Key Moves to Save the Season for Winless Fantasy Teams

October 2, 2020

Chris O'Reilly advises fantasy football managers with winless or losing teams on how to salvage the 2020 season with key trades, waiver adds, and strategies.

No fantasy football manager ever goes into the season thinking he or she is staring down the barrel of an 0-3 start. Maybe we have a roster spot or two we can foresee giving us issues, but unless we possess the most defeatist of attitudes, we likely feel the team we drafted will give us a chance to win. Then the season starts, and any of a number of things go horribly awry.

One 2020-specific misfortune that may have befallen you is the maelstrom of early injuries that pulled the rug out from under so many promising fantasy rosters before they even really had a chance. Perhaps your early-round picks are playing less like stars and more like guys trying to earn a one-way ticket to the waiver wire. Maybe they're playing relatively well, but suffering from a lack of touchdowns (Amari Cooper) or questionable usage patterns (*sigh* Joe Mixon). Or, in the cruelest of fantasy plot twists, maybe your team has been very good for the first three games, but you keep running into buzzsaws in the form of the one or two teams in your league that actually outscore you in a given week.

At the end of the day, how you ended up here only matters to the extent that you can identify what needs to be done in order to rise from the ashes.

Important Reminders

Even if you're sitting at the bottom of the standings with an unsightly 0-3 record, please try to remember two things:

1. It could be worse. You could be 0-2-1, and you could've just elected to punt from midfield with 19 seconds left in overtime against a team that won two games last year.
2. It doesn't have to stay this way, so don't give up!

Because no two rosters are exactly the same, there is very little I can offer in the form of specific advice on how to climb out of the cellar. If you want some help pertaining to your team directly, you can always reach out to me on Twitter, @cjoreillyCLE.

But through the art of shrewd trades, smart navigation of the waiver wire, and looking ahead at teams' schedules beyond just the upcoming week, there are always moves you can make in order to give your team the boost it needs to get in the win column. Let us begin.

Trade for Deshaun Watson

Okay, I know I said this wouldn't be specific, but allow me this one exception. Deshaun Watson has gotten off to something of an un-Deshaun-Watson-like start in 2020, and a big part of that can be attributed to what has got to be the most difficult early-season schedule in the NFL. Watson has faced the Chiefs, Ravens, and Steelers so far; the two AFC North foes in that trio are among the league's top defenses, and the Chiefs are an incredibly tough team to play catch-up against, which is exactly where Watson found himself in Week 1. The person in your league who drafted Watson may be growing restless, and now is the time to take advantage of that.

Is having Bill O'Brien as his head coach and losing DeAndre Hopkins a detriment to Watson's fantasy outlook? Sure. But from where I stand, Watson has earned the right to be considered one of the league's best quarterbacks independent of his surroundings, and his schedule is about to get a lot less daunting. Watson's next three opponents are the Vikings, Jaguars, and Titans--all of whom have been there for the taking through the air.

Following a Week 7 bout with Green Bay, the Texans hit their bye in Week 8. Here are their remaining opponents from Week 9 on: at Jacksonville, at Cleveland, New England, at Detroit, Indianapolis, at Chicago, at Indianapolis, Cincinnati (Week 16, when most fantasy championships are played), Tennessee. Other than two matchups with the Colts and one home game against the Patriots, who do we need to be afraid of on that schedule? With a brutal first three opponents in his rear-view, Watson has been cleared for liftoff.

If you already have Watson, keep him and know that better days lie ahead. If you don't have him, reach out to the person in your league who does. They might be impatient enough to sell him off for less than what it would normally take to acquire him. Watson is the type of player whose "boom" games can single-handedly win you a week, and they're coming sooner than later.

Find the Right Trade Partner

Unless you are just the most woefully unlucky person in the universe, chances are you've got at least a few players on your roster who would command a nice haul on the trade market. At 0-3, now is the time to start seriously considering making some of those deals. Having two or three guys go off in a given week while the rest of your lineup turns in a collective dud isn't doing you any good, and you, unfortunately, don't have the luxury of waiting to see if those underperforming players can turn it around.

Again, since I don't know exactly who is on your roster, I can't tell you exactly which personnel moves to make. But I can try to steer you in the right direction so you approach the best trade partner(s) based on the construction of your roster and theirs.

Is QB one of your greatest strengths? Go see how the person in your league who drafted Tom Brady or Carson Wentz would feel about an upgrade at the position. It's hard to imagine things getting much worse for Wentz and the Eagles, but with all their injuries it doesn't appear things will get significantly better for them anytime soon, either. In Week 4 they face the 49ers, who just dismantled the Jets and Giants despite missing almost all of their most important players on both sides of the ball. If the Wentz manager in your league hasn't acquired a serviceable backup yet, they may be desperate for a trade.

Brady has two solid fantasy outings and one total letdown through the first three weeks, but he and the Tampa Bay offense have hardly been the juggernaut we were hoping to see, and now it looks like Chris Godwin will miss some time. No harm in sending out a feeler to gauge whether your league mate's patience is wearing thin there.

If you can spare some running back depth, reach out to the league mates who lost Christian McCaffrey or Saquon Barkley. In my primary home league, the guys who drafted McCaffrey and Barkley now have pretty barren RB depth charts. Someone in that position should be agreeable to any reasonable trade offer that involves a running back going their way.

If you have McCaffrey, or Raheem Mostert, or George Kittle, or any other injured star slated to return at some point in 2020, strike up negotiations with the owners in your league who have the best rosters and records. They may already have visions of championship banners dancing in their heads, and consequently they may feel their lineup can survive until the injured star comes back. You'll obviously have to include a non-injured player in the deal, but you might be able to persuade someone into giving up some depth in return for a guy who can put them over the top in the second half of the season.

Regardless of who you engage in trade talks, do not let your league mates push you around. People will prey on your desperation and try to coerce you into making a panic deal. Don't give in. If you have a strength in your lineup that can fortify one of their weaknesses, then they need your player(s) to remain competitive just as much as you need theirs to turn your season around. Drive a hard bargain until you get the offer you want, or keep the player you're offering and look to improve your team elsewhere.

Scout Future Matchups

You admittedly need a little roster depth to do this, and at 0-3 you might not have very much of that. But looking ahead to future matchups can help you better prepare for any positions in your lineup where you might generally be streaming from week to week, especially defenses. Take note of teams that are exceptionally weak against a certain position group, and see what you can do about getting in on the players set to face them in upcoming weeks before your league mates turn their attention there as well.

For instance, everyone wants the defense facing the Jets right now. Not everyone is looking ahead to see who plays the Jets in Weeks 5, 6, or 7, however (Cardinals, Chargers, Bills). If you're finalizing your lineup on Sunday morning and you feel like you have a roster spot to spare, scoop up the Arizona defense to keep on your bench until their ultra-inviting matchup in Week 5. This is just an example; the Cardinals might already be on someone's roster, but you get the idea. Always keep an eye on next week's schedule late in the current week to see if there are any advantages you can get a head start on exploiting.

Conducting reconnaissance on future matchups can also help you out in trade negotiations. For example, Miles Sanders is about to hit a pretty brutal stretch of his schedule over the next three weeks with road games at San Francisco and Pittsburgh, and a home bout with Baltimore. If Sanders is on your roster, you might be able to capitalize on his high-draft-pick pedigree and offload him to an RB-needy team in return for a player with less of an uphill sled in his immediate future. Again, just an example, but knowing the upcoming schedules of the players you and your league mates are putting on the table in trade negotiations can give you some hidden leverage.

Make Late-Week Waiver Adds

One sneaky way to give yourself as much roster flexibility as possible is to drop your kicker and/or defense after each week and replace them with actual players. There are two reasons I do this when I'm able.

The first is if I have multiple players on my roster who are listed as questionable to play for the upcoming week. As we all know, those are fluid situations and we're not guaranteed to receive any clarity on them until late in the week with the way NFL coaching staffs play everything so close to their vests. If I have an IR spot(s) on my roster, it can't be occupied by "questionable" players. It can be occupied by players who have officially been declared inactive for a given week, regardless of whether those players are on the real-life IR (at least in ESPN leagues, this is the case). As soon as one of my players is ruled out, I can then place him on my IR and go pick up a kicker or a defense without having to drop a running back, tight end, receiver, etc. By doing this, I'm leaving myself as many outs as I can at positions that aren't as easy to stream as kicker and defense.

The second reason goes hand in hand with the first. Let's say Player A, who is the starting running back on his NFL team, suffers a mild ankle sprain in Week 4. His status for Week 5 is cloudy, so I go to the waiver wire and pick up Player B, his backup, who is set to see an uptick in volume if Player A is out. I'm not sure how the situation will play out, so I drop my kicker to make room on my roster for Player B. Friday afternoon rolls around, Player A is declared active, rendering Player B a non-factor. I drop Player B and replace him with a kicker.

But what if I dropped another RB or WR to make room for Player B? Sure, his value probably wasn't especially high if I dropped him for a second-string running back, but now he is freely available to everyone else in my league. What if it was someone like Kansas City's Darrel Williams or Arizona's Chase Edmonds, both of whom are one teammate injury away from taking on a prominent role in his respective offense? A league mate with a roster spot to spare might pick him up once I release him, and now I'm stuck with an unusable Player B instead.

The moral of the story here is to wait as long as possible before making roster decisions that force you to drop players who could potentially be usable in fantasy lineups at some point. You're not missing out on anything by waiting until Friday, Saturday, or even Sunday morning to pick up a kicker. Give yourself until the weekend to wait out injury designations and other variables, and then you can choose who to drop based on a full week's worth of information. Every bit of roster flexibility you can squeeze out of a week matters when you are trying to claw your way back into the playoff mix.

Parting Words

At the risk of sounding like a head coach trying to save his job after a bad start, I want to drive home the point of refusing to throw in the towel. My best friend started out 0-4 in our most cherished home league last year, and his future couldn't have looked any bleaker. He traded for Lamar Jackson and Leonard Fournette, wound up going 7-2 the rest of the way, and nearly made the playoffs. It would've been pretty easy for him to surrender, but instead he got aggressive and tried to turn his season around. If you're sitting at 0-3 right now, that comeback story could be you in 2020. This whole year has been about trying to make the best out of a truly dreadful situation, so you might as well apply that philosophy to your fantasy football team and have some fun with it.

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