you did draft a couple of those names, you might have been sitting on your pedestal thinking you're set to go.

And not been as diligent in later rounds because you snagged the big two names in the first two. But you were smart enough to grab Michael Crabtree in the eighth last year. And you were fine when Hopkins didn't pan out. Yeah. All right. Let's go ahead and move on to number one. Number one. See, it was number one. The guy said so. Look, this one, we're all going to jump in on here. This is what this show is all about. I mean, Jason talked about.

It's not just the draft. We're a year-round fantasy football podcast for a reason. Not because you have to listen to us all year long, but you might want to, and we wanted to. And that's why we did this, starting this years ago, because look, it is more, and this might be hard to believe. It is more than wins or losses. It is about enjoying your league, enjoying your season. And Mike, the other day I asked you, why do you play fantasy football?

Because it's fun. Yeah. So there are a lot of ways that we think you can do this, that you can make it more about wins and losses so that each year is very rewarding. Look, it's just like the NFL. There's only one title winner at the end of the year. Now, we're going to do our best to help you make the right decision so you can get that hashtag Foot Clan title every year. But here's the deal. There are a lot of Foot Clan leagues out there.

People listening to this show, all Foot Clan members, only one of you is going to win that league this year. So what are some ways that we can make our leagues better each and every year so that we're enjoying ourselves so that we're being great commissioners? What are some of the things that we can do? Well, one thing, and you just alluded to it at Footclanleaks.com, is have great people playing with you, right? So that means...

playing with people who are more educated at fantasy football, who enjoy talking about it more, you know, share some resources, whether it's, you know, maybe your friends don't know about roto world, you know, the app. Tell them. I know it seems like, it seems, you know. You're giving away your secrets. But when you give away your secrets a little bit, I mean, I'm not talking about, you know, you don't share everything. I remember back in the day, you'd always have that year one when you got a new, when you got a new source, you'd be like,

Oh, Mike, I got a new source. I ain't telling you nothing. I don't even think when you play with good people in your league, it's more about getting people that are going to be committed, too. It's not necessarily all sharing that resource or one resource or the other. It's just making sure you're not in a league with three committed people and seven people that auto draft and don't participate the rest of the year. You also need to find a way.

One of the ways to do that is just facilitating good communication in your league. We've done this through Facebook groups. We've done this through Slack channels. We've done this in environments where, look, you're not relying on somebody to log in and find a message board that is hard to find Sleeperbot, their leagues. That's one nice thing about them. There's an open chat channel in there. You're not going to miss news. Other things that make for a fun league, trust your gut. You know what I mean? Like if you've got a guy,

this draft season that you think he is going to break out. But you know what? The three of us or other analysts, we disagree with you. Trust your gut. Draft him. We're not going to be right about everything. No one is. And so when you hit, when you get that guy that's like, I knew it. Oh, it feels good. You know, it feels good. You end up with a fat head on the wall of that player. You know, you got the championship belt around your waist.

the rings on your hand. It just feels good. It's fun. Trust yourself. It's also more fun to win with players you enjoy rooting for a lot of the times. Or as Mike would say, it's real bad to lose the players that you hate a la Doug Martin last year. I say it's more about that because it's, you know, it's dangerous. It's always dangerous when you are just like, oh, I really, really like this guy. So I want to make sure he's on my team. But when you dislike or just you don't believe.

in a particular player. And then you go all in on them anyways. That really. You get peer pressured into. Yes. Yeah, exactly. You get peer pressured into. I mean, that's just piggybacking with what Jason's saying. You know how this show got started? This show started. The initial seed that built this podcast was basically Mike and I made a podcast for our individual league for 12 other owners.

It was a blast. You know, 10 other owners. We made a podcast once a week. We talked for 15, 20 minutes. We talked crap about the other league members and ourselves. We made fun of the things, but it brought the league together. Look, you want to have fun. You want to stay connected. You want to buy in. You want to respond to people's trades. You want to just take a little bit of pride in your league, and it will improve the experience for every single person. I also think, you know, we haven't really said this before. I don't.

I don't think we've told people do this, but I want to tell people do this. I encourage you if it is at all possible to do live drafts. When you can get your friends and family or workers or whatever at the same place as opposed to online drafts. Now, sometimes you have to, and there's nothing wrong with online drafts. We, you know, we're going to do an online draft for the listener league. It would be impossible to not do that. But you have so much more fun.

When you've got that event, when you're making it this time where you get together and you see your buddies and, you know, one or two can't be there, whatever, Skype them and get on a Google hangout, you know, or whatever. Don't let that say, well, two guys can't so we can't get this group together. Those events, they're just, you know, we're all becoming adults in our lives. You know, what's 35-year-old man. Oh, I'm still 18 at heart.

You know, and so, you know, we don't have as many great events, you know, to do every year, you know. So it's just one of those days to look forward. I'm going to count them back. And then we're going to jump into our best ball segment, give you some, today we're going to give you some late round best ball targets in our best ball segments. So pay attention to that. Number 10, don't get sentimental. Number nine, quarterbacks, you can take a number. He can draft them late. Number eight, adjacent special.

Be a draft stalker. Pay attention to the other teams in your league. Number seven, Mike talked all about tiers, all right? Level up your draft game by drafting with tears. Number six, I said know your surroundings and know your league. Find the things that you can maximize within your league settings. Number five was Drop watch. Drop it like his hard. Pay attention to those players dropped throughout the week.

The guys that sneak onto the waiver wire, maybe nobody notices. Number four was backs to the future, all right? Your future fantasy football success is going to be dependent on your realization of the value of the running back position. Number three talked about trading. Be a master of trades. Understand that two for ones, three for twos, those are an advantage for you. You get the best player back. You got an extra spot to fill off the waiver wire. Number two, Jason talked about not.

winning your entire league at the draft, and certainly not in those first two rounds. Look, guys are going to bust. You've got to pay attention to the later runs. You've got to pay attention on the waiver wire through trading and all that stuff. And the number one, look, it's more than wins or losses. Find some ways to take pride in your league, make it a more enjoyable experience. Upgrade that experience every year. And there are a lot of ways to do that. And you'd be surprised. You can get the league to buy in on some of those. Let's say you want one of those sweet league trophies. Well, like you've got 12 guys. They can throw five bucks in and get a sweet league trophy and get it engraved every year.

Have some pride in your league. And hopefully you enjoyed those top 10 tips and tricks for this season. Let's go and talk a little best ball. Bestball bonanza brought to you by Playdraft. Hey-ho. All right. Every Friday we're talking best ball. DFS got the Playdraft segment. You can go to Playdraft.com slash ballers. Get a free entry into a best ball league if you are so inclined, which we are so inclined. Look, late round best ball targets. You're talking about players.