RADIO
There is no more expansive wasteland than the time in between drafting rookies in a dynasty league and the beginning of training camp. It’s the less than glorious time in your league where absolutely nothing is happening. There are classic routes you could take to pass the time; you can be the guy offering an expanse of bad trades to everyone in your league, you can be the guy dropping and adding every rookie who may-or-may-not-make-the-team long before the first training camp snap is taken, or you can ignore your league entirely until the Thursday afternoon you have to set your lineup. These are all stages of fantasy football boredom, where nothing is happening and no one is winning or losing.
You can also use this time to monitor the stories that live under the radar, the not very sexy stories that may give you the slightest competitive advantage when the ball begins to be snapped in the August heat. Though these moves won’t cause you to win or lose your league, they may help foster a more competitive focus once training camp rolls around.
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Inventory
There’s an assumption that before a draft, inventory has been taken on the players you have and the players you need, and you’ve constructed a draft plan accordingly. A few days after the draft, review the entirety of your lineup again. Why take a few days? Because no fantasy draft has ever gone perfectly. Removing yourself from your lineup for a few days will let you come back and start to crunch numbers. What’s the average age of your wide receivers compared to expected production per game? Do you have enough starting running backs to give you production during every possible BYE week? Where is the bulk of your money going, and can that be managed in a different way?
By having a complete team, you can run every equation in the book, not just because you are bored to tears (sure, it might be a factor…) but to get a more thorough understanding of the benefits and struggles you can expect in the 2016 season.
Lineup Rundown
When you’re done looking over your own lineup, go look at every NFL one you can get your hands on. As players report to training camp, every local newspaper or team specific fan site (if not the NFL team themselves) has published the massive depth chart list at each position. It’s far too early to make roster moves based on this information, but you could learn about a situation where a talented rookie might be able to leapfrog the guys listed in the top slots.
Take the 2015 New England Patriots. While most of the roster could have been written in permanent marker as of July, running back jumps out as an immediate problem. Then-28-year-old LeGarrette Blount was the starting running back without ever having a season over a 1,000 yards rushing, far from being a positional lock. You don’t need much research to learn that Blount, with an ADP of 62 at the time, was never a lock at workhorse back for the Patriots, but by August 2015 you needed darts to tell you if any rookie was going to get a shot at the job. As of training camp, it was a situation to simply monitor.
You know how the story ends; by the start of the season, LeGarrette Blount would miss four games due to suspension and Jonas Gray, the oft-drafted running back who had a glimmer of brilliance the year before, wouldn’t even make the team. Brandon Bolden would start the season as primary back, and third-down responsibilities would be left to a journeyman running back named Dion Lewis that was all-but-undrafted.
Lewis was not exactly a fix-all for fantasy football teams after tearing his ACL in November, but similar situations can be found on other rosters. Even in the deepest leagues, you can find a situation where a significant role is up for grabs, and follow it as training camp begins.
Call Everyone
This is a weirdly important step in your league, especially if the league isn’t made up of the 12 best friends that anyone could have. Calling up the guys in your league, especially the ones you don’t get a chance to talk to or have never talked to before, is an all around pleasant experience. Ask them how they think their draft went, what were they disappointed by, and have no agenda. Not only is it a nice thing to do in general, you can find a trade that no one feels ripped off by. Were they disappointed in not getting Derrick Henry? Do they feel like they spent too much at wide receiver? Are they worried they won’t have any tight end production? You can help, and if you can’t help then you remember them for later if you can solve their problems. You can also ask them their thoughts on your draft, if you feel like being sneered at with envy or mocked for a bad roster for a solid five minutes.
This is ultimately less of a “pure strategy” move, and more of a “be a nice guy” move. Though draft days and match-up Sundays are super competitive and full of trash talk, giving a guy in your league a call to “take his temperature” regarding his team is just a friendly way to talk fantasy while also getting some information that may help trading take place in the future.
Pre-training camp is that truly desolate time where very little can be done to improve your team. There are no players to scout, there is no trend to monitor, and even the first few days are comprised of rookies learning the basics of pro-football life. Use this time not as a way to change your team, but to further understand what the 2016 season will look like. Try to understand your team, your competitors’ teams, and NFL teams as thoroughly as you can so you know what to expect when action actually starts happening. Until then, maybe do an extra errand or two on those free Sundays… while there’s still time.
