Winning Your "Home League"

One of the biggest challenges for fantasy football advice-givers is how to advise our biggest group of listeners, viewers and readers. As the title explains, I'm talking about "home leagues."

Home leagues are the bedrock of fantasy—the reason we have an industry. Home leagues are where most of us started, and, if we're lucky, we still have one or two of them left. There are many reasons why expert advice gets a bit funky when it's repurposed for use in leagues that feature less predictability on draft day. Think family leagues. Think office leagues. Think friend leagues. Each one opens up a different box of oddities.

In a family league, everybody may know uncle Fred is drafting players who went to Notre Dame, and that little Timmy is drafting only Bengals. In the friends league, we go in knowing that only half the teams will still be engaged by the middle of October. The office league drafts at a bar and half the league won't remember the last five rounds. Some may be in the bag by the end of round one! I could go on, but you all know the drill. This is why I constantly say "know your league" when talking about draft prep. 

In leagues where the level of play is high and consistent throughout all the teams, we can effectively apply ADP data to our process. It's a lot tougher to do when a material percentage of the league plays unpredictably or bizarrely.

So how do we prepare for all of this volatility? Ironically the answer is similar to my core philosophy in high stakes leagues. It's all about ceiling.

"HOME LEAGUE" COMMONALITIES

• They tend to be smaller. You often see 10 and even 8 team leagues.
• They have smaller rosters as well, usually 15 players or thereabouts.
• They oftentimes have no flex spot, or the third WR spot is converted into a flex.
• They almost always use Kickers and Defenses.
• Engagement tends to peak at the draft, and then regresses week-to-week as we move through the season. Let's call it engagement regression.

The smaller league size and lack of a flex spot is obviously actionable. We are less encumbered by structural concerns. Even if every drafter was sharp, the numbers say we can wait longer on the positions of scarcity. Said differently, we can target the onesie positions (QB & TE) earlier, without paying a structural penalty later on in the draft.

Smaller rosters can also be worked into our strategy. At the bare minimum, we know the free agent market will be far stronger, and this should color much of our thinking and decision-making. 

Kickers and defenses increase volatility at the scoring margins, but the bigger impact is about roster management. You need to know the rules in your league. For example, can you punt a bye week? Meaning, can I leave my K or DEF spot blank when my K or DEF is on the bye? If not, the cost of a high-end option could be big, because you'll need to cut one of your finite bench players to get through their bye week. For this reason, and a few others, it's best to play matchups at these positions and nab a good option once their bye week has passed. In short, let other folks worry about these positions on draft day.

Engagement regression is your friend from a competitive standpoint. It sucks for the league, sure, but your odds go up as others give up. The key thing here is to understand the dynamic in advance. You can almost bank on fruitful free agency in these kinds of leagues. The takeaway I'd encourage you to have, is that risk-taking is far less risky when you know free agency will be your friend. 

Swing for the fences all the way through your drafts, because studs win these leagues, even more than in high stakes formats. 

KNOW WHO HAS ACTUAL VALUE

The last thing I want to talk about are the roster cloggers. These players can be dangerous to folks who play a lot of fantasy, because we value them by name and they are reflexively appealing. The 50th best wide receiver has real value in a typical 12-team league with more rosters spots, where all the teams are leaning in throughout the season. 

In a smaller home league, they have value if they are in your lineup and that's about it. You roster Khalil Shakir if you need him and you release him when you don't. It may seem counter intuitive to drop Shakir and pickup a guy like Tank Bigsby, who may not have scored any fantasy points last week, but it's the way you win.

In short, there are many Shakirs available at all times and they have mild contingency ceiling compared to a back who is one injury away from being on the can't cut list. Think of it this way. If DJ Moore goes down, how much more valuable does Shakir become? Now contrast that to what happens to Bigsby if Saquon Barkley goes down. Bigsby quickly becomes a fantasy game-changer or a "league winner" as our industry loves to say. 

You may like the look of the more predictable producer on your bench, but rostering replacement level talent over big ceiling contingency options is a blunder.

There are other examples of this, like rostering a second QB versus a player who has a big ceiling in his range of outcomes. Say Burrow is your starter. Who do you want on your bench, Dak Prescott or Mike Washington? If you look at ADP, you might conclude that Prescott is the easy choice, but I'm rostering the guy who is one injury away from being Klint Kubiak's lead dog.

CLOSING

As a fantasy football advice-giver, I wish these leagues were more complex, but the truth is, you'll find the most success by keeping it simple. Never pass on an elite talent to make a structural pick. Avoid roster cloggers. Don't waste time and energy or a finite roster spot on an extra kicker or defense. Backup quarterbacks often fit into this paradigm as well. 

The silver lining in all of this is that the players still matter. Is it bad to focus more on the real NFL game and less on fantasy game theory? The answer to that question probably varies depending on who you ask, but the reality is, knowing the players is of huge importance in "home leagues", and you have more time to focus on it. Lean into that reality and it will serve you well. 

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For more on home leagues, check out my latest podcast below. I dive into how my rankings and materials can be effectively applied to smaller formats. I also walk, pick-by-pick, through this team I just drafted.