Fantasy Football: The keys to starting the season strong — and boosting your playoff chances from the jump

· Yahoo Sports

You're an engaged fantasy football manager. You've been scouting all summer, thinking about skills and roles and strategies and the like. You've been dreaming of that championship at the end of the year, the glory and the parade.

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Let me introduce another word for you: leverage.

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Any large journey begins with small steps, and that's my goal for today — small steps. I prefer to attack fantasy football with a microscope, not a telescope. It's such a snow globe league, sure to look radically different in a few months. So my initial aim is to consider what I know right now and do my best in the short term.

I want you to dominate early in the fantasy football season. That's the cleanest way to prepare for glory later in the season.

A fast starter in fantasy football affords you that leverage, and with that comes wonderful things. Maybe you can shrug off a difficult bye week. Perhaps you can make some of those obvious 2-for-1 trades where you're sacrificing depth to a desperate opponent and poaching their star. In the middle of the year, we can start shaping a roster that's set up to dominate in the money weeks, armed with more reliable information on which defenses truly are horrible.

If you have leverage, you can let the game come to you. If you don't have leverage, you often find yourself forcing things, pressed into an activity you would prefer to avoid.

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How do we play for today? How often do fast-starting or slow-starting teams make the playoffs? Here are some concepts to consider:

A fast start doesn't guarantee a playoff spot and a slow start doesn't doom you for the year. But let's see how the actual math shakes out:

Start

Made Playoffs

Won Title

5-0

90.90%

24.50%

4-1

74.90%

18.60%

3-2

50.20%

12.30%

2-3

25.30%

6.30%

1-4

8.70%

2.30%

0-5

1.70%

0.45%

Obviously you're more likely to have a strong team if you start fast, and your roster might have holes if you start slowly. But a quick start also brings that leverage we talk about; the freedom to be patient with a bench player or the luxury of mining the waiver wire without "must-win" challenges staring you in the face. Fantasy football leverage is like being on the button in every poker hand you play. It's a cheat code.

I'd prefer not to draft into injuries in August — I know injuries will find me soon enough early in the season. Jordyn Tyson should have a terrific pro career, but when his hamstring injury fell this summer, he essentially dropped off my draft board. I'm not waiting two months for a player with zero track record.

Injury optimism is rarely your friend in fantasy football. A hurt player might need a prove-it week or two before you feel confident starting him. Perhaps they'll be on a limited snap count when they return. The picture often takes too long to develop. Alec Pierce was dinged up all summer; I love the player, but I won't take him either. I don't want to be guessing in September.

Obviously your roster needs to be a collection of balance — your best players will help you all year, while the remainder of your roster could be a mix of help-now and help-later players. J.K. Dobbins should be the early backfield winner in Denver, holding off RJ Harvey and Jonah Coleman. David Montgomery has a favorable rushing schedule for the opening weeks. Omarion Hampton should hit the ground running against a favorable opening slate.

This is more of that "microscope, not telescope" way of thinking. Again, you need a mix of cadence-specific players on your roster. It's fine to do some long-term planning, too. But sometimes it's important to realize value that's immediate.

Opponents don't come into play with your superstars, of course — if you're rostering Bijan Robinson or Puka Nacua or Trey McBride, you're rolling them out against all comers. But the matchups are critical at the lesser positions and the streamable spots. In most of my leagues, I'll have a short leash for my D/ST picks and often rent them out, a week at a time.

Week 1 already is giving us some signals. The Chargers are 10.5-point favorites over the Cardinals, the Lions are 7-point favorites over the Saints and the Jaguars are a 7.5-point choice over the Browns. I will aim to draft one of these three favorites for my Week 1 defense, and I don't suspect any of these D/ST targets will be that expensive.

One of the biggest mistakes fantasy managers make is to overly fall in love with their bench. Obviously, it's a season-to-taste thing; I'm not saying you have to recklessly cut players without a thoughtful moment or two first. But in-season information often means more to us than blind summer speculation.

Are you familiar with the Monty Hall Problem? It's a counter-intuitive logic puzzle that shows us that when we have additional information, it's often in our best interest to change our mind.

We can take that concept and apply it to our fantasy world. Once the NFL starts playing real games, the Monty Hall Problem applies to fantasy football; with more information, changing is often the correct choice. (This is not to be confused with the 2014 Denver Broncos; that was the Montee Ball Problem.)

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