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Each season a number of NFL
scheduling oddities appear. The 2005 season is no exception. If you're a
serious Fantasy Football owner, you'll want to consider every edge possible
-- including scheduling anomalies.
Learn how to use "Hot Spots" to target waiver wire pickups,
craftily time trades and optimize your roster for the playoffs.
In this article, 4for4.com’s Greg Alan breaks down the 2005 NFL schedule.
You’ll find vital tactics that can positively change your outlook and lead
to big results.
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Folks, to win your league championship, you must get hot at the end of the
season!
All your research during the summer will fail to net a championship if you
run out of gas during your Fantasy playoffs.
LESS EFFORT + MORE RESULTS = A MUST
DO
Many Fantasy strategies and tactics often require tons of preparation and
often result in rather minimal gain. However, leveraging “Hot Spots” requires
little time and often yields a big upshot. Sound good? Buckle up, let’s dig
in…
In truth, having just one
or two favorable add-on scheduling match-ups during your playoffs is often
all it takes to gain an edge -- and walk off with a championship.
In this article, I make a case for the phrase "Timing is
Everything." Keep that theme in mind this season. If you wisely leverage
the NFL schedule, you'll be able to cleverly time trades, artfully target
waiver wire pickups and most importantly, optimize your roster for the
playoffs.
Even if your draft doesn't go well, by leveraging "Hot Spots"
you'll be turning negatives into positives and strengthening your team.
We’ll start out with some traditional Strength of Schedule (SOS) research. In
addition, I'll offer up a few observations.
I'll also share the initial 4for4.com 2005 Defense Team rankings. We'll
integrate these rankings into the 2005 NFL schedule. Then, we'll build a
roadmap and flag some "Hot Spots." Here, we'll pay particular
attention to the final few weeks of the NFL regular season -- Fantasy
Football playoff time.
In addition, we’ll review
the 4for4.com Team Defense “Hot Spots” -- a great time saver in helping plan
out your Team Defensive starts.
But, before we dig in, I need to get everyone on board and talk about how
important the NFL schedule is when it comes to winning your Fantasy Football
Championship.
Case Study No. 1 - Chris Schussman
wins big in WCOFF
Back in 2002, despite drafting Vinny
Testaverde and Shane Matthews
as his starting QBs and fielding a draft day roster that claimed Rod Gardner as a No. 1 receiver, the
WCOFF league champion, Mr. Chris Schussman, walked away with a cool $200,000 grand prize. How
did he do it? Plain and simple, he got red-hot in the playoffs starting in
Week 13. As it turns out, each of his first three draft picks had green
(good) "Hot Spots" in the WCOFF playoffs. All three of his top
picks delivered when it counted the most, and Chris walked away a huge WCOFF
winner!
Case Study No. 2 – Greg Alan goes
53-0!
That same year, I competed in an 11-team private Fantasy league. In this
auction/draft league I faced long time rivals, several of whom I consider to
be among the strongest Fantasy Football players in the world. Because I built
my roster around the 4for4.com "Hot Spots" I was literally
unstoppable after mid season. In fact, I was the highest scoring team six
weeks in a row! As a result, coming down the stretch I posted a head-to-head
record of 53-0, dominated the playoffs and walked off with another
championship.
Case Study No. 3 – Jim McVicar plans
and wins FFTOC
The 2004 FFTOC Champion, Jim McVicar, summed it up this way, “Doesn’t it always seem the
same guys have the most luck each year.
I would wager that they are the same guys that are spending mega hours
doing research. It seems the harder
you work the luckier you get. I started working on (and planning out) my
lineups for last year in May just as I have this year… I really can’t wait
for this season to begin.” Turns out,
Jim saved and planned to use Culpepper,
McGahee, Lee Evans and Randy Moss in the final week of the
FFTOC playoffs. All those players had easy match-ups, giving McVicar the
points he needed to win the FFTOC title.
After all the
draft day strategy, all the player evaluations and preseason analysis, the
fact remains -- if you want to win a big-time national contest like WCOFF or
the FFTOC you need to get hot at the end of the season. If you don't get hot
at the end, your chances of winning it all are slim. The same is true in most
local leagues -- you must end very strong.
Next, I'll address specifics about the 2005 NFL season. I'll focus on
actionable tips and things you can use.
Strength of Schedule (SOS)
To kick things off, we'll start by examining opponents' win-loss records from
the prior season. As is the case with much SOS data, you'll want to use
caution and good reasoning, especially if your SOS analysis completely hinges
on performance from last year.
I'd strongly suggest you steer clear of fragmented stats derived solely from
last year's data. As much as I love analysis, Fantasy managers that drill
down into measures like "Yardage Allowed to a TE" and
"Opponent's Red-zone FG accuracy" often miss the big picture. These
studies often lack predictive rigor. Measures like "Yardage Allowed to
an Opposing No. 3 WR" rarely hold up from year-to-year.
Rather than generate a stack of metrics based on last year's data, the trick
is to look for significant outliers and shifts from the prior season. That’s
exactly what Table I does for us.
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