Lineup Advice, Team Tracking & Strategy: Week 14

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Bye:  Falcons, Bears, Packers, Colts, Saints, Commanders

Week 14

For most leagues, we're at the end of the regular season with one game to go! Finish well, regardless of your place in the standings.

If you played vs. Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown, you played against two players finishing week 13 as top-five overall scorers. Sorry! Additionally, depending on your defensive scoring format, the Cleveland Browns finished as the eleventh best individual scorer last week. The top-12 overall scorers were a mix of quarterbacks and wide receivers primarily. Only Christian McCaffrey broke the top-12.

It's a brutal week for those missing players due to byes. Thankfully, aside from Aaron Rodgers and, maybe, Justin Fields, most of the quarterbacks on bye are mid or low tier players. But for those looking for help from other skill position players, Jonathan Taylor, Chris Olave, Alvin Kamara, Terry McLaurin, Michael Pittman and Christian Watson, the cupboard may seem rather empty and at a very critical time.

This is going to be a good week for me to go deep down the rabbit hole to pull up some intriguing waiver wire players who may have an opportunity for big production due to a combination of matchup and injury opportunity. I'll be doing that later today and Wednesday. If you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, check in with me in the comments. I already have my eye on a few players with upside potential depending on injury status above them on the depth chart.

If you find yourself out of the playoff hunt, this is a time to have some fun with the game in general, get back to the roots of this great hobby of ours. It should be fun to sidle up to the television for seven hours of commercial free football (if you get the Red Zone package). These last weeks is where I do some of my best work in research for 2023 as well. I start really going down the rabbit hole on topics such as prospective draft depth, 2023 free agents, trade targets, etc. Opportunities abound for the well informed.

I'm planning on having a series much like this lineup advice for interactive planning and research where I share things I'm finding as I dig through the dirt for opportunities. I'll be backing this article up with chats in our Discord channel as well so be sure you get involved with that!

Good luck this week, let's get to work.

Team Tracking

Week 13 was shaping up to be a very poor week until the second set of games and then my guys came on. There really wasn't many odd scoring anomalies or situations that flipped wins to losses or losses to wins, though one of my primary teams could not overcome a matchup vs. the Hurts/Brown stack. Just too tough to make up a 70 point hole from two players. I did have one team playing vs. the aforementioned Browns defensive unit as well and I lost big, but it wouldn't have made much difference.

As we enter week 14, the final regular season in nearly all of 13 of my tracked leagues, I'm relatively pleased with what I saw when I looked at the standings this morning. Of the 13 teams, I enter week 14 with only four out of the playoffs, and three of those were fully expected to be out of the running as they are orphan rebuilds or general rebuilds. The fourth team is a new league for 2022 and one I felt very good about but lost two of my three best running backs for the year due to injury and my receivers were ho-hum. Still thought this team would squeak into the playoffs but it was not to be.

Of the nine teams in the playoffs or, in the hunt, one is a perennially strong team which has never missed the playoffs. A superflex format and, while I withstood injuries over the first half of the season, I eventually succumbed, losing Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp, Darnell Mooney and missing Deshaun Watson. I traded Watson mid-season for what looks to be the 1.01 and 2.01 in 2023. I also lost Dak Prescott to begin the year though a backup of Cooper Rush helped keep me in games. I'm 9-4 and on the outside looking in for the playoffs believe it or not. While my record is good, it's a bit deceiving when you look at the all-play results. The loss of Stafford and Kupp had a production impact too hard to recover from. In all reality, it's best if I don't make the playoffs as I'll have the (projected) 1.01, 1.08 and 2.01 with a good looking core of players. Sometimes finishing poorly due to injury  is not a bad thing when draft picks are involved. I'm actually excited should I miss the playoffs. I'll update you next week as there are four teams fighting for that last playoff spot.

In leagues where we have multiple divisions, I'm at the top of most. In leagues with one large division, it's more of a mixed bag. As you may recall, a staggering 40% of my tracked teams last season made the championship game, a number I can't realistically expect to see again. That said, my stretch goal is for 46% (6) of my teams to reach the final game. I can't say I'm optimistic though, of the nine potential teams in the playoffs, there are seven which have a legitimate chance and two others which will take a higher degree of luck.

I finished this week 8-5, bringing my total record to 98-71. It's a good record, but not great. Ultimately, I've made two of my teams strategically poor which has cost me something near 10 wins. Flip those losses to wins and I have a record of 108-61, that's far more notable. But that's the game we play. Not all teams can be competitive every year.

Strategy

I want to touch on a subject which should be of interest to all you commissioners out there:  The Trade Deadline

There are a lot of thoughts about the trade deadline and where it should be placed within the fantasy season. It seems there are more and more leagues eliminating the  deadline altogether because it increases engagement and allows for teams to always be adjusting rosters and builds.

I'm firmly against trade deadlines occurring after week 10. Let me explain way.

The NFL imposes a trade deadline for a reason and that reason should apply to fantasy as well. A late, or no, trade deadline allows teams out of the playoff hunt to move assets which could impact the power balance of the league. Without it, teams would have more opportunities to rob Peter (future years) to pay Paul (current year) with less regard for forthcoming years. A trade deadline, strategically placed, forces teams to at least consider the opportunities of the current year while most teams are still in the playoff hunt. This plays out in fantasy as well but with other considerations.

Fantasy is not the NFL! Most play fantasy for their love of football but with the added bonus to win money, with high stakes leagues becoming increasingly popular. There's extra incentive for owners to sell-out of future assets to front load teams for competition now, foregoing future years. This is the same reason I highly recommend commissioners not allow trades of draft picks beyond the upcoming season. Too much opportunity for poor trades, front loading and eventual frustration, lack of competitiveness and eventual abandonment or lack of interest. I see leagues allowing trading of 2024 and 2025 draft assets and I cringe every time. Force your coaches to play in the near term to help keep your league balanced.

The last thing you want as a commissioner is for a substantial power shift in the final few weeks in what was an entire season of strategic jockeying for victories. We all play dynasty for the strategic element, the building and strategy during the off-season months which plays out during the upcoming season. There are few things more frustrating than seeing a poor performing team unload veteran assets late in the season, potentially elevating (rewarding) a team who was on the outside looking in. The dynasty game is waged primarily in the months of January through August, and then secondarily between regular season weeks one through eight or ten. I strongly discourage you from allowing an acute one-off power shift late in the season which may remove much of the strategic element.

Yes, trading is fun and uncompetitive teams should be allowed to better their rosters, but not at the expense of organic seasonal competition and the natural progression of off-season activities. Trading is a fantastic way to bolster team strength and league enthusiasm, but it's also a primary element for teams to become uncompetitive as well. Misfortune (injury) is part of fantasy just as it is in the NFL. Team owners must have depth and should not be allowed to unload assets to recover late in the season. I get questions all the time that go something like this:  My team is underperforming and I don't have any draft picks until 2025. What should I do to improve?

Trading activities should be limited to a time during the season when most all teams are still in the hunt for the playoffs and making the trade could impact those chances, either way. Moves allowed late in the season, when nothing is on the line, promotes activity which would not have occurred otherwise and unfairly shifts the balance of power at a time when build strategy and depth should be rewarded.

I'm off my soap box now.

Good luck in week 14!