Leagues with short benches (1 Viewer)

[lowman2]

Any of you guys in leagues where the bench is around 4 players? I am trying to come up with a strategy for my 12 team work league and need some advice. I keep coming back to the Qb and how you will be handicapping yourself if you wait on a Qb and have to play a commitee approach and eat up one of those 4 spots . Any thoughts???

 

[Hugonel]

Yep. Makes it critical to draft K and Defense extremely late because that's the player you may be forced to drop so you can add a player to fill in for the bye.

It also makes it much more important to watch the byes when drafting.

The 4th WR is usually a guy who gets dropped/added a lot due to the byes as well, so be careful about spending too many high picks on the 4th WR and a 4th RB.

because you know you are likely to drop a player by necessity, you may consider taking a flyer on the last 1-2 skill positions and hope they explode. I.e., if you draft a steady Eddy with a late pick chances are you KNOW you'll drop him anyway, so why not take a gamble on a higher risk player to see if you can snag great value late. Then you can drop someone else or cobble a 2 for 1 trade to get a stud when you need to make a roster shift due to the byes.

 

[Giant Wooden Badger]

Agree.

My 12 teamer has a 5 man bench and 9 man starting roster (QB,2RB,2WR,TE,FLEX,K,D). Take high upside gambles over Bobby Engram types late. Draft K and D at the very end and don't wait too long on QB.

This league is also 6 points per passing TD so QBs are more valuable anyway.

 

[Cleat Spike]

I usually complain and lobby with the other owners to keep banging on the commish to change the roster amount and get with the program.

 

[Sweet Love]

I have been in a league like this and I have found that late round fliers in typical leagues, remain undrafted (could be guys like Troy Williamson, Shonn Greene, etc). Over the years, I found that when I drafted well or was not hit by injury, my teams sputtered by the end of the year. I couldn't figure out why this was, but one year I had my top two RBs go down because of injury and I was able to get up and comers who ended up performing better down the stretch.

The lesson is, if one of your players is not living up to expectations, you need to cut ties early. You can't afford to stash many people on your bench and they will be gone if you ride your players into the ground.

 

[dojeff]

Make sure your Kicker, TE, and Defense all have a different bye week, if possible. That way you only need one additional roster spot to cover for those byes when using the waiver wire.

 

[-jb-]

We have a short bench in one league, in order to drive free agent moves (which raises the pot). It's a fixed roster. Everyone gets 2QB, 3RB, 4WR, 1FLEX, 2TE, 2PK, 2TD. No one can stockpile any position, which makes the draft quite a bit different. That may not be what you're looking to do, but it's a happy medium.

 

[jerseydevil20]

I have been in a league like this and I have found that late round fliers in typical leagues, remain undrafted (could be guys like Troy Williamson, Shonn Greene, etc). Over the years, I found that when I drafted well or was not hit by injury, my teams sputtered by the end of the year. I couldn't figure out why this was, but one year I had my top two RBs go down because of injury and I was able to get up and comers who ended up performing better down the stretch.The lesson is, if one of your players is not living up to expectations, you need to cut ties early. You can't afford to stash many people on your bench and they will be gone if you ride your players into the ground.

This is exactly right. With a short bench you almost need to consider the WW an extension of your bench. If you get emotionally tied to a player that "should" be performing better you will loose out on the up and comer that ends up blowing your guy away.Also, preserve your standing on the ww order (if it doesn't reset every week) so that you can pounce on bad choices other owners make due to injuries/bye weeks/etc.

 

[stevegamer]

I was in a very odd short bench league last year where the bench was short - 6 roster spots, but inflexible - 1 each at QB/RB/WR/TE/PK/DF.

So the roster was 2/3/3/2/2/2 QB/RB/WR/TE/PK/DF. It made me treat the waiver wire as my own personal playground.

You want to be able to scoop up any injured studs who get dropped due to severe bye week issues. You want to insure that you don't have bye week issues yourself, or the other option is to do the "tank a week" strategy and pre-determine that you don't care about byes, except that you want them together.

I'd really practice drafting teams to understand how to manipulate bye weeks.