RADIO
Where there are rules, there are loopholes.
There are ways to implement sneaky strategies that could either be viewed as genius or sketchy. The two questions are: 1) How far are you willing to go to get an advantage in your league? 2) How long can you keep it going until others pick up on it? I’m not here to judge you either way, so I’ll lay forth some sneaky treats and you do with them what you may 😉
Here are some fantasy "hacks" that could give you an advantage the rest of this season and help you get a leg up on the competition.
Editor's Note: Stay on top of your draft prep with RotoBaller’s fantasy football rankings, featuring expert analysis, ADPs, and draft insights for both PPR and non-PPR leagues.
Hacks for Fantasy Football Leagues
Drop players pre-waiver
Do you have players that you are dropping in waivers and/or don’t care to hold on to? Might as well drop them pre-waiver as bait. Maybe someone will bite and as the season progresses you can whittle down other teams’ FAAB. Maybe your dropped player can serve as a decoy for some of the players you really want on the wire.
Pick up streamers a full week in advance
Look ahead at QBs, kickers and defenses and pick up these players the week prior, if possible. Why waste FAAB the following week? Get a head start at owning the streamers you want in advance.
Yahoo! Hacks
If the setting in your Yahoo! league is Sunday–Thursday for Waivers, you can probably pick up players before, during or after Thursday night’s game or Sunday pre-1 pm games i.e. London games. You then will have the option of dropping these players before the 1 pm games on Sunday. Now this is a real sneaky one that may upset your league mates, but again I'm not your judge. This hack gives you a major advantage. If a player gets injured in a Thursday night game you can pick up his replacement mid game! How does this help? It happened with Aaron Jones this season and with Davante Adams last season, in case you needed a specific example to see the massive opportunity in front of you.
Blocking Players
If you don’t want a player on your roster but want to block your opponent from grabbing him, you can pick him up and drop him on Sunday morning or earlier depending on the duration of your waiver period. This guarantees that player will be unavailable for the week. This also works if you want to pick up another player and still want to have the opportunity to get the original player back via waivers after this week’s games.
Thursday night starts
Make sure you have your Thursday night players in positions on your roster rather than in your flex spots. This gives you more flexibility for the remainder of the games.
Hard to drop players
Have guys on your roster that are cramping your bench but are hard to drop? This could be a guy you think will break out or is injured for a week or two. You are probably better suited picking up someone to help you this week or even next week like a defense, so instead of dropping this player, try to trade him to a bad team for a player you are comfortable dropping. If your guy eventually booms, at least it's on an irrelevant team, right? Nothing is worse than inadvertently helping a competitor, so control the situation as best you can by blocking the top teams from gaining a potential advantage. Who says you can't play defense in fantasy football?
Best of luck with my fantasy hacks. Sometimes you need the extra edge to take out your cocky opponent who pretends that you care too much while they discretely check their app every half-hour. Stick it to the draft truthers who believe they’ve drafted the Super Bowl winning squad and will sink or swim with their original squad while poking fun at those of us that make moves. And one-up your worthy opponents who may not discover what you’re doing for a week or two until you've pulled ahead of them in the rankings!
