Beginner's Guide to Fantasy Football, Part 8: Improving Your Team

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Links to other parts of this series:

No roster is perfect. Few come close to it. Flaws exist on just about every roster, and no fantasy owner is lucky enough to make it through a season without injuries or byes causing problems.

You’ve effectively analyzed your roster by now, whether it’s via the Rate My Team app or your own self-reflection. You know the team’s weaknesses and strengths, and you can do the same for the rest of the teams in your league. Our Draft Dominator can help you do just that if you use it to sync up with your league or manually input all the teams. Leverage that knowledge to pursue trades or use free agency to improve your roster.

Wheeling and Dealing

A trade is a great, if not easy, way to improve your roster. It may be more difficult in some leagues than others to pull off trades based on the willingness of fantasy owners to make them, but it never hurts to try.

Let’s start with the same fictional roster from the previous section. Again, this is a 12-team PPR league with a flex starter.

Like we noted, running back is a position of weakness on this squad. So what can we do to improve it? The first thing to do is to scour the rest of the league to find a trade partner. That means finding someone who needs something you have. This isn’t just a preseason endeavor -- keeping tabs on team needs throughout the season is a good way to find trading partners to bolster your roster.

So you find someone who went RB-heavy to begin their draft and took Derrick Henry, Austin Ekeler, Najee Harris, and Miles Sanders, for example. But working in a solid quarterback and quality tight end means that team lacks quality starters at receiver, with Justin Jefferson being the only solid starter. You’ve found a good trading partner.

Before heading into any trade negotiation, the important thing to understand is that fantasy team owners tend to have wildly differing valuations of players. Most of the time, they overvalue their own players. One man’s trash may be another’s treasure. Certain players may be untouchable on rosters, and there is little you can do to sway that brick wall. Often starting a trade negotiation with an offer that is perceived as insulting will kill the deal right away, sometimes with a rebuke from the offended owner. If you are serious about making a deal, the best approach is to offer a fair trade. That means offering what you think is good value to get what you want.

What is good value? Three bench-warmers for a star is not. Take it from someone who has made scores of putrid trade offers in bad faith; you will get nowhere flipping waiver-wire fodder for the third-best quarterback in the league just because that team is desperate for help.

Some leagues have trading blocks, where you can put players you are willing to part with and see where others stand. You will get a better idea of where players are valued and maybe find a better starting point.

Trolling the Line

Trading can be a good way to improve your roster, but it can be tedious and unsuccessful most of the time. Scouring the waiver wire and the free-agent pool will be a better bet most of the time.

Unless you are in a best-ball or DFS league, successfully navigating the waiver wire and free agency is vital to long-term success. Stars are born mid-season. Players get injured or fall short of expectations. Bye weeks wreak havoc on starting lineups. Sometimes even picking up players to block leaguemates from getting them is important.

Whatever the case may be, you are unlikely to go far without picking up and dropping players. A free agent is a player that can be picked up immediately without delay. The waiver wire is a pool of players for whom fantasy teams must vie.

There are two major ways fantasy leagues do this process -- waiver priority and free-agent acquisition budget (FAAB). The former is straightforward -- there is an order of priority for every team in the fantasy league, and the highest priority wins when multiple teams claim a single player. Some leagues slide the waiver wire winner to the bottom of the priority list once they have claimed a player on their squad. Other leagues reset waiver priorities based on things like points scored and record.

FAAB is like a pseudo-auction that occurs every week. Players are given a FAAB budget that they can use throughout the year to claim players. Each team bids on players on the waiver wire, with ties going to the team with a higher waiver priority. Each team’s FAAB budget does not reset, so spending all your money on a player in Week 2 means you will have to rely on unclaimed players or free agency to make moves on the wire. Many fantasy owners fear using their money, though, which can be detrimental to success as well. There is no sense in ending the season with half your FAAB left -- spend up, but spend wisely.

So how should we approach the waiver wire?

Filling a Hole

Injuries and suspensions happen all the time in the NFL. When they do, those players’ replacements often get a chance to shine in an increased or starting role. Take James Conner two seasons ago. LeVeon Bell was out of his own volition, which created a massive void at running back. Conner was the favorite to land the starting gig, and he wound up delivering big numbers for his fantasy owners. Now, Conner was nowhere near a waiver wire pickup for fantasy leagues that drafted late in the summer, but he may have been a savvy pickup for a team that drafted during the offseason.

More often than not, it will be clear-cut. If a player on your fantasy squad is going to miss time, replacing him is vital. Sometimes there is enough depth on the team to absorb the loss of a starter, but most of the time, you’ll want to go after your injured player’s replacement. Odds are, that player will produce at decent levels if not startable.

Up-and-Comers

The easiest and most obvious way to improve your team on the waiver wire is to grab someone who is showing out early. Often, a player will have a great game only to fall back to the depths of fantasy production, but often you will get at least a few productive weeks out of someone who came out of nowhere.

Rookies on Bad Teams

There are always teams out of contention by midseason. As the season wears on, those teams might feel inclined to utilize rookies more, sometimes as starters when they were on the bench earlier. Anticipating such moves can help you snag a future starter a week or two early before the rest of the league is keen on your guy.

Eyeing the Playoffs

It’s every fantasy football owner’s goal to make the playoffs, but what if you arrive there and half your team is slated to play against defensive buzzsaws? As the season progresses, keep an eye on the last few weeks of the fantasy season -- typically Weeks 14-16, though the added game bumps the playoffs back a week in many cases. You won’t have to worry about byes, but you do want to see what players might have favorable matchups. If you see an NFL starter on the wire who has struggled but plays against the NFL’s worst defense in Week 16, give him a roster spot. Unless your bench is shallow or so strong, you won’t need him. Nabbing that player could swing the playoffs for you.