Preseason Roster Checklist
It’s been a long off-season. If you’re anything like me, you probably spent every free second you had over the last eight months trying to improve your dynasty roster. You read articles on sleepers and worked hard to find roster space for them. You spent countless time scouting the incoming rookie class, perhaps trading into the perfect spot to land your next superstar. And you likely combed through every other roster in the league on a regular basis looking for trade partners. Perhaps to the point that you know each roster by memory.
You did everything you could to put your dynasty team in position to win the title. Although it was fun, it was also exhausting. And now we only have a few short weeks until we find out if all that work will pay off.
So, what should we do now that the roster is in place and preseason football is here?
Well, there’s a handful of things I like to do every pre-season to make sure my roster is ready for this season and beyond. Many are extremely subtle and some may seem obvious, but each can be critical to keeping dynasty owners out a jamb during the regular season. I like to call it the pre-season dynasty checklist.
Don’t Stop What You’ve Been Doing
If you did all that work over the last eight months, why stop now?
Keep reading updates and articles. Keep scouting those sleepers. And most importantly, keep sending out those trade offers. After all, many dynasty owners don’t pay attention as much as others during the off-season and are just now coming out of their fantasy baseball induced coma. You should be there to help wake them up. If they weren’t all that interested in one of your offers back in May, it’s time to send another one. Never stop trying to improve your roster.
Pay Attention
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While many football fans will tell you the pre-season is a waste of time, dynasty owners should know better. It wasn’t that long ago that Victor Cruz introduced himself to many fantasy owners for the first time by catching six passes for 145 yards and three touchdowns including an incredible one-handed grab that went for a score in a pre-season game against the Jets in 2010. Of course it wasn’t until a year later that Cruz made a fantasy impact, but his pre-season as a rookie put him on the map, as well as many dynasty rosters.
While a lesson can also be learned from the countless stories of pre-season darlings who went on to never make a fantasy impact like Zach Sudfeld did with the Patriots in 2013, the potential to add an impact player for the low price of absolutely nothing should be enough to keep dynasty owners’ attention throughout August.
Submit Your Starting Lineup
I like to do this one about every month or so throughout the off-season. It may seem like an obvious thing to do, but it’s overlooked by countless dynasty owners every year.
Can you imagine logging on to submit a lineup a week before the season kicks off and realizing you don’t have a usable RB2 on the roster because you traded away Alfred Morris for Allen Robinson back in May in a deal that was an easy accept at the time, but crippled your starting lineup? I’ve seen it many times.
Taking the time to submit (or write out) a starting lineup is the best way for dynasty owners to identify weaknesses and areas of need. And doing it a few weeks before the start of the regular season is far better than doing it a few days before.
Taking things a step further, now is also a great time to pinpoint the top backup at every position in an effort to get ahead of potential injuries, which leads us to the next item on our checklist.
Get Handcuffed
No, I’m not suggesting that now is a good time to break the law so you’re out of the slammer before week one. Instead, it’s a good time to make sure the handcuff for your top running back is on a roster and hopefully make a move to put him on yours.
Throughout the off-season, other owners were forced to cut quality backups they had rostered the year before in favor of rookies or other players they acquired via free agency or through trades – this is the perfect time for a savvy dynasty owner to find space for that handcuff.
While many leagues have roster size limits that prohibit such luxuries as a running back handcuff, any non-IDP roster with more than 20 roster spots should be plenty big for the Eddie Lacy owner to find space for James Starks (who is a free agent in two such leagues that I’m in.) After all, it’s far easier to stomach that moment that Lacy goes down clutching a knee or ankle when Starks is already on your roster.
Avoid the Bye Week Blues
Because our rosters are pretty well put together before the NFL schedule is even released, many dynasty owners have trained themselves to ignore bye weeks when building a team. Now’s the time to stop ignoring them, however.
For owners who haven’t looked into the bye weeks yet, it’ll be incredibly annoying to realize that their top three wide receivers are all on bye in week 11. That said, it’ll be even more annoying when reality sets in mid-season.
If your roster is indeed bursting with players sharing a bye, the quickest answer is to try to fill your last couple roster spots with potentially useful players off the waiver wire with different bye weeks. Then, try to get creative with trade offers (although avoid overpaying just to escape the bye week blues) and keep a close eye on the free agent pool. The first bye week isn’t until week four, so fantasy owners have plenty of time to fix this problem.
Get Familiar with Player Contracts
Going into the season, it’s good practice to acquaint yourself with the NFL contract of each player on your roster, particularly the players entering the final year of their deal. There are two reasons knowing a player’s contract can be beneficial.
First, the extra incentive the player may have to put up big numbers in a contract year. While I don’t necessarily subscribe to the theory that players in their final year will suddenly breakout and carry a team to fantasy glory, there have been cases where it’s happened. Jeremy Maclin comes to mind immediately when pondering such instances. He set career highs last season, catching 85 passes for 1,318 yards and ten touchdowns in his final year in the City of Brotherly Love. While it’s unknown if the promise of big payday was what gave Maclin the motivation to finally put it all together, it certainly couldn’t have hurt.
The second thing worth keeping in mind with players entering their final year is the increased potential the player could see a drop in fantasy value if he signs a lucrative free agent deal a year from now. The most recent example of this is, you guessed it, Maclin. Going from Chip Kelly’s high flying offense to one led by captain check down himself, Alex Smith, did a number on his fantasy value.
As you can see, players in the final year of their contract can be a double edged sward. Depending on your roster makeup and your chances to contend for a title, it may be best to move on from a player like Maclin when he’s in the middle of a career year. Either way, it’s best to be aware of these situations before the season is in full swing. For the owners of players like Nick Foles, Lamar Miller and plenty of others, such information can be incredibly useful as the season progresses.
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