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Five Tips to Winning Salary Cap Fantasy Football Leagues
By Jeff | August 29, 2007
Per request, as well as an attempt to get a little more involvement in my Sporting News Salary Cap Fantasy Football Challenge (there are confirmed teams that haven’t signed up yet but it’s always good to get more), I’ve decided to list a few tips that will help you get the most out of your salary cap fantasy leagues and potentially dominate your fellow opponents. This is only a guide. While I will include examples from previous seasons, it is not my intention to tell you who to buy. Hey, I’m all about the greatest human trait of them all - the power of free will.
My credentials: I’m not sure I would go so far as to say that I’m an expert in this field, but I’ve been playing in various fantasy football leagues for about 13 years and I have won the championship at least 5 times and finished near the top in countless others. I love the NFL as well as college football, just ask my wife, so I feel I know as much as the average fan if not more. I hope these 5 tips help you and I hope that you enjoy testing them in my salary cap challenge. (Motivational graphics taken from posters sold through AllPosters.com)
1. Do you like it, love it, want some more of it?
Or, as my wife would say, “Do you love it love it?” I don’t think I’ll ever understand how saying something twice actually clarifies what you are talking about, but I have never heard that understanding women is an attainable goal either. Anyway, obviously, if you are in a fantasy football league of any type, then you are probably a fan of the game or, at the very least, you enjoy it immensely. This is the most obvious requirement, but I would be amiss to not include it. In addition, you must possess some sort of competitive nature. I don’t care whether you are bad winner or a sympathetic one, but you must be a bit of a bad loser. You must desire to win! There has to be some kind of tingly feeling that penetrates to your core when the mention of pigskin, touchdowns, first downs, and concession stand nachos start to infiltrate the vernacular of your community. I know it’s cliche’, but you have to love what you do to be successful at it. This is easily my favorite time of year with college basketball’s Final Four coming in second. If you have never participated in a fantasy football league, you will find that the way you watch and enjoy football totally changes. No longer do you simply root for your favorite team or players. You begin to cheer when a player on your team has a productive day - even if it is against your favorite team. It’s crazy, but crazy fun!
2. Persistence pays off.
You have to be committed and dedicated to this hobby. I’m not suggesting that you give up your first-born child or anything, but you do have to be willing to do a little research, watch some ESPN (really, how hard is that), browse some websites, and spend your Sundays and Monday nights (and some Thursday nights) in front of your television set. I highly recommend watching college football as well, so you can get a glimpse into the future. Essentially, by agreeing to join a league (whether there is an entry fee or not) you are committing to a season of football, highlights, and consistent internet browsing. To stay on top of your game, you have to pay attention to trades, acquisitions, and injuries. Obviously, if one of your quarterbacks (QBs) is out for several weeks, then you need to know it and take appropriate action to find a replacement. You have to know when the bye weeks are for the teams that your players are on. Don’t take zero points if you don’t have to. Also, stick to it and don’t give up! Don’t ever give up (thanks, Jimmy V)! Every week is valuable points wise and experience wise.
3. Sell high and buy low.
Now that we know you are a true football fan and that you have committed yourself to doing your best, we will get to the meat of dominating. You want to take a salesman or stock-trader perspective in regards to your fantasy team when playing in a salary cap league. The general rule is to sell high and buy low. Of course, this is conditional to a few things as well, but if you are able to fill a few roster spots cheap and get decent production, you will save your salary cap money for your big time stars. This is also considered getting value for your selection. I realize this is easier said than done, but it’s not hard either. The key is to use my second tip by simply paying attention to what is happening. The easiest ways do this is to watch the injury list and the preseason. Every year, a valuable running back (RB) goes down due to injury for a period of time allowing his back up to take over his duties. These backups are hungry to start. They want to be the man too. Even if it’s only for a week or two, if that RB plays behind a good offensive line, he will shine and give you good points for cheap. In addition, his value will increase because of his point production, so more often than not you will sell him higher than what you bought him for when the starter returns; thus, giving you more money to spend on your other positions if they need some tweaking - and they will.
Also, the preseason can help you out since there are some positions won during that time frame. Most of the salaries for the players you will be buying have been determined several months ago and it’s possible that some rookies have won starting jobs that you can get fairly cheap in relation to their veteran counter-parts. No doubt, if their talent holds true throughout the season, their value will increase resulting in more money to spend. Watch those depth charts. (Note: RBs are the easiest to replace in this scenario if you plan on using a rookie, but if the backup QB or wide receiver (WR) is a veteran then feel free to fire away.)
4. It’s not personal; it’s business.
You have to treat your team like a business. We all have our favorite teams and favorite players. You can’t fall into the trap of over-valuing a player just because you like him a lot. To be successful, you have to put personal feelings aside. Even if your favorite player is Ladainian Tomlinson, you have to consider the price you have to pay to get him on your team. I’m not saying that he should not be on your team, because let’s face it, he is arguably the best player in football and will score a bunch of points for you. However, is that price worth what you have to give up at your other positions. The good news is that if you use tip #3, it may be possible to get Tomlinson on your team or add enough value during the season that you can afford to add him after his bye week, in which case you won’t have to worry about selling him outside of an injury.
It’s about determining whether the player is worth the price tag. Last year, there were several weeks where Steven Jackson scored about the same or even more points than Tomlinson and was definitely a cheaper option. Chances are that teams with Jackson did better than teams with Tomlinson simply because they could afford to upgrade their other positions better. That being said, you must have a work horse on your team. This is the condition that I mentioned in the above tip #3. You can’t simply fill your roster with value players, but you don’t have to spend every dime either. There has to be a group of players that you can count on for solid production. QBs and RBs are by far the most valuable since they handle the ball more than anyone else and therefore given the most attention and possibly the most money. WRs are flighty. Even the best receivers have weeks where they only get a few receptions for low yardage, then the following week, they might go crazy with multiple touchdowns and yardage galore. You can’t panic over one week of bad production, but you can’t sit idle for long if a trend of poor production develops. Your trades are limited in the challenge that I submitted, so you have to plan accordingly. (I will give this advice: defenses are hard to predict so I would suggest filling that position last until it appears that one team has greatly improved and are playing above what their price tag suggests.)
5. There’s nothing wrong with a little luck of the Irish.
Obviously, this is going to be something beyond your control and it is nothing that you can learn, but you do need to have it to win - to a certain extent. Growing up, my all time favorite board game was Risk. Risk rocks! I felt that for the most part I had an impeccable strategy but I didn’t win every game. The reason? Bad luck with the dice. The same holds true here. You can make solid decisions but if luck is against you, there isn’t much you can do about it. It’s possible to do good research and make some highly educated choices in a change to your roster, but have those changes backfire due to injuries, problems with the law, or simply have a team exploit a weakness that every other teams learns from. It happens, and it happens often. The key is to do your best in minimizing those bad luck opportunities by continuing to do solid research and making educated decisions based upon that research. There will be times when it seems like every change results in success, and there will be times when it seems that everything you do results in failure. All I can say is ride the success while you have it, while simultaneously looking for alternatives in case the failures begin to happen.
An easy way to help minimize the luck factor is to take into account a player’s propensity to get injured. Fred Taylor is an excellent example. Taylor was one of the more exciting prospects coming out of college when he was drafted by the Jacksonville Jaguars. The moment he took over the starting spot, he took off and rewarded fantasy owners with points galore. However, year after year, he would miss several games due to injury that lowered his status because no one could trust he would last the year and he never failed to prove them right. It is obviously wise not to risk a roster spot for a high-risk injury player. Nonetheless, if you are a gambling man, and with a little luck, you could easily take his decreased value along with his high risk and potentially rise above the rest if you are able to trade him before his next injury or if you strike gold if he doesn’t miss any games at all. High risk can equal high reward, but it can also equal last place if you are not careful.
If all these tips are used successfully, then there is no doubt that you will be among the top of the leader board during this football season. The question is are you man enough to test your skills against mine. Of course, if you are a woman, you must ask yourself if you think you have enough competitive edge to battle against us men. I didn’t think you did. Feel free to check out my two challenges if you’re up for a little ‘friendly’ competition.
There’s the Salary Cap League Challenge hosted by The Sporting News.
And my Survival Football Challenge hosted by Yahoo! Sports.
Topics: Sporting News, advice, fantasy football strategy, fantasy sports, salary cap fantasy football |
August 30th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Some good, solid advice… Don’t want to be there when you get woman-slapped around though.
August 30th, 2007 at 11:35 am
August 30th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Hi Jeff,
Excellent post! I liked it alot. I updated the request. Hopefully the tags work.
Chessnoid
August 30th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Hi Jeff,
Excellent post. I enjoyed it. I took care of the tags. I hope it works for both of us.
Cheers!
August 30th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:10 am
i played the english premier league’s fantasy football last season. tho i was well versed with all the players, i really can’t predict how the players will perform. after one season, and looking at my ranking at the end of the season, i didnt join in for the new season.
September 3rd, 2007 at 9:35 pm
But that’s the good thing about salary cap football in that it doesn’t hurt you that much because you can sell the player and buy someone else in his place; unlike typical fantasy football where you have to search the waiver wire for a replacement or hope that someone else doesn’t beat you to his back up. It’s way fun!