I lead all my leagues in transactions and I'm doing very well this year which made me think... if skill > luck in FF, then maybe we can see a pattern of those with high amounts of transactions having better records and better rosters. Or maybe not, who knows. But maybe this can be educational.
So just curious, feel free to answer whichever questions you want below.
1. 23 in 12-team Non-PPR redraft / 37 in 12-team PPR / 30 in Guillotine.
2. 6-3/6-3 but will be 7-3/7-3 after this week. Still alive in Guillotine.
3. Cordarelle Patterson. Saved me when I lost Gus Edwards and Trey Sermon did nothing. Just fell to me when others went for Rondale Moore / Sony Michels. Dumb Luck but I don't discriminate and said why not.
Emmanuel Sanders / AJ Green - These guys were great flex for PPR. Dropped early on in short bench work league 2 WR single flex league. Probably should have never been dropped but some people are impatient.
AZ/Panthers/Cowboys/Patriots - These defenses put up elite games. This is why I never draft defenses early since they all came from waivers.
4. D'ernest, Toney - probably the best ones... Those games were huge and gave me wins. Toney then went on to be a non-factor but that one week where he was a huge sleeper was a genius play that I kept chasing after but never repeated lol. Collins/Ty'son/Sermon/Murray/Ingram and so many one week RB guys this year. It's just a revolving door for RB spot starts this year. Great year for zero RB?
5. Ty'son/Sermon/Jamaal Williams held onto them for like 4-5 games. Didn't want to give up but eventually had to. Carson is still eating a spot on my Bench with no IR. WR just didn't pan out for me. I have a revolving door of rookie WRs that I keep picking up and dropping with Rondale Moore/Rashod Bateman/Elijah Moore/Kadarius Toney/Bryan Edwards.
6. Starting to pay more attention to playoff schedule since I'm a lock. Also going for more upside now than weekly streamers. Therefore, handcuffs and defenses with good schedules are starting to have more importance that winning this week. Once I passed byes I dropped backup TE/QB.
7. I hate to admit this... But I went zero RB twice this year and it worked both times. If I did not work WW as hard as I did trying to stream RBs though I would not have made it. There weren't many clear RB studs emerging from WW outside of Elijah Moore / Patterson. Mostly spot starts that required you to pay attention to the news and pick guys up in advance. Not having to pickup and spot start WRs really helps because it's so hard to stream that position or pickup WW WRs.
edit: I just looked more closely at the weeks where I used waiver wire players and at the other top teams in my leagues.
Other than me leading both in transaction volume, the teams usually second to me in transaction volume had the following in common: They were last place. Then I dug into the games I actually used waiver players and it was very sparingly. The other top teams made very little transactions because they drafted well. There's pretty much no league winning waiver wire pickups this year other than Patterson and maybe Mitchell.
So now, I'm changing my hypothesis from being active on waivers makes a meaningful difference and leads to more wins to:
Playing the waivers doesn't matter that much. It can help, but you are not likely to turn around the fate of your team. Most players on waivers are there for a reason. Good players and handcuffs are often drafted and on benches and wins are more correlated to good drafts while waiver wire activity correlates more with losses as teams become desperate.
So just curious, feel free to answer whichever questions you want below.
- How many transactions have you had so far?
- What is your record?
- What are your best pickups?
- Best one week plug and play moves you've made?
- Any players you held on to way too long?
- What is your strategy for waivers going forward? Is it going to change? (i.e. Handcuffing? Dropping 2nd QB/TE and stacking RBs?)
- Anything else you learned or want to share?
1. 23 in 12-team Non-PPR redraft / 37 in 12-team PPR / 30 in Guillotine.
2. 6-3/6-3 but will be 7-3/7-3 after this week. Still alive in Guillotine.
3. Cordarelle Patterson. Saved me when I lost Gus Edwards and Trey Sermon did nothing. Just fell to me when others went for Rondale Moore / Sony Michels. Dumb Luck but I don't discriminate and said why not.
Emmanuel Sanders / AJ Green - These guys were great flex for PPR. Dropped early on in short bench work league 2 WR single flex league. Probably should have never been dropped but some people are impatient.
AZ/Panthers/Cowboys/Patriots - These defenses put up elite games. This is why I never draft defenses early since they all came from waivers.
4. D'ernest, Toney - probably the best ones... Those games were huge and gave me wins. Toney then went on to be a non-factor but that one week where he was a huge sleeper was a genius play that I kept chasing after but never repeated lol. Collins/Ty'son/Sermon/Murray/Ingram and so many one week RB guys this year. It's just a revolving door for RB spot starts this year. Great year for zero RB?
5. Ty'son/Sermon/Jamaal Williams held onto them for like 4-5 games. Didn't want to give up but eventually had to. Carson is still eating a spot on my Bench with no IR. WR just didn't pan out for me. I have a revolving door of rookie WRs that I keep picking up and dropping with Rondale Moore/Rashod Bateman/Elijah Moore/Kadarius Toney/Bryan Edwards.
6. Starting to pay more attention to playoff schedule since I'm a lock. Also going for more upside now than weekly streamers. Therefore, handcuffs and defenses with good schedules are starting to have more importance that winning this week. Once I passed byes I dropped backup TE/QB.
7. I hate to admit this... But I went zero RB twice this year and it worked both times. If I did not work WW as hard as I did trying to stream RBs though I would not have made it. There weren't many clear RB studs emerging from WW outside of Elijah Moore / Patterson. Mostly spot starts that required you to pay attention to the news and pick guys up in advance. Not having to pickup and spot start WRs really helps because it's so hard to stream that position or pickup WW WRs.
edit: I just looked more closely at the weeks where I used waiver wire players and at the other top teams in my leagues.
Other than me leading both in transaction volume, the teams usually second to me in transaction volume had the following in common: They were last place. Then I dug into the games I actually used waiver players and it was very sparingly. The other top teams made very little transactions because they drafted well. There's pretty much no league winning waiver wire pickups this year other than Patterson and maybe Mitchell.
So now, I'm changing my hypothesis from being active on waivers makes a meaningful difference and leads to more wins to:
Playing the waivers doesn't matter that much. It can help, but you are not likely to turn around the fate of your team. Most players on waivers are there for a reason. Good players and handcuffs are often drafted and on benches and wins are more correlated to good drafts while waiver wire activity correlates more with losses as teams become desperate.
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