Fantasy Football Game Changers and Pro Tips

What’s up Shelfies?!?!?! Hopefully your leagues have all set draft dates by now, or if you’re like us at TSF you’ve already had a couple! Over the course of the season we’re going to be bringing you some tips and tricks that you can apply to this season, but also to the rest of your fantasy football career. Some will be good rules of thumb, some general best practice tips, and then a whole bunch of our own approaches to fantasy that typically see the TSF boys in championship rounds year after year. In the future we’ll be releasing these on a weekly basis, so be sure to sign up on the website (it’s free and we won’t bug you with spam emails, only appropriate and targeted fantasy football content that we know you’ll actually enjoy and find useful). Again, the first 5 are my free gift to you, but going forward if you want to see these you’ll need to be signed up on the site!

And as always, if you want to be part of our listener league, sign up on the site and tell us on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram @TopShelfFNTSY and we will get you entered into the drawing for a spot in the league. And if you win… you’ll be walking away with two signed jerseys (Kenneth Walker and Ricky Williams), along with a bunch of TSF swag, a discount code for the store, and more!

Well let’s stop goofing around and get into it!

Game Changers:

1. Consume every ounce of fantasy football material you can find

Luckily for you, TopShelf Fantasy brings you a wealth of material over the course of the fantasy season (and offseason) that you can use to get an edge on your opponents. Whether it be our articles, our strength of schedule collection, the weekly updated rankings, or any number of other things that can be found at topshelffantasy.com, reading through all the material provided will make you a force in your fantasy league. But while TopShelf is a fantastic one stop shop, don’t limit yourself to just one point of view! Scrub through FantasyPros, The Fantasy Footballers, or any number of other great podcasts to make sure you are positioning yourself as best you can!

A key point here is that you can’t limit yourself to just tuning in between September and January. Especially if you are in any dynasty leagues. In this case, you are truly looking at a year round commitment. If you choose not to be engaged 365 days a year… you will be a step behind your league mates who are putting in that work!

2. Every failed season is a great learning opportunity

Look, you’re not going to win every league you’re in every single season. While we would all love for that to be the case, it simply isn’t. However, you can make sure you are always in contention for a title if you follow the right advice, and continually learn from the mistakes of seasons past. This is targeted more toward the yearly redraft leagues, and not so much dynasty leagues, which tend to be a bit more cyclical, with teams finding themselves atop the league and then in a rebuild if they sold out for a championship.

But to circle back to where I started, every season you don’t win is a chance to evaluate why that was. Was it a bad trade that didn’t work in your favor how you thought it would? Was your draft strategy flawed from day one? Maybe you weren’t as engaged as some other league members on the waiver wire or mismanaged your FAAB dollars and crippled your team early. Whatever the case may be, sit down and have an honest conversation with yourself and figure out what you can do to be better the following year. At the same time, look at the other teams in your league that were at the top of the table. What did they do that worked? What did they do that didn’t? It’s easy to write off someone else winning and say “oh I should have won, they just got lucky”. But that’s rarely the case. Honest deep reflection and a quick post mortem on your team can prove to be immensely valuable.

Conversely, while you’re making this year end assessment, remember there is a fine line between a mistake and bad luck. We had a team in my hometown league this year who drafted CMC, Calvin Ridley, Deshaun Watson (late in a 2QB league), and a few other guys who ended up injured for large portions of the season. His draft and approach were fine (shout out Pat), and there’s nothing he really needs to adjust in his strategy, it’s just bad luck that bites us all from time to time. That being said, had he taken Deshaun first overall… now that would be a mistake that one could look at and ID as the main reason for a lack of success.

So all in all, be critical of yourself, but don’t overdo it to the point where you start to think you did nothing right!

3. Understand your league and its members better than anyone else

This is another time for deep legitimate reflection and analysis of your league and its teams as a whole. Understanding the tendencies of the other managers in your league is of paramount importance. If you have a league manager who is in love with a particular player, and you own that player, well there’s your ideal trade partner. If you have a team that always drafts WRs early and goes zero RB, snag that extra RB to dangle to them later. Navigating the tendencies of your league mates is just as important as understanding some of your own tendencies.

This works in concert with my point from above… a post mortem on your team (and others in your league) can prove invaluable if you can identify what you’re doing that may be making you a predictable fantasy football player, and as such, a target by the more savvy owners in your league.

 Also, to go alongside what I’ve said so far, doing some early season mock drafts (as many as you can) is a fantastic way to get a feel for what your opposing managers are planning to do this season. If there’s a big name rookie coming out, it can help you scope out where they are projected to go in your league’s draft and then plan accordingly. For example, last year we had Najee and Etienne as the top two RBs coming off the board, and a few mock drafts may have helped you dial in what your league’s personal expectations for each player may have been. This is particularly advantageous when it comes to home town players as well. The TSF boys are from New England, so those years where Gronk was a dominant TE for the Patriots he always went earlier in our local drafts than if you only looked for national ADP numbers. It’s just an interesting caveat to consider when attempting to project certain players that may be valued differently in your league than they would be across the country.

4. Never be afraid to ask for help

Some people might shame you for this, but sometimes exactly what you need is a second set of eyes on a problem. Maybe it’s a trade you don’t know if you should accept, maybe it’s a start/sit conundrum, maybe it’s a million other things you just aren’t POSITIVE you should be doing… ASK AN EXPERT. The TopShelf Fantasy guys are always online ready to field your questions at a moment’s notice. Twitter, Facebook Instagram @TopShelfFNTSY… we’re here for you. We run questions by one another all the time, and there is no shame in it. And sometimes you just need that outside perspective to get a clear read on something. The last thing you want to do is ask the opinion of someone else in your league, so log into Twitter and shoot us a question for a quick expert response and we’ll help you out to the best of our ability!

5. Be patient and don’t overreact to rumors floating around the NFL twitter space

Offseason rumors rarely come to fruition, so making over-reactionary roster moves predicated on something you saw online can have disastrous results. Take this current offseason with the rumors of Aaron Rodgers calling it quits in GB, Russel Wilson being linked to 15 teams before he ends up in Denver, or any other number of stories that get “leaked” and never wind up happening. If you made a dynasty trade based on every rumor you heard, not only would you be extremely busy, you’d likely be trading on false information. Be patient, know the actual value of information you’re consuming, and make trades based on known quantifiable info tied to your players.

But don’t be overly patient! Sometimes moving a guy a year before his cliff is better than being caught with him a year after it! Most of this advice applies to dynasty teams, but in keeper leagues a lot of the same principles can be applied, and even in normal redraft leagues as the trade deadline approaches, knowing what information to trust is of the utmost importance.

So there you have it! Check back next week for the next installment of our tips and tricks article for more in depth info that can help make you a dominant force in your league for years to come. But be sure to sign up on the website (again, totally free and we won’t annoy you with stupid emails) or else you won’t be able to view the future articles in this series!

Stay Fluid, Stay Loose!