Weekly Fantasy Football Strategy: Should I Diversify My Lineups?
by Lootmeister, Professional Fantasy Football Player, RotoPicks.com
When talking to other weekly fantasy football players who play in multiple leagues, a common topic of discussion is whether or not they should diversify their lineups. This article will give some real life examples of diversification that will help you get on the right side of the fence regarding this topic and make you feel good about your decision.
Assuming that you're employed and generate income, you probaby have some sort of retirement account (and if you don't, you should!) As a general rule of thumb, any financial advisor/stock broker worth their salt will hammer you with the advice that you should "diversify" your portfolio, having no more than 5% of your portfolio in any single stock or 20% in any one industry/sector. The reason for this is to protect yourself from risk. Companies can and will go out of business. Other issues can arise as well, such as a company getting nailed for cooking their books, a poor economy, etc.
You want to diversify your fantasy lineup for many of the same reasons. While a team isn't going to go out of business, it could be said that this is comparable to a player getting injured during the game, putting a huge crimp on your overall scoring for that week. It happens often and isn't something that you can predict or factor into your weekly handicapping, although we do recommend staying away from players who are listed as questionable with injuries that can be tweaked, such as hamstring pulls, calf strains etc.
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While "cooking the books" isn't going to happen in the NFL, what can (and does) happen more than you probably know is a guy can be playing with an unreported nagging injury or flu-bug. One always needs to check the injury report (daily), but not everything is covered and you don't want to hear that your top running back left the game at the half due to dehydration because he was sick all week.
A poor economy in fantasy football is a team not playing well. There could be many reasons for this... We've all seen games affected by bad weather, an emotional letdown, or simply having an "off" day. Off days happen at some point during the season and it always seems to have an effect all teams, hence why there has only been one undefeated NFL team in the last 50 years.
In closing, it could be said that playing with the same lineup across the board is a form of russian roulette which when money is at stake, is much more of a gamble than you would to assume. I liken it to a baseball player who swings for the fences. Sure, you may hit 40 homeruns but you're probably only going to bat .250 and that equates to winning big 25% of the time. I'm not saying that not diversifying will cause you to only win 25% of your daily fantasy games, the point I'm trying to make is that it's not a good long term strategy.
The question of "should I diversify or not" is likely only something that you'll truly understand once it's happened to you and you've gone through a miserable Sunday afternoon knowing that your teams are all dead. It'll rip your guts out and leave you talking to yourself with such hindsight as "I'm never going to let that happen to me again." I could give you numerous examples of myself playing in as many as 100 leagues in any given week keying on a guy like Adrian Peterson who ends up going down with a strained foot etc. And of course, go figure, I had the guy on every single team. It's twice as brutal when it's a big money guy that you've spent $13,000 of your $100K salary cap and triple terror when the injury happens early in the game and you had only accrued 2.2 poitns!
Some of the brightest people that I know have achieved success after having to go through massive failure. As noted above, you may need to experience it first hand prior to undersanding it's value. Whether you take heed to this advice or not is obviously your call, but as the wiseguys do, it's highly recommended to diversify your risk so your bankroll doesn't take a giant hit should you have a player(s) go down with injury.
Best of luck to you! - Loot
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