Improve your fantasy football win percentage in under 2 hours per week
There’s no need to waste hours of your busy life doing fantasy football analysis.
Here’s a simple weekly workflow to follow that works for most players…
Tuesday - Roster Assessment & Waiver Wire
Our week begins on Tuesday. This day is all about figuring out who to claim off the waiver wire, drop from the roster, and what holes we need to fill due to injury, bye weeks, or shit performance.
I like to first bench all my players. It feels like I’m working with a clean slate. Especially after a bad week, it’s a good palate cleanser and puts your brain in assessment mode - no one’s starting slot is safe, everyone is a candidate for dropping or benching.
Claiming players off the waiver wire and making drop decisions is more art than science. Since quality running backs tend to be scarce these days, it’s good to prioritize them. Then wide receivers, tight ends, quarterbacks, and everyone else.
Injuries create opportunity. So check the injury report and who might be in line for more work in the coming weeks.
Also include players who had potential “break out” games. Most sites allow you to sort available players by fantasy points the week before.
Then, take all the players on your potential add list and determine if they should have a place on your roster. This is like risk analysis, because you’ll most likely have to drop someone to make room. It’s a relatively simple assessment, but can be gut churning if you have to give up on a player you had high hopes for (only to watch some other manager claim them and beat you later).
Finally, rank the players who make the cut in order of potential performance and roster need. Then put in the claims in priority order and see what shakes out.
This sounds like a lot of work, and it might be if you’re new to it. But after a couple weeks, you’ll learn to keep your claims list short so you don’t have to make too many decisions.
Unfortunately, most players who seem to break out will regress to the average. Knowing this will give you comfort when there’s a manager with a higher waiver priority than you.
Est. Time: No more than 30 minutes
Tips for Success
The waiver wire is all about strengthening the depth of your roster, and on occasion, landing a true breakout star before they break out. It requires good timing and a bit of luck.
Some managers like to keep their priority high and don’t work the wire until they spot an obvious premium add. Other managers, like me, thrash the wire weekly and always have a low priority. You’ll develop your preference over time.
There are strategies for “streaming” players at positions where the difference in performance is typically negligible. Quarterback, kicker, and team defense are the usual suspects. But tight end is also a candidate if you don’t have a consistent producer. In other words, don’t be afraid to thrash kickers and team defense, as they tend to bunch up around the average week in and week out.
Wednesday - Roster Improvements via Trade
Wednesdays are reserved for investigating trade options. This is a fun activity where your goal is to propose a mutual win-win swap with another team.
What this looks like in practice is trying to find another team with a weakness at a certain position and strength at a position you need. Ideally, this tends to be trading, say, a surplus running back on your team for a surplus wide receiver on another team.
In reality, trades tend to be the realm where managers try to get something for nothing. Like trading an underperforming brand name player for a high performing no-name player. Some managers are suckers for name brands.
I only propose trades when I see an obvious fit. My preference is to draft elite wide receivers high and mid to low tier running backs later. So I almost always have a surplus of receivers. So I tend to propose trades that swap one of my receivers for someone else’s running back.
Most sites have a view where it’s easy to see everyone’s current roster, so it’s easier to identify good trade candidates.
There’s no trick and tactic here. Some managers are always proposing trades. Other managers, like me, tend to sit back and wait for the right opportunity. There’s no right or wrong way to go about it.
If you’re brand new, I suggest erring towards proposing trades regularly, just to get a feel for what works and doesn’t for you. Who knows, you may score that unicorn player who wins you a championship.
Est. Time: no more than 15 minutes
Tips for Success
When determining trade candidates, look at lineup theory’s Power Matrix to identify teams with strong upcoming matchups, and avoid teams with weak matchups.
Think workload - target share, percentage of carries, etc - when making trade decisions. It’s not always about pure output. A player could be getting a heavy workload but under performing because of a tough schedule, which is frustrating the current manager.
Don’t reject stupid trade proposals from other managers. Either make a similarly stupid counter offer or just let it sit. Who knows, maybe it sits there forever, your player gets hurt, and boom, you can screw that other waste-of-time manager.
Thursday - The Analysis Loop & Roster Building
Thursday is the day we begin analyzing and making lineup decisions. We’re going to use what I call The Analysis Loop (tm).
Using lineup theory, it looks like this…
Step 1: Check the Vegas Odds & Weather tool. This is simply to understand which teams and games Vegas believes has high fantasy football potential. Look for high over/under and teams with players on your roster who are expected to score a lot.
Step 2: Identify no brainer matchups. Check the Power Matrix for teams on your roster who have good matchups, numbers above 1.0, and not so good matchups, numbers below 1.0, for each position.
Step 3: Rank players according to projection. Check out the projections and insert players on your roster with the highest projections. We’ll look a bit deeper at projections and other metrics in a minute.
At this point, you should have an initial roster, ready for the Thursday game(s). This should be relatively easy, since most of your players are no brainers.
But you’ll most likely find some roster slots with lingering questions, and potential swaps who may be a better play this week. Or, if you’re “streaming,” you still need to claim someone off waivers to fill that spot.
Going back to the projections page, look at the players with the biggest question mark. One player may be projected slightly above another, which is what you want. But look at 2 other numbers: Big Game Probability (BGP) and Power Score (POW).
BGP tells you how likely a particular player is to “go off,” which is hit or exceed the Big Game Threshold. You can find the Big Game Threshold for each position next to the position selector.
POW tells you the quality of the matchup, between the individual player and the opposing defense. It’s colored coded, with green boxes indicating stronger matchups and red/yellow/orange boxes representing weaker matchups.
For those similarly projected players, you can determine which might be the better play based on these 2 metrics. If you’re more of a risk taker or could use a big performance, then use BGP as your deciding factor. If you’re more conservative or want a more “sure thing” (if there is such a thing) then use POW.
Finally, ensure there’s no Thursday players you need to claim to fill roster gaps. If there are, claim the player with the highest projection or the best matchup. No need to get bogged down in analysis paralysis - trust the numbers.
That’s it. You should have an initial lineup that’s ready to rock.
Est. Time: no more than 30 minutes.
Tips for Success
Don’t allow your gut to be a determining factor. When in doubt, pick the player with the highest projection, BGP, or POW. The numbers are stone cold truth tellers. It may not work out, but it’s way better than anyone’s heavily biased feelings.
This should be obvious, but make sure you perform The Analysis Loop before the first Thursday kickoff. Give yourself enough time to do the proper amount of analysis, which should be no more than 30 minutes.
Use this time to make roster swaps off the free agent market, those “just in case” players that could be subbed in for questionable players in your starting lineup if the need arises on Sunday.
Remember, this is a process, treat it as such. The better you get at executing the process, the quicker you can get back to your awesome life, the better your lineups will be.
Friday & Saturday - Off Days
Relax. Let the sting or glory of Thursday games wear off. Maybe enjoy a line of freshly chopped cocaine, or whatever you do.
Either way, take a couple days off from thinking about fantasy football. Trust me, more analysis isn’t going improve your lineup at this point.
The only exception to taking Friday and Saturday off is late in the season when they play games on Saturday, and the day after Thanksgiving for the oddball Friday game. On those occasions, repeat The Analysis Loop, which should be quick.
Sunday AM - Analysis Loop & Roster Finalizations
For some reason, the NFL insists on playing games in stupid Europe, on stupid Europe time. Which means, on a handful of Sundays, there’s a goddamn game super early in the morning. So make sure to check if you have players going in those games and either include or exclude them from your lineup.
Now the time has come to finalize your roster for the week. Remember The Analysis Loop you performed on Thursday? It’s time to do it again to ensure your lineup is the best it can be.
After The Analysis Loop, there’s nothing extra to do here except pay attention to late breaking injury news and inactives. You may have a player or two whose playing decision will be made “game time.” This means, his status will be officially announced at least 90 minutes before kickoff.
Most likely, those game time decision players will be labeled as questionable throughout the week. So you should have an idea which players to plan for potentially being out.
At this point, it helps to peruse the news reports and maybe even enjoy some worthless, but entertaining, commentary on your favorite pre-game show. They’ll typically have a scroll or segments listing players who will either be playing or not.
Quickly, Huge: If you do decide to watch those shows, IGNORE any fantasy “advice” they may give.
Those shows exist to get eyeballs and move money from your pocket to their advertiser’s. Don’t buy into to what they’re selling, even if it sounds legit. You’ve already done the optimal amount of analysis. You don’t need any more. You certainly don’t need a jackass “expert” with fart breath screaming to the world who you should play and who you shouldn’t.
Trust the numbers, not the loud mouthed idiots.
Lineup theory’s projections update throughout the day, about an hour before game groupings. It might be useful to do a quick analysis loop prior to each block of games to ensure nothing significant has changed. This step is totally optional though, as projections rarely fluctuate significantly.
Now all that’s left is to enjoy the games. Perhaps flip on the Redzone Channel and veg out on some great Sunday action.
Est. Time: no more than 30 minutes, doing analysis and finalizing your roster that is.
Tips for Success
I mentioned it before, but be wary of external “experts” offering late lineup advice. They’re pulling things out of their butt or trying to make a controversial talking point to get everyone yelling and excited. It makes for good entertainment, but it is terrible fantasy advice.
Game time decisions are a pain in the ass, so pay attention. It’s better to drag someone off the heap who’ll only score a few points than take the zero.
I’m not a fan of obsessing over the ups and downs of my matchup, so I rarely check scores during the games. It’s too stressful. And it’s not going to help you win. But, you do you.
Monday - Last Second Roster Swaps
Monday only matters if you still have roster decisions to make, because of game time decisions or start/sit swaps. Otherwise, if all your roster slots have played, you can relax.
If you do need to make lineup decisions, go through The Analysis Loop 1 final time close to game time. It should be super quick this time, as lineup theory’s projections automatically filter out players who’ve already played.
Est. Time: no more than 15 minutes.
Repeat Until Championship Won
Winning fantasy football is a process. With just the right amount of analysis, you can be competitive week in and week out. And with a little luck, you could find yourself in the playoffs consistently.
There are many strategies and methods for performing analysis, some way more involved than they need to be. Most analysis sites throw a bunch of stats and “expert” opinion at you and let you figure out. They don’t care if you got things to do. They only care about getting you to subscribe with empty promises of “dominating your league.”
League domination doesn’t have to be involved, or expensive. Lineup theory carefully builds metrics that carry a high impact, so you can make lineup decisions quick and easy without sacrificing quality.
The Analysis Loop, along with paying attention to news and player status, is all the average player needs to compete for a fantasy football title in their league. And a lot of luck helps too. Hopefully it will serve you well.
If you have any suggestions for how to make managing a fantasy team better, more efficient, etc, then drop us a thing using electronic mail technology: a-ron@lineuptheory.com.
When you’re ready, you can subscribe and enjoy all the tools, and more, outlined in this thing. Thanks for reading.