Preparing your fantasy roster for the playoffs

Andy Behrens and Scott Pianowski give you a couple of tips to get your fantasy team ready for a championship run on the latest episode of the Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast.

Video Transcript

ANDY BEHRENS: Waiver priorities, roster construction, and how you view transactions as we head into the fantasy playoffs. So, like, for me, I always think roster depth-- and I've written about this before-- is just a thing that becomes far less important as we get this deep into the season, right? Like especially-- especially in 2020, especially in a COVID season of all years, roster depth is really important to start the year. I wanted deep benches. I wanted lots of options.

Now we're getting closer and closer to me just wanting to know who my starting roster is going to be in weeks 15 and 16. And I've tried to trade my way into that position where I'm kind of top heavy, right? Like this is when I start thinking more about getting those understudy running backs, just getting some of the backups onto my roster, guys that, like, if an opportunity presents itself, they're going to pop. But I don't need to have a zillion different options that I'm sweating at this time of year. I wonder, like, how you approach the final weeks like this?

SCOTT PIANOWSKI: Yeah, you're spot on there. Remember, we're just about done with bye weeks. Every team plays in week 12, and then Carolina and Tampa Bay clean up the byes in week 13.

So 30 of your 32 NFL teams are not going to miss another game, assuming there's no health outbreak or anything, which, of course, we know is a possibility in 2020. So the idea that I need to hold onto wide receiver 49 because I'm going to need him--

ANDY BEHRENS: Yes.

SCOTT PIANOWSKI: --I'm thin at wide receiver, that's out the window now. That doesn't exist anymore.

And also this particular week with Thanksgiving games, we're going to set our lineup in segments, right? You may have some stuff going Thursday, and then you may have some stuff early-window Sunday, late-window Sunday. That will enable you to probably have more information come Sunday about, oh, am I behind? Am I ahead? Maybe you'll be cutting some guys you didn't play on Thursday.

To make a long story short, the whole idea of depth is out the window now. You're trying to roll out your best starting team, and the shape of your bench-- you will think of backing up guys you maybe wouldn't have backed up in the past if there's a reliable guy who's not starting right now.

This is also-- I would never do this in September. This is when I'll carry two defenses. This is when, you know--

ANDY BEHRENS: Oh, this is such a good point. Yeah.

SCOTT PIANOWSKI: You know, I looked ahead when the Rams had their bye week. I looked ahead and said oh, wow, they have some really good juicy match-ups. People couldn't hold the Rams during a bye week. But now when people have those-- and the bye weeks are gone. Now they're looking to add defenses.

Now you want to look and say, OK, who are the Jets playing in the fantasy playoffs? Who are now the Bengals playing with-- you know, Joe Burrow's out. That offense could easily torpedo. We might not see Joe Mixon again this season. Certainly won't be for a while. So who's playing the Bengals?

I think it's a great time to stock up on a couple of defenses even if you don't need them per se. Maybe you have a bye. You're not going to play in week 14, but you keep him off an opponent's roster for week 15 or something like that.

So definitely the priorities change, and one of my strongest takeaways is don't be ashamed to do it. It feels like a novice move or a lemming move to have multiple defenses. This is multiple-defense season.

ANDY BEHRENS: I love that you mentioned that, and it is kind of a noob move to start the season, right? But I can tell you who the Jets are playing in weeks 15 and 16 because I have rostered both defenses in, like, three different leagues. It's the Browns and it's the Rams. And I'm sitting on them now, and I just added the Browns in a handful of leagues coming into this week.

And, like, I don't know that that's going to be the perfect play, but both of them are pretty good defenses. They're available in less than 50% of Yahoo leagues, but they're not, like, universally rostered right now. Both of them are teams that you can go out and get, and they each have match-ups with the Jets late in the year. It's hard to imagine that those aren't going to be friendly spots.

SCOTT PIANOWSKI: And look at how the Browns just made Carson Wentz's life miserable.

And I guess the Browns have signed-- you know, we're at a time in sports where we see all the different sponsorships. I guess the Browns have signed some kind of weather sponsorship where they're going to play every game in horrible weather. And so you see a lot of low scoring. You see a lot of difficulty passing. They have a good pass rush. I think they had five sacks of Wentz. Wentz threw a couple of interceptions, and it felt like there were, like, three or four near interceptions. They lost one interception on an overturn.

So you throw in nasty weather, and the Browns are going to be ahead in a lot of these games. They'll be playing with that leverage. The pass rush can just pin its ears back in the fourth quarter, which those guys love to do.

You know, a couple of my games I'm going to win this week because the Browns put up 20 fantasy points in a standard Yahoo league. So those guys are already in my good graces, and I'm excited about that schedule you mentioned to come.