Do Not Ignore This Fantasy Football Tip

While listening to Fantasy Focus on ESPN Radio, I heard ESPN's fantasy expert, Eric Karabell, offer his Tip of the Week.  With trading deadline looming, he suggested dealing your bench strength to shore-up your starting line-up.  After all, if you're going to play QB Marc Bulger every week, having Michael Vick ride the pine won't help as much as improving your RB2 or WR3.

A bit later, he mentioned that fantasy football play-offs are won by the Jeff Garcias and Kyle Bollers of the world.  In this context, he brought up Raiders QB Aaron Brooks in a postive light.  (ed:  cue-up "That's why I hate fantasy football.")

Those two statements seem incongruous.  If a free agent pick-up during the play-offs is the difference, why not advice fantasy football players to shed their dead weight and corner the market on the starting QBs (or starting RBs or WRs) in the free agent pool ahead of the play-offs?  This way an injury to your play-off opponent causes him to panic as he finds nothing to replace his starting QB with from the free agent pool?

Maybe fantasy footballers shouldn't trade their bench depth in the event one of their starters can't play during the three-week play-offs?  Maybe the tip should have been to make sure you have a quality back-up at QB entering the play-offs and trade for that depth if you don't have it?

Want proof of this?  Go into your free agent pool right now and run what-if scenarios.  What if my starting QB went down, who could I pick-up?  What if my RB2 went down, who can i pick-up?  My WR2?

If those scenarios make you worry, then trade for depth!