Football Solstice, Part One
Eight wins.
That’s the goal. With eight wins, you have virtually assured a playoff berth. Teams sneak in with seven wins on occasion, and even fewer teams get in with six wins after tiebreakers are calculated. In order to avoid the hassle of relying on chance and league tiebreaker settings: eight wins.
A quarter of the way through the NFL season and a third of the way through the fantasy regular season, eight wins either looks like a certainty, a likelihood, a possibility, or a longshot. But with nine games left to play, eight wins is within reach for absolutely anyone, regardless of records. Now is the time to make a move to ensure that you 1) get to the playoffs, where anything can happen, and 2) prepare for the playoffs, where anything can happen.
If you’re halfway to the magic number, you can look ahead to the playoffs to avoid the top seed early exit that seems to occur every year in every league. If you’re winning as often as you’re losing, you can break that trend and etch out the extra couple of wins that put you over the top. And if your season started with a failure to launch, there’s nothing wrong with bowing out gracefully… but there’s also nothing wrong with doubling down.
All you have to do is get there. Anything can happen in the playoffs. Just get to the playoffs.
Eight wins.
Record: 4-0 or 3-1
Directive
At 3-1 or, even better, a perfect 4-0, the objective for the rest of the season can be modified a little to make the overall goal more achievable. Again, eight wins is the magic number for a playoff berth, and at 4-0 we’re already halfway there; a 4-5 record gets us in the playoffs. That said, resting on laurels and staying the course will likely get you in the playoffs, but often ends ugly with an early exit.
Fantasy players tend to strive for an undefeated season or, at the very least, a top overall seed. By failing to plan ahead, while assuming that the last four weeks of the season will play out just like the first four weeks, those teams frequently limp into the playoffs and lose to a red-hot team that got in the playoffs with a winning streak. At 4-0 or 3-1, we have the luxury of sacrificing some midseason games to ensure that the playoff letdown doesn’t occur.
So shift the strategy a little: sell high on early-season production, and buy low on late-blooming studs. Some of the players who got us to this point are at or near the end of their usefulness, so let’s move on from them now in favor of the players who will help us finish strong!
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Who to trade with
You may be able to find a trade partner in the upper-middle of your league’s standings, so don’t rule them out, but the teams at the bottom of the standings are your primary targets… because they’re the most desperate. At 1-3 or 0-4, those teams need to start winning. NOW!
They’ve likely been waiting on Le’Veon Bell to sign his franchise tender, or Leonard Fournette to get healthy, or David Johnson to do literally anything to justify his early first-round ADP. They can’t afford to wait any longer, but guess who can? Mr./Mrs. Four-and-Oh can afford to wait on a league winner!
The teams at the bottom of the standings are ready to sell now, in favor of some players who can help them get back on track and start climbing the standings. In fact, they will likely trade away multiple long-term players for one win-now stud. This is where you cash in on early season outputs that aren’t sustainable, in return for the players who will lead you to fantasy glory after a little midseason turbulence.
Who to trade for/away
There are two scenarios where a player becomes tradable when you’re in this enviable position. 1) The player has been producing at a high level that likely isn’t sustainable, or 2) the player faces a difficult schedule late in the fantasy season.
In the first scenario, we’re looking for statistical outliers; Patrick Mahomes’ average of nearly five touchdowns per game and Michael Thomas’ 95% catch rate are great examples of the outlier starts that can be exploited. Obviously, those two particular players shouldn’t be sold just to get their flukey production off of your roster (and in a dynasty league, should be virtually untouchable), but because of their early-season production, they can return a massive injection of talent if the right offer comes along.
If the production truly was an outlier, replacing them with multiple players who will outperform that one early season stud is a no-brainer. The other side of the spectrum contains all of the players who have underperformed for various reasons – injury, suspension, a difficult schedule, etc. – and will likely conveniently bounce back right after you trade for them.
As for the second scenario, predicting late-season schedules is a little tricky, because a lot can change in nine-plus weeks. In that timeframe, the Rams welcome back Aqib Talib, the Ravens get Jimmy Smith back, and the Chargers see the return of Joey Bosa. So it’s important to wonder why bad defenses are bad; in most cases, though, they’re just bad because they’re bad. If there’s no reason to believe that they’ll turn it around, then exploit them.
Through the first four weeks, the Saints, Chiefs, Raiders, Falcons, Chargers, Patriots, 49ers, Cardinals, Buccaneers and Giants have been the ten most generous defenses in terms of giving up fantasy points. The Chargers have the only defense with likely positive regression coming, when Bosa returns from injury around week nine. The Patriots have seen some injuries in their secondary, but the bigger trend to follow is the transition from former longtime defensive coordinator Matt Patricia to first-year de facto DC Brian Flores, which will likely develop into a much stronger defense late in the season.
The rest of those matchups should remain exploitable throughout the season, and several of them (the Saints, Chiefs, Chargers, and Bucs) also field explosive offenses, which create negative game scripts for the defense when their opponents are chasing points and scoring in garbage time.
In contrast, the Bears, Rams, Jets, Browns, Dolphins, Titans, Redskins, Cowboys, Vikings and Jaguars have been the hardest defenses against which to accumulate fantasy points. There’s no real reason to believe that they will soften later in the season, so these are defenses to avoid in the fantasy playoffs.
There’s the map of the universe, so let’s identify some actual names.
Quarterbacks
- Trade Away: Ben Roethlisberger. “Big Ben” is an aging quarterback who has been in several shootouts with good offenses and bad defenses to start the season. Plus, he’s notoriously bad on the road, and the Steelers will travel for six of his final 11 games of the fantasy season.
- Trade For: Russell Wilson. He started the season without his top receiving option (Doug Baldwin) and had a fairly difficult schedule to start the season. He’ll have to deal with the Vikings in week 14 but ends the season with a very fantasy-friendly schedule otherwise. Wilson is a serial fantasy league winner, and he’s set to do it again in 2018.
- Trade Away: Carson Wentz. Based solely on his fantasy playoffs schedule, Wentz could be in for a letdown at the worst possible time. The fantasy championship could be a shootout versus Houston, but the rest of the late season minefield includes Washington, Dallas, and the LA Rams.
- Trade For: Cam Newton. Cleveland in week 14 is the only matchup with a defense outside the bottom five in fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks after week 12. Lock up that first-round bye and he gives you amazing matchups against New Orleans and Atlanta, respectively, in the semifinals and fantasy championship.
Running backs
- Trade Away: Carlos Hyde. Here’s one of those extreme outliers: Hyde is averaging over a touchdown per game, yet only rushing for 3.4 yards per carry. Nick Chubb showed what he can do in week four and he’ll take on a larger workload as the season goes on… especially when he proves to be the more efficient back.
- Trade For: Kareem Hunt. You can’t trade away Mahomes, especially in a dynasty league. But he is a statistical oddity, and there is regression coming. So here’s how you sell Mahomes’ ridiculous production without trading Mahomes himself. As his efficiency goes down, the field gets longer for the Chiefs offense, which means more attempts for Hunt and more yards to be gained. He will also start seeing more work in the passing game, as a nice PPR bonus.
- Trade Away: Todd Gurley. That’s right, sell Todd Gurley. You can sell him based on the way he finished the 2017 season, now that it’s an expectation. The reality is, not only is it highly unlikely that he repeats his fantasy playoff production, but he could be in for a massive letdown. In weeks 14 and 15 he faces the two toughest run defenses in the league, Chicago and Philadelphia, respectively.
- Trade For: David Johnson. Honorable mention to Alex Collins, who has a better late-season schedule, but “DJ” has a soft schedule of his own, to go along with a true bellcow role in an improving offense. Matchups with bottom-five run defenses (Detroit and Atlanta) carry Johnson through the first two weeks of the fantasy playoffs, before a matchup with a Rams team that may not have anything left to play for in week 16.
Wide Receivers
- Trade Away: DeSean Jackson. He has 424 yards and three touchdowns… on just 17 receptions! Outlier, outlier, pants on (out)fire! Especially now that Jameis Winston takes his starting job back from Ryan Fitzpatrick and turns it into a more conservative approach.
- Trade For: Odell Beckham Jr. One of the league’s premier scorers has been treading water as a top 20 fantasy wide receiver in PPR, despite the fact that he’s yet to get into the end zone. The touchdowns will come, and they could come in bunches once OBJ breaks the seal.
- Trade Away: Kenny Golladay. Aqib Talib, Patrick Peterson, and Xavier Rhodes will turn Golladay’s breakout season into an absolute nightmare when they line up across from him in three of the final four games of the season.
- Trade For: Antonio Brown. His quarterback is a hard sell, but Brown has always been able to find fantasy points, even when Roethlisberger struggles. Brown finishes the season with four straight matchups against bottom-seven defenses, including a dream matchup with the bottom-ranked Saints in the fantasy championship.
Check back soon for parts two and three, covering 2-2 teams and losing teams!
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