luck has it, i wasn't finished yet

more free advice at a time when you don't need it.

the terrible thing about keeping extra kickers and defenses on your bench is not just that they're so easily replaceable. it's the opportunity cost; those bench slots can do a lot more for you than just provide alternatives when your defense has a bad matchup. kicker is absolutely the worst position to double, and if you carry two kickers for more than one week a season, i just don't know why you're even reading this. i could argue that you don't even need to keep a kicker over his bye, but that might not be the worst offense in most circumstances. i did drop lance moore on his bye, i think, to keep a bye week kicker. the worst part is, my plan was to pick moore up again after the bye had passed. that is where you're in trouble. if you have a player who's already shown signs of breaking out, a player you want on your roster later in the year, do not keep a kicker over that guy.

the kicker/defense problem is only one example of how you can mismanage your bench. in many leagues that i have been, the trade market is far from efficient. unless you're playing with people you know will make a lot of moves, do not horde talent at one position expecting to deal it for something else. i was in the lucky position in one league to draft romo (early) and cutler (late). before romo's injury, i lucked into an even better situation by flipping him and hines ward for brees and sjax. i made it look like a grab for an underperforming rb, when what i really wanted was to swap for brees' more atrractive fantasy playoff schedule. yeah, that's right, after week 2 i was looking at the playoffs. somehow the move was attractive enough to my trading partner that he snapped it up immediately, helping me avoid the bad luck of romo's subsequent injury. in most leagues, you can't get that deal done, and you can't get much for cutler. i managed to finally deal him and ginn for colston, but i already had wayne, marshall, and bowe starting for me at wr. back to my point, however: while getting a cutler late in the draft as your backup is great, you can't draft people you don't need and hope that you can flip them for something you want. that's just wasting your bench space.

here's the real issue: your bench can be like an investment portfolio. you should be looking for values and high potential options late in the draft, but looking for people that will help your team, not trade bait to help someone else's. besides providing security if someone goes down, the bench should be where you stash people you are counting on to improve as the season continues. to some extent, you should trust the talent in stronger portions of your starting lineup to keep you out of trouble. concentrate your late round longshots on positions where you sense weakness. i finished third in league where my customized autodraft strategy backfired and left me with a bench full of backup nfl qbs. not backups for my team, backups in real football. of course, my starting lineup was stellar: mcnabb at qb; peterson and jamal lewis at rb; wayne, andre johnson, and boldin at wr; and clark at te. i happen to strongly dislike mcnabb, so i did two things to fix my qb situation, which i saw as my clear weakness. first, i picked up warner, who was rumored to have the inside track on the cardinals' job (and who was stellar late in the '07 season). the fact that he went undrafted makes little sense, but i saw weakness and made a grab. then, since i can't stand mcnabb anyway and he had the same bye as warner, i traded him for cutler. end result: i was as set at qb as every other position.

running back was my second glaring weakness; i looked at the hype and early returns, grabbing slaton and chris johnson. in this ppr format, slaton outscored ap and chris johnson was close to his level. hoping to grab depth, i shopped peterson before the season, trying to trade down at rb and land a receiver. no one was biting, so i kept him, as he was clearly not valued high enough around the league for me to bother trading when i only needed bye week guys. i took desean jackson as my fourth receiver, hoping he would pan out and knowing i didn't need to make a deal just to make my bench look better. i dropped clark early, not wanting to keep an injured te on my bench, and picked him up again when he was healthy. it might seem crazy to give up your seventh round pick for nothing, but te is generally a low reward position, so i hate investing two roster spots on it. with what soon proved to be quality depth at rb and qb, i could have dealt someone, but i had no real needs. sure, my juggernaut of a team lost in the semifinals, but that's going to happen. it also didn't matter that lewis failed to deliver fourth round value, because i made the right waiver picks at rb. maybe the wr early, many rbs late strategy is a pretty good one.