The following is an excerpt from the latest edition of Yahoo’s fantasy football newsletter, Get to the Points! If you like what you see, you can subscribe for free here.
Just in case you need to brush up on the principles of in-season roster management — the stuff we all originally learned as wide-eyed freshmen back at Fantasy U — let’s review a few do’s and don’ts:
🩼 DO use all available IR slots. Just as you wouldn’t let a bench position go unfilled, you shouldn’t leave an IR spot empty, either. Go grab the best IR-eligible player you can find from the free agent pool. For some of you, that’s T.J. Hockenson. For others, it’s Kendre Miller or Keaton Mitchell. When you’re offered free lottery tickets, don’t pass ’em up.
❌ DON’T burn those flex spots on Thursday night. Ideally, you’ll keep your flexes open until Monday, preserving maximum flexibility to cover any injuries, unexpected absences or weather-related concerns. This may not seem important in opening week, but it won’t be long before your team page is full of little red Qs, Ds, Os and IRs.
📲 DO make preemptive pickups while your matchup is in progress. Remember, if your league uses default settings at Yahoo, you will be able to drop any player from your bench ahead of Monday night, even after their game has kicked off. Players from your active roster obviously can’t be swapped out, but reserves are cuttable. This means, for example, that you can stash a backup running back on your bench ahead of Sunday’s games just to see if they break out — and if they don’t, you can drop them mid-matchup in favor of a player involved in a later game. (Private league commissioners who hate this feature can turn it off via “lock bench players.”)
🤔 DON’T overthink matchups early in the season. As a general rule, I’m gonna simply start my best players in the opening weeks without regard to matchups. I realize we’re all feeling pretty confident in our NFL opinions at the moment because they haven’t yet been tested in actual games, but we’re about to be reminded that the NFL is hilariously difficult to forecast. It’s a league we need to relearn each year. Don’t assume last season’s stay-away matchups will be as challenging in 2024.