We are in the closing stretch for the fantasy regular season. Eight weeks are behind us with most leagues having five more weeks until the playoffs. Most teams in the league have clarity on if they are a contender or not and the previous installments of this post have discussed particular target players for contending or building trading. On a weekly basis here is the checklist for dynasty owners in the closing weeks of the regular season:
Double-Check Lineups
Have a routine each week. I set an initial lineup before Thursday Night Football, then adjust as needed over the weekend, including going through all my leagues leading up to the early Sunday kickoff. Even if not in the playoff race, do not be the GM to completely miss a declared 'out' player for the week. With more family time, travel, and holidays, life happens but have a valid lineup, period. If a specific player scratches or looks dicey after Friday practice reports, the myfantasyleague.com function where you can check a player's status in all leagues is a time saver for GMs in a bunch of leagues. The page shows which teams have a certain player on their roster in each league and you can click to only those leagues to get the player out of lineups.
Free Agency Diligence
This was mentioned on this week's Under the Helmet dynasty podcast I host and bears repeating many times over especially in-season for dynasty GMs: Check all transactions in dynasty leagues. This is the time of year where some GMs will curiously drop quality players either due to bye weeks or team direction. One example is as I checked the waiver/free agent moves emails waking up this Thursday, I jolted from the prone to vertical position seeing Spencer Ware dropped. I clicked through the email and raced to pick him up and fortunately acquired him as I knew this league did not freeze dropped players until kickoff. Ware is the one of the premiere one-injury-away running backs, who would be an auto-start option if Kareem Hunt were to miss time. This is one example of paying attention to every transaction as any of them could be important. Even if a player is a dropped of interest and locked until the following week, one tip is to put in a waiver bid for the player when you see them dropped. Put in a $1 bid and dropping your kicker or something. That way when you go in to set waivers the following week, you will see the player already in the queue in order to adjust the bid and/or player to be dropped. Otherwise, days later from when you saw the player dropped, a GM can easily forget about the player and not bid at all, allowing another team to acquire them.
Weekly Market Test
Regardless of being in the contending or building team direction bucket in a given league, check the pulse of the teams in the opposite bucket. There are typically 2-3 teams at a minimum clearly in one subset or the other in a given league. As a builder, shop your short-term producers or handcuffs to the strong teams and inquire about injured players as acquisitions. As a contender, explore adding production or insulation from the non-contenders. These are win-win deals and typically easier to put together than neutral market trades. Even if you checked in with the same team a week or two ago, things change for GMs and rosters and feelings about their players and depth on a regular basis. With the trade deadline looming, regular check-ins are necessary to best help your team for the stretch run or next season.
Fantasy Playoff Matchups
For strong contenders, it is time to start looking at playoff matchups. While Week 16 is the title week for fantasy football, I like to look at Week 15 more as a high-level team. Most prize structures are built where even getting to the championship game is worth 2-3x the entry fee, where teams losing in Week 15 are relegated to playing for third place where many get their entry fee back and maybe a little more. The loser of the third-place game may get nothing at all. In short, Week 15 is the high-leverage week of the season. Also, strong teams are angling for the bye week, which excludes Week 14 from their slate of matchups. For other playoff teams, Week 14 is the most important week.
Quarterbacks
The Footballguys Adjusted Strength of Schedule tool (SOS) is a must-use feature on the site. I deplore raw SOS tools merely stating the points allowed by defenses to each position. More context is needed and Footballguys looks at the adjusted points allowed based on how the positions scored in other games compared to the defense in question. For quarterbacks, here are the matchups and quarterbacks to note for the fantasy playoffs:
This pair has the best combined Week 15-16 slate of the position. Carolina gets appealing division matchups with New Orleans and Atlanta. With D.J. Moore rising in prominence and Greg Olsen healthy (for now), Newton is a strong play. Flacco is the underrated add for GMs hurting at the position. One example I have is I had a committee of Baker Mayfield and Jameis Winston on an otherwise dominant 8-0 team. I explored a trade with a team who had three quality quarterbacks but was out of the playoffs, Joe Flacco has the least name cache of the trio. I was able to acquire him for two future 4th round picks. With Winston a wild card to start down the stretch and not wanting to rely on Mayfield alone, Flacco was a no-brainer acquisition when specifically looking at Week 15 as Baltimore gets Tampa Bay and the cost was minimal.
Other quarterbacks with promising matchups include Drew Brees (Tampa Bay in Week 14), Ryan Fitzpatrick or Jameis Winston (New Orleans in Week 14), Dak Prescott (Tampa Bay in Week 16), and a shootout matchup of Drew Brees and Ben Roethlisberger in Week 16.
Running Backs
- Dalvin Cook, Latavius Murray
- Christian McCaffrey
- Doug Martin, Jalen Richard
- Aaron Jones, Jamaal Williams
- Sony Michel, James White
- LeSean McCoy
- Alex Collins, Javorius Allen
- David Johnson