10 Commandments for Winning at Fantasy Football

This is the fourth in a series of articles geared toward winning at fantasy football. To find more content on useful ways you can win your league, click here

4th Commandment – Thou Shall Draft Players From the NEXT Great Offenses 

Here at FFChamps we already told you to avoid players on bad teams. We also like to draft players from good teams. Taking it one step further, we also really look to draft players from the NEXT great offenses. 

Hindsight is 20/20 and with hindsight everyone's a genius.  I can sit here and tell you to load up on players from New Orleans and San Diego.  Let's not forget about Indy, Green Bay and New England.   Everyone knows that stuff.  Brees, Manning, Rodgers, Grant and Wayne are on everyone's radar, not to mention all of the other studs we left out. Ryan Mathews?  Randy Moss?  Where is your edge?  What will separate you?  You can separate yourself by being a prognosticator and not a follower (or let us do that for you).

If you can successfully pinpoint the next great offenses you don't have to worry about luck or rely on a few super sleepers to come to fruition in order for you to win your league.  If you can project the NEXTgreat offenses, you will be able to identify the Sleepers, they just will be obvious to you.  Other guys say “I'd rather be lucky than good”; here at FF Champs, we say “WE'D RATHER BE GOOD THAN LUCKY!”  You can put the odds in your favor by taking guys from the next great offenses. 

Let's go back and look at 2 examples, one from the 2008 season and one from the 2009 season.  In 2007 the Saints were already one of the better offenses, they had Drew Brees but they were still in transition from the Joe Horn/Deuce McAllister era.  They really didn't have a running game because Deuce was aging and Reggie Bush wasn't the answer.  In the last game of the 2007 season, they gave you a glimpse of things to come.  They finally gave rookie Pierre Thomas a shot and he carried the ball 20 times for 105 yards and caught 12 passes for 121 yards and a TD.  With production like that at running back you could see the offense improving, no? 

Going into the 2008 season we looked at the Saints and said all things are pointing to this offense taking the next step to greatness. They may have a running back that solidifies the position, which could move Bush to more of 3^rd down back, where he excels.  They brought in Jeremy Shockey, a playmaker at TE.  The young WR's they have been drafting have another year under their belt, and Drew Brees is clearly becoming one of the elite QB's in the league.  The result was the Saints scored 463 points, 84 more than the year before and Drew Brees, Lance Moore, and Pierre Thomas, any of the three, could have single handedly won your Fantasy League for you. I know this because we did it with Pierre Thomas, his Week 17 performance the year before was enough for us to draft and stash.

In 2009 the most improved offense in terms of scoring was the Minnesota Vikings.  They improved 91 points, from 379 to 470.  In hindsight, everyone is going to say this was obvious, they signed Brett Favre, thus ending the Tavaris Jackson/Gus Frerotte nightmare from the year before.  It may have been obvious but what round did Sidney Rice go in, or Visanthe Shiancoe?  If you had drafted these guys, the value you would have gotten could have won you leagues.  Shiancoe improved from 42 catches and 7 TD's to 56 catches and 11 TD's.  Sidney Rice went from 15 catches to 83 catches for 1,312 yards and 8 TD's.  The average draft position for Rice was the 15^th round!  That's a league winner if you draft him, no doubt!  As you read this you are thinking that I am full of it and whoever drafted Rice was lucky.  That's not the case, because like I said, we don't rely on luck in Fantasy Football. 

When Favre came in we looked at the WR's because we knew that Favre was going to make them better so who would benefit at the WR position?  Their leading receiver from 2008 was Bobby Wade, he was in Kansas City, so he wasn't going to help.  That left two guys, Bernard Berrian and Sidney Rice.  What we liked about Rice was that, although he didn't catch that many passes in 2008, they liked him around the goal line.  In the second half of the season he caught 4 TD's and they were all from in close.  To me, that said trust, and one thing about Favre is that if he trusts you, you are going to get the rock -- just look at Donald Driver, Javon Walker, Greg Jennings, all probably less talented than Rice and all put up great numbers with Brett Favre. You could have done OK with Berrian, but Rice was the “sleeper” (now we know better, right?) and should have been on your team.

Those are just two examples from the last two years but I can go on and on.  The naysayers will argue that this is all hindsight, but it's not. If you do your homework, it's all right there in front of you.  You are not going to be right year in and year out but if you can identify the next great offenses your level of success in identifying the next Sidney Rice will skyrocket. 

If this sounds time consuming, it is. You have to pour through stats and analyze a lot of different variables -- the good news is that we do it all for you in the FFChamps Draft Kit.  To see who Fantasy Football Champs think are the NEXT great offenses come to www.FFChamps.com.

1st Commandment: Know Thy Scoring System

2nd Commandment: Thou Shall Stick To Thy Tiers

3rd Commandment: Thou Shall Avoid Bad Players from Bad Teams

4th Commandment: Thou Shall Draft Players From The Next Great Offenses

5th Commandment: Thou Shall Wait on Thy Quarterback

6th Commandment:Thou Shall Covet Thy Stud Wide Receiver

7th Commandment: Thou Must Draft Thy Stud's Backup

8th Commandment: Thou Shall Not Draft Two Studs From the Same Team

9th Commandment: Thou Shall NOT Draft a Kicker or a Team Defense Too Early

10th Commandment: Thou Shall Start Your Studs