DO THIS NOW - Week 1 Fantasy Football Strategy

Intro week one of fantasy football is officially upon us and we got five strategies that you guys need to do right now to prepare yourself for week one kicking off we are not going to waste any time the first strategy tips that we're going to break down are things you can do for your starting lineup the next two are bench related stuff and then the fifth one is kind of just like a general blanket statement heuristic that you want to keep in mind early in the season so starting with tip number one look to upgrade your starting Tip 1 lineup and this is very simple in most of your leagues you guys are probably looking at your teams constantly I'm doing the same thing right now I open sleeper every 3 to five minutes and look at my team look at my roster look at my weak spots specifically you want to look at your home League teams it's very clear what your weak spots will be for example you guys can see my team on the screen right now my weakest spot is rb2 you can see I have Bree Hall as my rb1 Richardson and David and joku as my onesies and a very loaded wide receiver core it is very clear to me that early in the season my weakest Position will be rb2 and my weak spot is something that I want to potentially upgrade from before that season starts of course this is by Design I ran a hero RB and my weakest spot is going to be rb2 as a result but for example I can go out and I can offer somebody Chase Brown who's currently occupying my rb2 slot plus Jackson Smith and jigu for example who is my wide receiver five on this roster and see if I can get up to a James Cook an Isaiah peo a Travis etn a Josh Jacob somebody like that again this is just an example it might not be accepted a lot of people in my league specifically are very familiar with two for one tier ups but it is something that you can do especially if you're in a more casual league and the shallower your starting lineup is if you guys are in eight team leagues 10 team leagues uh one quarterback two running back two wide receiver one tight end one flex your starting lineup is literally all that matters that is there's nothing else that matters about your team so upgrading the weakest positions in your starting lineup will make your team better and this could apply to David and joku as well I could maybe take David and joku plus a bench piece try and get up to Pitts or McBride or canade or Andrews if I want to the point is basically look at your starting lineup and see where you can maybe make upgrades before the season starts yeah 100% again we'll tag a little bit more on in terms of the overall roster contract you want to stick to but specifically for this team as well you understand hey I have you know two wide receivers two Flexes in this league KN that it's not a three wide receiver three start league with seven bench spots there will be some stuff on the waiver wire for you to potentially back fill so people are all automatically thinking okay well the opportunity bundle of these two guys for one like he's getting more raw points from these two players you also have to think too adding that Open Bench spot you're going to be adding somebody from waiver so if there's a player that you selected in the 14th or the 15th or the 13th round of your drafts and you can tag them on and upgrade somebody in your starting lineup there should be somebody on the waivers that profiles similarly to that guy anyways yeah and that's this is a good time to plug that our trade calculator also factors in what might be available in your league and factors that into the trade so for example like you said if I took Drake London and if I took JK Dobbins for example and tried to get up to Marvin Harrison Jr the trade calculator will actually Factor in that I can just pick up a player off of the waiver wire with that Open Bench spot so yeah again look at your starting lineup see how you can maybe get better before the season starts and I will say be diligent but there's a good chance that some of your league mates don't want to deal before week one like my league mates have expressed to me like Malik neighbors went to pick before I selected Michael Pitman I've tried already to get Malik Neighbors from this guy and he's like I want to see what happens like there's going to be a lot of people in your league that want to see what happens the first week or the first couple weeks of the Season before they want to make trades again we're just talking about a strategy you can Implement Maybe League mates are not willing to trade like mine so do keep in mind that on the waiver wire specifically in Shadow the leagues there will be plenty of options available so even though you're losing a two for one in theory you can always add that player over in the waiver wire but we could go Tip 2 on to tip number two and that is balancing your late versus your early season plays you don't want a team full of upside for the later season because you don't want to fall in a one- six one and seven type of hole but you also don't want a team that doesn't have any upside for the later season push you want to make sure that we are balanced as Thanos one said perfectly Balan as all things should be that is how we should be attacking our fantasy football teams specifically at running back again you'll talk a little bit when it comes to the wide receiver position but we want to be balancing the archetype of player that makes up our roster having guys that we can plug in on day one that we trust with workloads mix with guys that can downright win our leagues for us and an example of that again you may or may not disagree with the overall valuation I know Cory's beside me probably you know licking his lips thinking oh I think you might have paid a little too much here but this trade follows that exact blueprint I view my running back core a hero running back draft strategy headline BR Bree Hall as having my rb2 as my only weakness of my team as much as I like rre Stevenson he is for my opinion an early season workload type of play the way I structure my running back CT is that I trust Rico dle I trust Chase Brown to fill in my rb2 touches right off the bat in the first three to four weeks and I want to go and swing on a running back like Trey Benson who can downright win my my league if James Conor were to go down he's an older running back that peaked in his last season I just trust the trend of older running backs potentially declining Trey Benson was a guy I had ranked as a top two running back in the class so for me personally the archetype of running back I wanted to compliment my breea Chase Brown and Rico Dow was one closer to a guy like Trey Benson rather than ra Andre so for me if I could leverage that early season production rondre has give me a big time upgrade in my opinion as much as I like Jaylen wad I view niik cin is a potential League winner at wide receiver I think he has the upside to be a mid to highend wide receiver one with this Houston Texans offense so for me personally yes I'm sacrificing some early season production losing gandre in this deal and you can make the argument from a straight draft value standpoint probably could have got a little bit more but for me personally balancing my running back room getting a big time upgrade in my opinion to niik Collins was a win type a deal for me and I would agree that the immediate overall Equity would favor Mason's side but the implied value of my deal should James Connor go down or should Trey Benson take the job over has the opportunity for me to downright win the league yeah and again the key is to to understand how your running back core interacts together where Bree Hall is your he's your hero RB he's good early and late season he's a stud then you have like you said in your opinion Chase Brown Rico D can be the early season plays for you and you add Trey Benson to be a late season play for you now I kind of disagree a little bit I think that chase Brown and Rico D are actually probably late season plays as well because I think we just got news today Zach Moss was listed as the rb1 on the depth chart Ezekiel Elliott as the guy who knows the system has been with the team probably has a chance to be the early season guy there but again it's your team your evaluation that you're making here and I don't think the trade is outrageous I think that bigger rolls down the stretch so that's kind of how you want to balance your running back plays and like for example you're like ah you know what I don't need chubba hover because I ran a double hero RB I don't need an early season play you could drop chuba hubard for Tyrone Tracy for example or you could use chuba hubard in a two for one trade up to get a better upside play like Zack shanet or something like that on your roster so again balancing your early and late season plays also applies to your starting lineup as well as your bench like we kind of just talked about there and the last note I will leave off of here is it fully depends on your draft draft stry if I went with a zero running back build and I didn't have a guy like Bree Hall the early season touches of RA mandre I would have rather kept that type of profile but because I had breea knowing that wide receivers more than likely on a week- toe basis with Malik neighbors Roma dun uh with Nico Collins now and Rashid rice the only spot that I will have for a second running back will be in that rbq slot because for the most part when I'm projecting my lineup moving forward it will be four wide receivers and two running backs and I already know one of those running backs on a week- toe basis will be briol so if Trey Benson does end up developing into that top 15 top 12 back should James Conor go down or Benson just win the job outright I now have a team that basically has no flaws yeah again I I look at your team and I think you have too much late season upside personally between Odun neighbors Trey Benson those type of guys I think rre actually fit your team a little bit better but again we disagree a little bit on the premise of the trade and again just a reminder too before we get into the bench kind of stuff that we're talking about Underdog fantasy does have a live promotion right now Thursday night we kick off the NFL season so excited to stop jabbering about these players head on over there use the code fsse you'll get our weekly rankings for the entire season to help you guys with start sit decisions Vegas information quarterback running back wide receiver and tight end matchups all that stuff is included in our weekly rankings Manifesto and you can get it by heading on over to Underdog using promo code fsse depositing 10 bucks it'll be in your email inbox within 24 hours you'll get this uh Travis Kelce pick them for week one as well so definitely check that out if you're interested now let's get into bench stuff and we're going to talk about building your bench properly Tip 3 this is one of the biggest mistakes that new fantasy players make and the biggest mistake that some of my like experienced League mates still make is that they don't want to have to make start sit decisions they're like I want my bench to be my bench and my starters to be my starters I want them to be terrible bench options that are only handcuffs or whatever that I can know that when I start them I start them and otherwise I just start the guys in my starting lineup so again your starters are all that matters for the most part in home leagues because in Shallow League formats your goal is to basically just have the best starting line but that means that your bench is going to out constant bench hits if you can you know properly structure your bench one what's up I was just going to say it goes back to0 one that you made where if you do have somebody that hits massively off your bench guess what you have an opportunity to potentially even make a two for one exactly you can use that depth in trade packages to tear up let's say you have DK Mecha as your wide receiver to in your lineup and Bucky Irving becomes a starting running back for the bucks because Rashad white gets injured you can take DK meaf plus Bucky and probably get up to like Drake London or something or probably get up to or n Collins or somebody like that that is why we want to build our bench properly there is absolutely no penalty for having bad players on your bench in home leagues in baseball obviously it's totally different but let's say in round 10 to 15 all you did was swing for upside you only drafted handcuff running backs ambiguous backfields rookie wide receivers whatever if you missed on every single one of those picks you could legitimately still be three and0 after the first weeks uh three weeks of the Season like it has absolutely no impact on your win L record and you'll probably have a whole new bench by week two if that's the case if everybody misses from your uh from your rounds 10 to 15 so here are some easy rules to follow if all this sounds confusing here are some easy rules to follow for building your bench properly as I talked about in the mistakes to avoid video If you guys drafted Dak Prescott Jordan love or better at quarterback so Allen Herz Mahomes those type of guys do not roster second quarterback don't if you're doing it just for the byee in the bye you can make that decision like momes and those guys they all have late buys I'm pretty sure especially Allen and Herz just wait until that week pick up Gardner mshu or Derek Carr Sam darnold Daniel Jones off of the waiver wire and you should be in a very good spot to just play that guy one week and then drop him after the week is over because Mahomes Herz those type of guys are never leaning leaving your lineup and again the exception is maybe like an Anthony Richardson because he's a little bit risky but for the most part I'm fine rostering one quarterback if you have Dak Prescott Jordan love are better and the same goes for tight ends too and again we're assuming one quarterback one tight end leagues David and joku Jake Ferguson are better don't draft a second tight end don't roster a second tight end there's no reason to have Cole Kad on your bench if you already have Kyle pittz or you already have Trey McBride or somebody like that so definitely part of structuring your bench is not holding extra onesies if you already have an elite option because there's a very good chance that if Jaylen Herz misses you're not going to win your league anyway and you can just stream the waiver wire and grab whoever bow Knicks Drake May when you uh when they pop up as waiver ads there's no reason to just hold to a tongue of IO on your bench behind Jaylen Herz yeah for sure and that goes back to the point you made in these six mistakes you're C League makes a video uh where people will take backup quarterbacks backup tight ends the other thing too A lot of people will handcuff their running backs it's fine I would say if you can get the Handcuff to your running back in the last round or off of waiver that is one thing but when you're over allocating draft resources in you're taking a running back in the second or third round and then you're also taking his handcuffed in the 10th round the opportunity cost of doing that is allocating two roster spots to the same position and you're doing it with two top 10 top 11 round picks the only reason it would be plausible would be if you're getting a guy in the final round or off your waivers at that point it's like okay cool they let him fall to you sure but typically speaking a lot of leaks specifically like for example I mean we're thinking bejon Robinson and Tyler algeri if you draft beon Robinson as good of a handcuff projection as Tyler aler may be why would you be drafting him in the 12th round because that's going against your bet on bejon Robinson yeah well and as I talked about in that video it actually inherently lowers your win rate because if bejon goes down you're probably not going to win your league anyway that's your first round pick like there's a very good chance that you AR going to win your league anyway people talk about it with Kiron and Korum and those type of guys the only backfield that I think it actually works for is the Carolina Panthers because chuba Hubbert is going to be a starter Jonathan Brooks once he comes back from injury is probably going to be the starter there and he's probably not taking up a roster spot if you have an IR spot in your league too so definitely make sure that with your bench you're loading it with wide receivers you're loading it with running backs like you can see two of my leagues that I have here Bucky Irving khil Herbert Zack sharan Troy Franklin Hollywood Brown and Davian Wicks all of those guys none of those running backs are handcuffs to my starters and also they're all upside swings if some of those guys miss let's say Irving is useless Troy Franklin is useless and whatever after the first two weeks of the Season khil Herbert's useless then I'll probably drop those guys for the hot waiver ads early in the season like we see on a year-over-year basis same goes for this bench here Ray Davis Bucky Irving chuba hubard Malik Washington Donavan Wicks Keat Mitchell Malik Washington plays wide receiver five snaps the first week or two of the Season I'm probably dropping him and picking up somebody else the other thing too is if you play with defenses and kickers never ever ever roster more than one at once unless it the fantasy playoffs week 16 week 17 and also make sure the types of players that you're going after are rookies are ambiguous backfields you want your high upside late season plays probably on your bench not in your starting lineup yeah like for example if we just look at the flock League like my bench has I mentioned a guy like Trey Benson there's also brillan Allen Jaylen Wright Rico do adni Mitchell and Jaylen tolber that's mixing some guys that should have an early role with some guys that could downright win me in my league like I mentioned with Benson I do think that could be the case for example with jayen Wright being the Handcuff that was the point I was talking about earlier with brillan Allen like yes I do have Bree Hall but I got brillan Allen basically for free off of the waivers it's not like I went and attack brillan Allen in the 12th round because I had Breeze Hall it's more so okay after the draft he's available I have a spot I'll add him at that point yeah and there's a good chance too that like Bree is dominant three weeks into the season you're probably not going to hold brilin Allen the entire year if there's better waiver ads to pop up yeah 100% yeah and speaking of waiver ads uh tip number four for how to construct your bench and what you want to do to attack churning your roster I use the term churning your roster churning your bench throughout that argument here and part of that is how you actually acquire Tip 4 these players so tip number four is start a plan to allocate your free agent acquisition budget or your waiver priority system if you guys use one and this is why you guys turn to us this is the beauty of you know talking about money talking about overall budget because it's just like real life for Fantasy Football man proper budget allocation is crucial for your real life decisions as it is crucial for Fantasy Football the way to contextualize this is think you're a sports team you're entering the offseason you have a star wide receiver Trio and your offensive line just came off a season where it ranked as the 27th ranked unit in the league are you going to go sign the star wide receiver in free agency or are you going to go sign the star left guard you're going to go start sign the star left guard because you have the wide receivers on the outside already set and you need to improve your offensive line think of that when it applies to your fantasy football team if you drafted a hero running back draft strategy and your wide receivers are I don't know uh let's just say you grabbed breea for example in my case London iuk Pitman and Higgins are mine with jsn on my yeah in your specific in your case specifically you have Bree Hall you have all those wide receivers your main problem spots rb2 unless there's like a puka like clear League winning profile at wide receiver you need to be spending that $100 of your Fab Fab budget accordingly you have to understand that I drafted this team with the strategy that running back two will be my weakest point on my team doesn't mean that it has to be the weakest point of your team throughout the entirety of the season because if it comes week one week two week three and there is a big running back fish you can get in the Fab well guess what you can drop 9095 $100 of your Fab to go acquire that player because if they do hit and they do end up being this year's kyen Williams then you look at your entire roster and say well where's the weakness I drafted this team with running back two intended to be the weakness but I just got to free kyen Williams to fill that slot for the rest of the season yeah people who ran hero RBS and picked up Kiren Williams after week one probably won their league people who ran hero RBS and picked up Devon aan or Jerome Ford after that or Gus Edwards the three or four week prior to week they probably had a ton of running back depth and didn't actually plan for that to happen which is why again we're not saying like make sure okay 80% of my fab is going to be dedicated to running backs 10% it's G be dedic like no just have a generalized idea it goes back to evaluating your starting roster with what positions are your weak ones maybe you punted quarterback maybe you punted tight end and tight end you're like okay I I have Pat frth my starting lineup right now it's kind of making me nervous if any good tight end wa ads like Ben sinate or jatavian Sanders or Greg dolit or Tucker craft pop up in week one or week two then you're going to be heavily allocating Fab budget or your waiver priority system to that position because you're presumably already very strong at the other positions if you drafted very well so again whatever your weak point on your roster make sure that you're keeping in mind that when the waiver ads start popping up weeks one two and three like they are usually the best ones of the Season at the beginning of the year make sure that you're properly allocating a good amount of your Fab budget to address the running back position which is usually the case for us or maybe wide receiver quarterback or tight end depending on the strength of your team and if you guys want a General Baseline for how you should be approaching based off the draft strategy you use in your draft if you used a zero or hero running back build like we said Pro typically speaking you're going to be strong at wide receiver you're going to be strong at quarterback you're going to be strong at tight end so you want to PRI prioritize getting that running back two slot filled for a hero or getting potentially your starting running back spots fied if you're running a zero RB and vice versa if you started with a double hero running back I understand like obviously if if like a Kiren Wills comes available like you're going to put a bid in regardless because they're just a league winning profile and you could figure the rest out but specifically when it's like the Drone forward profiles or the week two or the two we the three- we type of plays that are costing $40 plus dollars of your Fab budget well you already invested heavily into the running back position you would be then be better suited to save that budget for the wide receiver position yeah tank Dell Jaden Reed guys like that that popped up on the waiver wire throughout the year that would be where you would want to at your budget so those were like the four like roster based tips that we wanted to share with you guys before the season the last one is kind of just like a bonus tip because a lot of people make this mistake especially new fantasy players tip Tip 5 number five is mentally prepare yourself for all of the new information that's coming because week one standouts from last year Kendrick Bourne Tyler alir Josh Kelly Roshan Johnson jacobe Meyers Rasheed Shahed other guys who we shouldn't have paid super close attention to having a monster game in week one but it also included PUK and AA Kiren Williams Michael Pitman Jr Brandon iuk T Travis etn sorry Bree Hall and other guys that we should have been paying attention to the usage we should have been paying to uh paying attention to um overall what they did in week one or what they did through the first couple weeks of the season the key is to knowing what's real and what isn't is new usage and new information that we didn't know already if we go out there assuming that chase Brown and Zach Moss is going to be a committee to start the season and Chase Brown plays 90% of the snaps in week one he suddenly goes from an upside rb3 to a a mid rb1 for the rest of the season or at least a highend rb2 if we're a little bit pessimistic the absolute best resource out there for this is on fantasy life.com Dwayne McFarland's utilization report we reference it all the time during our uh tier list videos yeah and again great work that Dwayne does I can guarantee you guys if you do follow the utilization report on a week- toe basis it is guaranteed to make you a better fantasy football player because while your league mates are looking at oh look this guy scor 26 points last week you're going to be the guy that's understanding the usage you're going to be the guy that's understanding well actually this wide receiver ran more routes than him so I'm going to Target the guy that's getting the better usage understanding that usage is more correlated to fantasy points rather than one-off big-time Spike weeks is going to make you a better fantasy football player in the long run again we want to be balancing this new information with offseason priors I think that is very crucial as well you want to be taking a new information but not completely dismissing all the research you did in the offseason whether it's watching us watching Ron watching Mason watching the land guys the domain guys whatever your go-to sources for Fantasy Football understanding that we want to take that research we did in the off season and not overreact to the new information but still be able to apply the new information we have people will you know inherently react to week one as they should but we want to be spotting the outliers and we want to be spotting the potential Buy Low or sell highs based off the usage that we could see in the utilization report are there players that performed at their lower range of outcome because of a bad matchup or higher range of elcome because of a good matchup taking in all this information not forgetting what we knew in the offseason but also understanding that are they performing as well as we could have projected or they overperforming or underperforming it based off the usage based off the usage is the key word people are going to look at the points rather than usage you want to be the one that is studying the usage yeah and again if you don't want to do that research yourself we're we're obviously going to tell you guys that stuff so you can just keep it tapped in right here hit the Subscribe button and we'll take care of that for you but if you are you know a serious serious fantasy player does their own research definitely make sure you check out Dwayne McFarland's Fantasy Life utilization report PFF has great resources for it as well there's tons of great Twitter follows that break down usage all the time I know J.J zacharis usually does like a weekly thread on breaking down the notable usage right after the games are over so he's also a great follow for that um but yeah that is our five tips are do this before week one again this one was a bonus tip it's more like get your mind right before week one as opposed to like something you actually physically have to do um but definitely something that we want to keep in mind less so again if you did enjoy this video leave a like down below subscribe to the channel if this is the first time you're checking us out you will want to keep it tapped in here this season we will do everything we can to help you hoist a fake Lombardi trophy in your fantasy football leagues this year and of course check out our sponsor if you guys want to support the show Underdog fantasy use the promo code fsse when you sign up deposit 10 bucks you'll get our weekly rankings all season long and if you're curious if you did that to get our draft guide you will also be receiving an email in the next day or two with weekly rankings access this entire season and of course we have tons of bonus content over on flock fantasy.com if you guys want to ask us trade questions ask us start sick questions there is alicart features over there on flock fantasy and both of those things will be linked Down Below in the description and in the pin comment but with that being said peace out and we'll talk to you soon