A few years ago, the fantasy football experts had 3 Golden Rules:
1) Get 2 elite RBs in the first 2 rounds.
2) Handcuff you studs.
3) Watch out for bye weeks.
At this point, all 3 mantras have lost importance. Now, they're possible strategies rather than rules. Conventional wisdom commanded you to spread out your players' bye weeks so that you never have a week where you have to bench more than 2 starters. However, it may make more sense to actually assemble a roster where all of your starting players have the same bye week, so that you suck it up and take a loss in that 1 week and then you're at full strength every other week while your opponents are shuffling through backups. Thus a roster with Michael Turner, Roddy White, Matt Forte, Brandon Jacobs, Brent Celek, Eli Manning, Johnny Knox, and Jeremy Maclin would all share a week 8 bye.
However, I tend not to pay much attention to bye weeks because I'm an extremely active owner - always wheeling and dealing, possibly too trigger-happy on trades, and making free agent pickups. By Week 8, my starting roster looks nothing like my starting roster from Week 1, so there's little value in pulling my hair out in the preseason because 2 of my WRs have a week 8 bye.
I only pay attention to byes as a tie-breaker between 2 players that are virtually equal. And I only care in order to avoid the worst possible situation in which every bye is spread across 2 or 3 weeks.
It's also possible if you end up drafting 2 TEs with the same bye week to make a 1 week trade with another manager. Find a guy who has a backup TE that's better than any free agent. The other manager wasn't planning on starting his backup TE anyway, so he'll loan the TE to you for the slightest temporary upgrade in WR (or any position). One-week trades are rare, but can be very strategic and fun.
2 comments:
I like the idea of a loaner TE but how do you manufacture a 1-week trade? You take the other guy's word for it or can you stipulate it somehow in the trade proposal? Sorry if this question is dumb--I'm kinda new at this.
In most Fantasy League Sites I've used, you cannot put some official automatic trade-back. But if you can't trust the people you're playing with not to cheat in that way, I'd get a new league.
Post a Comment