Deadline Decisions

With many fantasy trade deadlines looming in the next couple of weeks, it's a critical time for you to take very rapid specific inventory of your team - who you have and who you may need through the end of your fantasy playoffs to cover the potential for injury or poor matchups.

That is, IF you are headed to the playoffs. If not, thanks for playing. Good luck next year. Now spoil away. Play to the whistle. Don't close shop or mail it in simply because you're out. Continue to make competitive claims and set your best roster each week at least until your regular season ends. Otherwise, you're compromising the integrity of the competition and potentially annoying other owners who are expecting to compete to the end. Your lack of effort late in the season could hand a win to someone who doesn't deserve it at the expense of a more deserving owner. Put yourself in the gypped owner's shoes and do him or her the courtesy as you would like to have done for you. And don't forget about the fun of it. Go get (and play) the more marginal guys you've always wanted. Don't make stupid choices, but going with personal affection over logic as a tiebreaker between two players is OK at this point. And it's more fun.

If you ARE possibly headed to the playoffs, it's time to break out your abacus. This will help you calculate what needs to happen between now and then to make your dream trip a reality, and to figure out where your future pitfalls may lie. Depth at the middle levels of positions is critical here, so you can play to take advantage of the best matchups and avoid the worst. That's true throughout the season, but you should actually now go through and map out what you intend to do with your lineup week-to-week for the rest of the season. You may have two awful WR matchups in week 15 that you didn't see before, so maybe adding another WR that has a highly favorable matchup then would be a good insurance plan for one of those guys.

The sneakiest play here is at DST. Everyone knows DST value is frequently more determined by the opponent than the DST itself, so grab your playoff DSTs at your earliest possible convenience before other owners start thinking about it. The most generous opponents this year have been Kansas City (at CLE, at OAK, IND in Weeks 14-16), Jacksonville (NYJ, at MIA, NE), Arizona (at SEA, DET, CHI) and the Jets (at JAC, at TEN, SD.) Philadelphia is also in there (at TB, CIN, WAS), but the Eagles have a lot of weapons that can potentially do offensive damage that the previously mentioned squads do not, so they present a larger risk. Strong weekly DSTs like Chicago and Seattle may not be available in your league, and some of the others (most specifically Oakland) have been way too inconsistent or susceptible to trust in a playoff setting, but that still leaves you with plenty of good choices for the most critical weeks.

Plug-and-Play!
-My top recommendation for this week would have been Daniel Thomas, so I'm glad he's already played and I don't have as much egg on my face. Although Thomas did get just as many snaps and touches as Reggie Bush, the Buffalo defense was way stingier than they have been all season, and the game was not nearly as high-scoring as I expected. Thomas remains a great emergency hold for the fantasy playoffs.
-Danny Woodhead. He's back to being "vintage" Woodhead, as a very productive receiver out of the backfield. His matchup this week at home against Indianapolis should provide a favorable opportunity to continue that trend.
-Carson Palmer. His recent strong numbers probably disqualify him as a random plug-and-play, but don't be shy at all if he's available and you need a solid QB this week. The Saints are currently in the live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword mode of scoring and giving up points at will, so any offensive opponent (particulaly a QB) is a potential fantasy superstar. The same can be said for Andrew Luck at New England this week. Outside of the clear studs, those two are at least as good as any other option this week.