How To Win Your Home Leagues

Nothing is more satisfying than destroying your friends.  Whether it’s bragging rights, a quick buck, or a stupid punishment, beating the people you hang out with makes you feel like a king among those peasants.

Your fantasy football leagues with friends and family should be no different.  You should want to dominate them in your drafts and make them have nightmares about your sleeper selections.  And most of the time you should be able to do this without any tips, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.

This is why I have compiled a few basic tips on how to beat your friends and families.  Playing in these home leagues is inherently easier than facing off against well-known fantasy gurus, but you should be approaching these foes differently.  And here is how to do it.

Tip 1.  Know the rules.

Read them.  Embrace them.  Make flash cards.  Do what you have to do.

This one is obvious, but every year I get people that show up to the draft in my home leagues that still have to ask what the scoring setting is.

“How many bench spots do we get?”

“Is this PPR?”

“When are the playoffs?”

“What’s the tie-breakers?” (This is actually a big one.)

These people then have 15 minutes to prepare for an entire league while you have known this stuff for weeks.  This is the easiest edge you can find because while they are scrambling to find the best rankings online for your league, you are sipping on your whiskey, neat, and laughing your way to the bank.  Which brings me to my next point.

Tip 2.  Find out what rankings your friends are using.

Say you are in the medieval times and you are preparing for a battle (I’ve been watching a lot of Game of Thrones).  Your opponent carelessly scribbles his battle plans onto a scroll and you scoop it up while nobody is watching.  You now know exactly what he is targeting and when he’ll want to do it.  Would you feel scummy?  Maybe a little, but you now have the upper hand for the next few hours.

This your exact goal for your draft.  If you know your opponent likes ESPN, numberFire, FantasyPros, or some other big-name site, grab their rankings to have on the side.  You’ll know exactly where they’ll plan on targeting guys and what rounds they’ll likely go for them.  This information will let you inside of their minds and you’ll know where to find value or when to pass on certain players.

Tip 3.  Be the “sticker b*tch”.

Most home leagues feature a draft board and player labels.  Because it can be a hassle to get up with each of your picks to search for a sticker to place on a board, many leagues assign this duty to the player who came in last place the prior year.  While this job is typically spat upon, I say you should embrace it.  Here’s why.

As we learned previously, there are always a number of people who show up unprepared to draft.  They’ll scribble some names on a paper moments before the draft and just wing it.  After they run out of the 30 names that they recall, they’ll start to get up and look for popular names on the player labels.  This is where you can hoard the labels with the “good” players on them and control who your uncultured friend drafts.  I have also found that hanging on to the labels keeps my head in the game in the later rounds.  While everyone else is reaching for another slice of pizza, you are scouring the bottom of the player pool to see which names are left.

Tip 4.  Pay up for tight ends.

In home leagues, you want to maximize your point total across all positions.  While quarterback is a replaceable position, tight end can’t be easily replaced with a late round guy.  The difference between the QB1 and the QB 12 was about 5 points while the TE1 and the TE12 was about 7 points.  These early round tight ends were also remarkably consistent compared to their lesser parts, while the entire QB tier is relatively consistent.

This tip also works because there always seems to be so much value that drops in these drafts. Most people that play fantasy football are low-level sports fans.  They’ll reach for their favorite players on their favorite teams and just ignore what the consensus is.  Just two years ago I watched Aaron Rodgers go in the top 5 of an ESPN standard league and nobody else questioned the decision but me.  This lets that go in the second round drop to the third, and so on.  By grabbing a stud tight end early, you’ll still be able to scoop up talented backs and receivers in the middle rounds.

Just to throw some names out there, I’m grabbing Gronk in the second, Kelce in the third, or Ertz in the fourth in pretty much all of my home leagues.

Tip 5.  Sell assets at peak value.

We have finally arrived at an in-season tip.  Everyone always says, “buy low and sell high!” because it is obvious, but it is easier said than done.  This one can be difficult for a lot of people, but shipping a guy after a massive week will net you the best profit by the end of the year.

Many casual football fans are blinded by recency-bias.  When someone has a good game, they’ll jump YouTube and search for their highlights.  They’ll be so blinded by a couple splash plays that they’ll be willing to get that guy on their team for whatever it costs.  This is when you pounce.  Target a slumping team and grab all the assets that they have given up on.

Tip 6.  Prepare for the end game early.

The “end game” is the promised land.  The fantasy playoffs.  Generally, these are Weeks 13-16, but some leagues play in Week 17 (Tip 1 coming back to help).  After the first four weeks of the season and I am confident about my chances of making the playoffs, I set my sights on those final weeks.

Find those juicy matchups.  Ship your guys with bad ones.  Most of the time the players you are trying to acquire have had some tough matchups right before it gets easier.  That is your time to pounce on them.  You should also focus on this aspect early in the year.  After your friends have gone on a losing streak and they have given up on their teams, it’s much more difficult to coax them into a trade.  And if they go inactive all together, a potential league-winning player could get wasted on someone’s team.  Acquire these guys early and you’ll breeze through the playoffs collecting cash and hardware on the way.

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