The fantasy football season can be divided pretty much into five phases. The first is pre-camp conjecture based on offseason free agency, trades, draft results, coaching changes, and anything else that's impacted players' fantasy values. That largely overlaps with my annual "32 Teams in 32 Days" pieces. The second phase is the preseason, which officially wraps up today. It's been a pretty eventful 5-6 weeks, as always. Good luck if you're drafting tonight.
The third phase is the first month of the season. By that point, most of us know if we have a great fantasy roster, a good one, or . . . one that needs a lot of work. Entering camp five years ago, 27-year-old Allen Robinson was coming off the third top-10 fantasy season of his career. He was a seemingly safe third-round pick. He then proceeded to post roughly WR60 numbers or worse, week after week. At some point, managers recognized that he wasn't going to turn things around. For many of us, it was then too late to do anything except drop this perennial must-start fantasy wideout.
As we all know, this first month involves a lot of waiver activity, as managers chase points and unload perceived dead weight. Is our struggling bell cow worth starting? Chase Brown limped along last year until finally breaking through in late October. Managers who were "wrongly" patient with Robinson might have been "correctly" patient with Brown. That's the challenge, right? Some signs are warning signs; others are welcome signs. We don't always know which is which until we've gone much farther down the road.
The fourth phase is the rest of the regular season -- about 9-10 weeks. It coincides with juggling bye weeks and injuries and everything else that we all deal with. Many of us are simply trying to persevere in increments, one win at a time, hoping to lock down a playoff spot.
And that's the fifth phase: the end-all / be-all fantasy playoffs. It doesn't always matter how great our team is by mid-December, and it matters even less how great our team *was* pre-December. Our players' health, their matchups, the weather, . . . any of it can impact whether we win our lose. My most painful title-game defeat was when I didn't have enough FAAB (waiver wire funds) to replace my kicker. That stuck with me for a long time. My happiest title-game defeat (if there is such a thing) was when I lost by about 90 points. I couldn't have done anything differently and won; some teams that storm through the playoffs are unstoppable.
While there's still room for data analysis during the regular season, most of that ends today. Well, there's one more thing to share if you're drafting today or aren't happy with your DST. Check out today's podcast for actionable data that once you hear it, you can't unhear it. That sounds ominous or trite or both. It's actually empowering. My entire DST draft strategy this year and beyond is based on this new research.
Finally, I'd enjoy hearing your biggest 2026 bargain and bust. Who will obliterate ADP expectations, and who will obliterate fantasy managers' title hopes? It's a great day to go on record and lay it all out there.
My biggest bargain is the same biggest bargain I've been pushing here and on the podcast all summer: T.J. Hockenson (overall-151 / TE21 ADP). He was 25th in TE targets per game last year despite catching a career-high 77.3% of his looks and helping his subpar quarterbacks post a combined 109.3 passer rating when targeting him. He and Kyler Murray should work well together.
And my biggest bust is the same biggest bust I've been pushing here and on the podcast all summer: Christian McCaffrey (overall-4 / RB3 ADP). His 450 touches last year (including the playoffs) marked the ninth time in NFL history that a 29+ year-old had 400+ touches. In their next season, their average fantasy-point decline of the other eight RBs was 28.7%. McCaffrey *might* partially persevere if he can remain a 100+ target running back. But outside of David Montgomery, there is no running back I'm fading more . . . and there's no riskier early-round fantasy player, period.
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