Fantasy Bye Week Tracker and Strategy

You are bound to encounter various types of bye week strategies throughout your draft, as well as those who pay no attention to it whatsoever. Keep in mind that in no way should you pass up a fantasy stud in the early rounds simply because you are worried about bye weeks, but it is nevertheless important to remember and keep track of during your draft. This comes into effect even more so in the later rounds when you are looking for backups. The two most effective, and practiced strategies seem to be:

• Spread out your talent. Most knowledgeable managers will attempt to diversify their team’s bye weeks attempting to minimize the total number of players who will be off for each particular bye week. This ensures that your lineup will be around 75-90% strength throughout the 8 weeks in which teams have byes.
• Have a “throwaway week” by intentionally loading your marquee players with the same bye week. This is a far riskier, and much less used strategy because no one wants to have their throwaway week come up when they draw the match-up versus the guy who has 1 win and an injured 1st round draft pick, however it will allow you to operate at full or close to full strength for the remaining weeks. Again, however, lineup strength should be your top priority, and if you choose to use this, do not forsake better players at the expense of stacking bye weeks.

Whatever you choose to follow, this sheet will allow you to keep track of your picks so you can be sure you aren’t doing things like drafting a backup QB with the same bye week as your starter.