Looking Forward, Not Backward

No one has the perfect draft. Thus, a successful manager must be an active manager - not just subbing guys in when there are byes. You have to be trading, adding players from the waiver wire, and making difficult starting roster decisions. You should do all the necessary research (a.k.a. just check this site every day), but once your roster locks in at 10AM, that's all you can do.

There's a strange psychology of regret that follows each decision. Here's my advice: do your homework, make your move, and don't look back. Being in 9 leagues myself, it's impossible to keep track of everything, especially during the 9 morning games. So I don't think about the fact that I'm starting Cutler in two leagues, but going against him in three leagues. I just root for all of my players to have good games, and ignore everyone else's players (until the Sunday night and Monday night games, when I can have a clearer picture of who I need to root for and against.) It's more fun to root for players, than against them. When you root against players, you find yourself just wishing the game would end already. When you're rooting for players, you wish the game would never end!

Along those same lines, after you make a trade, just root for your team; don't focus all your hatred and anti-rootage on your former player just to prove that you were right to make the trade. If you make a lot of trades (as I do), you're bound to lose on a few. And that's okay.

It's only useful to analyze your mistakes if that can actually make a positive impact on your future fantasy performances. Let's say, for example, you find yourself consistently trading away the random guys who perform well in the first two games, i.e. you traded away Brandon Lloyd, Kyle Orton, Arian Foster, and/or Peyton Hillis, then next year you should learn not to dismiss players as flukes too quickly. But in most cases, there's no cognizable trend; you just made some moves based on your best judgment. Some worked out, some didn't. Just make the move and root for your starting roster to succeed.

It's so silly when one of my colleagues agonizes over who to start in his flex, and then roots against the guy on his bench. He started Mike Williams (TB) instead of Dwayne Bowe in week six and almost destroyed my television when Bowe scored his 2nd TD. I reminded him that Bowe is on his team and will be on his team next week too. So he should be happy about Bowe's emergence. I got the sense that he'd rather have Williams get 8 points and Bowe get 3, than Williams get 10 points and Bowe get 20.  And that's just crazy.

If you get bold and drop a big name player (Mike Sims-Walker, Marion Barber) for a no-name like Danario Alexander, that could be a brilliant move or something that your leaguemates will mock you for all season. Who knows yet. But if you did it, just stick with it and forget about Barber and MSW. Manage your team as it exists now.

Keep on looking forward, and best of luck!