Welcome to the world premiere post of Instant Offense.
This being my first post, I'd like to welcome anyone unfortunate enough to have found this blog. You are obviously either related to one of the authors or addicted to amphetamines and fantasy sports. For those of you that don't know me, I'm the Sponge, I'm a fantasy guru and that's all you need to know. I'll keep the chitter-chat to a minimum, and let my hard-hitting analysis do the talking for me.
Today's topic is building a championship fantasy team. The construction of a championship fantasy team is a three phase process.
Phase 1 - The Draft - Too late to help you goons with this phase, as it may be the most important. I will go over my strategy for attacking the draft once fantasy baseball season is upon us. If you draft well, you are one step ahead of everyone else, however, you can still have a good team even if you blow a few picks if you focus on the other two phases.
Phase 2 - Waiver Wire - Many fantasy owners neglect this aspect of fantasy. If you are one of these owners, you likely missed out on the likes of Kurt Warner, Eddie Royal, Desean Jackson, Chris Johnson, Steve Slaton...etc. If you missed out on one of these guys, fear not, there likely is still one or two impact players on your waiver wire, here's what to look for.
1. Big names dropped early - Many owners freak out way too early and make some pretty foolish decisions as a result. Capitalizing on these freak outs is a must if you are looking for waiver wire gold. You know a big name when you see it, and unless that player is injured or has been demoted from his starting role, he is likely worth a spot on your bench. Hard to say who this may be in your league, I know I snatched up Ronnie Brown the week before he scored those 5 TDs...
2. Players inheriting starting roles - This is especially true for QBs and RBs. If there's room on your bench, snagging a "no-name" guy that is inheriting a starting role due to injury or poor performance from the previous starter can be clutch. If you did this last year, you may have landed Ryan Grant, Earnest Graham or Derek Anderson. Guys to look out for this year: Brady Quinn and Tim Hightower
3. Opportunity - If you're picking guys up after one solid week, you're gonna be disappointed more often that not...One big reception or run can result in an inflated stat line, what you want to see is lots of looks/touches for RBs, WRs or TEs. Matt Buser of Yahoo! tracks these stats every week in his column "Looks/Touches"...I recommend reading it. This is especially useful for WR/TEs, as catches can be a misleading stat. Perhaps some drops or poorly thrown balls resulted in missed out points, but the opportunity was there. If a QB is looking for a guy, points will soon follow. Surprise targets this year: Eddie Royal, Desean Jackson, Muhsin Muhammad, Antonio Bryant, Matt Jones and Kevin Walter.
Also, if you own guys like Braylon Edwards, Andre Johnson, TJ Houshmandzadeh, and Kellen Winslow, don't worry. They're among the league leaders in targets per game, and soon these targets will turn into catches and points.
Phase 3 - Trades - One thing you must always be doing as an owner is assessing your strengths and weaknesses. Ideally, you want to have production out of every position on your fantasy team rather than relying on one or two studs to put up huge points. This will result in a more consistent performance. To achieve this, you sometimes have to make trades, by deciding what you have extra. If you have 3 stud RBs, good for you, but if you only start 2 and your WRs suck, guess what? Likely, so does your team. Deal one of those RBs! Here's what to look for when making a trade.
1. People who need what you have extra - Once you've decided what players you can afford to trade, go to your leagues "Roster Grid." This has every teams starting lineup side by side. If you see a team starting Selvin Young and Deangelo Williams, chances are he's in the market for a RB...See what he has that may help you.
2. Buy low players - Often you can snag some serious talent by making trades for players who struggle early. Heres some buy low players this year: Joseph Addai, Ryan Grant, Andre Johnson, Braylon Edwards, Willis McGahee (careful with this one...) and Ben Roethlisberger (careful again)
3. Stupid n00bs - These are great, you can often snag TO from them for Marvin Harrison, Isaac Bruce and Lance Moore...OK maybe that one won't apply to your league, but likely your league has a stupid n00b...try to pwn him.
- This kind of brings me to another point, if you are in a REAL league that is sans-n00bs, don't offer a bunch of scrubs that u picked up the day before for one stud player. You're insulting their intelligence and making them less likely to deal with you. When this happens to me, I often just leave the trade up there until it expires...
Well I hope this helps. Take my advice and go dominate your league.
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