College Fantasy Football: Navigate the regular season successfully with these useful strategies

We've discussed some of the most prevalent draft strategies you should be aware of when filling out your initial roster. However, the draft is merely the starting point. In-season roster management is just as important, if not more, than the team you leave the draft with. With a relatively limited 18-player roster to work with, hard choices will need to be made throughout the 13-week College Fantasy Football season.

Here are a few aspects of the post-draft strategy you should be apprised of heading into your first CFF campaign.

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What kind of waiver system should I use for my league?

The CFF waiver process runs parallel to the NFL version, with the standard rotating waivers we've all experienced at some point in our fantasy lives being the default system. You also have the flexibility to choose a Free Agent Budget to process weekly waiver claims. 

Both systems have their merits, and there isn't a right or wrong answer in terms of which system is best for your league. Personally, I feel like regular 12-team leagues consisting of mostly newer CFF managers are likely best served by the simplicity of traditional "Rotating Waivers." Whereas larger leagues with 14, 16, 20, etc. teams and more experienced managers are usually aided by the extra layer of strategy associated with allocating a fixed yearly budget. I like to use a $1,000 FAB budget, but to each their own. 

How long should you hold onto underperforming high draft picks?

A massive difference between NFL and CFF roster management is how much loyalty we should show to our high draft selections before dropping them. With a relatively suppressed 32-team NFL fantasy player pool, and extended 17-week fantasy season, patience with underperforming first-through-fifth-round players is usually a virtue. Outside of injury, it's unusual to drop slow starters since the roles (and contract status) of running backs and wide receivers are well defined heading into the NFL season. Even underperformers are generally still playing at least co-starter reps in the early going, and there is almost always a Round 16-18 roster-clogger you will drop instead. 

On the other hand, the College Fantasy Football Power Four Conference universe spans 68 teams with wildly unsettled depth charts thanks to the significant graduation and transfer turnover every program experiences on a year-to-year basis. Often you will see a young up-and-coming player who is believed to be a backup in a two- or three-way running back rotation take hold of the job and separate from his backfield mates within the first couple of weeks. A great example of this was Virginia RB J'Mari Taylor, who was a top-15 rusher and paid handsome dividends for astute managers who plucked him off the wire early last season.

The same principle applies to wide receivers, as my POWR3 "Potent Offense Wide Receiver 3 Theory" covered in a previous article outlines, since it's very common for the second or third WR in a prolific passing offense to overtake the perceived preseason WR1. Targets, catches and touchdowns are easy to track, but also be mindful of advanced metrics such as number of routes run, yards per route, average target depth and target share are all important leading indicators as to which receivers are headed for an increased workload based on preseason predictions. 

If you took a perceived Alpha WR1 in Round 4 who is being out-targeted by a teammate 30-to-15 in the first three weeks, and is sporting a check-down-worthy 8.0 average depth of target, then he's a liability and should be jettisoned in favor of another player who has a little steam to his profile. Don't get stuck holding the bag in CFF when a player has taken a hit in relevance within his own offense. 

In general, I am very aggressive in the first three weeks trying to acquire players who appear to have ascended their team's depth chart. I'll then generally pull back a bit during Weeks 4-6 as the in-conference schedules start, and wait for injuries to reveal high-value, plug-and-play opportunities for capable backups who inherit productive starting roles. 

Which position can you find the most value on the waiver wire?

This is a tricky question, as the knee-jerk reaction is to say quarterbacks, since we start fewer of them than RB or WR. In fairness, that may be true in 1-QB formats where you only start 12 of 68 Power Four Conference signal-callers on a weekly basis. However, I'd argue that in Superflex and 2-QB leagues there will be more wide receivers cycled through rosters due to the inherent instability of the position. 

The difficulty of projecting the wide receiver position in CFF leads to the premium matchup-proof Alpha WR1's like Malachi Toney, Jeremiah Smith, Nick Marsh, et. al, being extremely valuable relative to their contemporaries. The vast difference between preseason rankings and the final WR scoring leaders only serves to encourage back-end roster turnover as well. You can replace your CFF team's WR5, who is usually a high-variance WR2 in a well-regarded CFB passing attack, far easier than your heavily matchup-dependent RB5 with a starting job on a low-to-mid range offense. 

With most of the 68 P4 programs starting three receivers, that gives managers around 200 starting wideouts to choose from each week. The CFB WR starting slots overshadow CFF starting lineup spots by an almost 5-to-1 ratio, so there is no shortage of streamable starting fantasy wideouts to choose from in order to field a competitive lineup. 

On the RB side, there are only 68 starters, and about a dozen of those are on relatively weak offenses that drastically impact a rusher's startability against superior opponents. These unstartable, lower-tiered starting RBs are offset by 10 or so RB2s on highly productive, run-oriented offenses that are projected to soundly defeat their opponents that week. That only leaves roughly 65 viable starting options for managers to sift through each week, and the vast majority of them are already rostered. 

All things being equal, CFF managers are better off rotating their back-end wide receivers and holding onto their more scarce running backs and quarterbacks when it comes time to make tough roster decisions.