We are officially into week 6 of the NFL season (and therefore fantasy season) signified by another Patriots beat down of a bad team Thursday night. Fantasy-wise, some of us are probably doing better than others (Tyreek Hill please come back and play lights out, Drew Brees, Cam Newton, same to you both), but regardless, we are fantasy warriors and we are far from throwing in the towel! Readers, I’m proud of your effort, I’m sure you are avidly reading fantasy football news or Ian Rapaport’s tweets, but maybe you’ve realized strange fantasy terminology continues to pop up as the season goes on, who knew?! Sometimes when I read words like “streamers” or “streaming” my mind goes to many things that ARE NOT football, mainly party decorations or video games because of course, but if you are a fantasy football-er and learning fantasy terminology, you now know this means grabbing a player at a specific position (QB or TE for example) off the waiver wire ahead of a favorable matchup the following week. Streamers are fun, for parties or for football, but you want to stream with strategy. In one of my leagues, we only have 3 bench spots so that doesn’t leave a lot of room for streaming players because there is no place to stash your regular starter. In my other league, I have 7 bench spots, which leaves plenty of room to stream and stash players based on the favorable matchups.
Fantasy terminology ranges from three-letter abbreviations to stock trading tips, regardless, here’s what we think you should know:
IDP- During your weekly fantasy research, you may have stumbled across the abbreviation IDP. Maybe you’re playing in an IDP league, but if not, IDP is a type of league that is not the standard league most of us play (please do not come for me if you play IDP, you are very intense and I hope you come to this blog for its pop culture references and not fantasy info…). Anyway, IDP stands for Individual Defensive Players in which you start specific defensive players and not a team defense like many of us do in standard or PPR leagues (if you don’t know what this means consult our first fantasy terminology post). IDP leagues are not as standardized as the more traditional leagues, so if this is your style, brush up on your league’s scoring system.
PFF- Pro Football Focus is a website that provides data-driven ranks, stats, and analysis for every team and player in the NFL. I’m telling you this because throughout the week you may see fantasy sites/tweets mentioning a player’s PFF ranking, or the rankings from a game, like this one:
Nick Bosa was DOMINANT on Monday night! 😤📈 pic.twitter.com/3uTr6HWqsB
— PFF (@PFF) October 10, 2019
Waiver wire- Hopefully by week 6 you are well aware of the waiver wire and how it works, but we try not to assume here and in the interest of being thorough, let’s discuss. The waiver wire is a list of players still available in your league to add to your roster. Waivers essentially put a temporary freeze on unclaimed players, allowing everyone a chance to claim these players BUT if multiple claims are put in on one player, the team with the highest priority claim is awarded the player. (In most leagues, each team’s waiver position is reconfigured according to the team’s position in the standings aka the wort team receives the best waiver position (No. 1) and the best team receives the worst waiver position because they clearly don’t need the help).
Buy-Low/ Sell-High- This one goes hand in hand with the waiver wire and potential trades that could catapult you from fantasy despair to fantasy greatness. Buy-low candidates are players that seem like they have underperformed thus far, and you could pry away from another team at a reasonable (or low price, sale, maybe even clearance?), with the hopes they rebound with a big second half. My best examples are RB Le’Veon Bell and QB Carson Wentz. Bell has put up decent numbers as of late, but with Darnold coming back, many experts look forward to an upswing from the Jets RB. The numbers for Wentz might not jump out at you, so now is the time to swipe him for cheap before he gets Desean Jackson back and kicks it into playoff gear. Sell-high is very obviously the opposite, players that have performed well and could be traded away for a king’s ransom, with the expectation they can’t possibly keep this up! The best example I can think of is 49ers RB Matt Breida, with his stellar game Monday night, his stock has never been higher. Can a running back that is part of a committee keep up big-time numbers? We bet not, sell, sell, sell.
PSL- Pumpkin Spice Latte, I just want to make sure we are all on the same fun, fall page.
Are you now ready to attack the rest of this fantasy season with the proper fantasy terminology? Put up some streamers, buy-low, sell-high, and climb the ranks back to fantasy greatness with me because I sure need to the way my season has been going…
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