Viva Murillo!
This is a big week for your league; the week where bye weeks and winless teams finally intersect. Not only does it provide you an extra strategic wrinkle to consider, but you'll also find out which owners need a wake-up call (or their walking papers). You see, one of two things is about to happen:
- 0-3 owners will use the waiver wire to improve their teams and try to right the ship. If you're 0-3, you are expected to take this track.
- Teams will be abandoned this week. Even though an owner is 0-3, they're also 3-0 ... somewhere. That means in your league they're about to go missing and focus on their "good" teams in other leagues.
In the first instance, your job is to make the best out of a bad situation. In the second, your job is to weed out these losers now, instead of waiting several weeks down the road. A driftwood team hurts the entire league, doling out cheap wins and giving an unfair advantage to teams lucky enough to face them. This is really your first opportunity to spot them, based on whether they make bye weeks moves or not.
If a team fails to pull players on a bye, the commissioner needs to step in immediately and find out what the owner is doing. If they've lost interest, they need to be replaced. If that's not feasible, the team should be frozen and their opponents should play against the league average that week. But they should not be allowed to upset the competitive balance of your league by letting owners face half a roster. You don't wait until week 9 to follow up on these clowns. You do it now.
Furthermore, bye weeks are important even if it's not your problem this week. Your opponent might have injury or bye week issues and they'll be looking at the waiver wire as they try to defeat you. Regardless of your waiver priority, you should be looking to use the wire as a weapon to defeat the other team. Try to guess what moves they need to make and try to make room for those guys yourself. You don't want to drop someone valuable, but there's nothing wrong with ditching a marginal player to prevent your opponent from acquiring someone they might use against you. You can always get rid of them the next week and do the same thing to your new opponent.
You can do other things to help your cause as well. I think it's important to play ethically, so I don't cross lines that constitute poor play. But there's nothing wrong with reminding a bottom-feeder that there are good players on the waiver wire and they should keep their eyes open. Maybe they use their priority and take a guy your opponent would take. I'm not suggesting you collude with another team to hurt your opponent— that's wrong and those teams have no reason to help you, anyway. But they can help themselves by using the waiver wire, and you can certainly talk fantasy football with your buddy and discuss the bounty of good guys on the waiver wire. Besides, I think it's a good idea to talk football with the winless teams anyway, because you don't want them abandoning their club and hurting your league. And maybe if they pay attention this week, they'll prevent your opponent from picking up a weapon that could hurt you on Sunday.
Whatever happens, the waiver wire will become even more valuable from this point going forward. Bye weeks will require even the best teams to search for valuable substitutes, and it will reveal the abandoned franchises as they take zeroes in their lineup. Make sure you pay even more attention to what's going on this week. It will help your team and your league.
You can reach Michael Murillo at vivamurillo@gmail.com.
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