Fantasy Football Draft Advice: How to Incorporate Late-Season Schedule Into Your Picks

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A player’s late-season schedule should be incorporated into your decision on whether to draft that particular player on to your fantasy football team. It would just be foolish not to be aware of the kind of schedule your player is going to face during the playoff weeks of fantasy football.

However, there are different rules for different types of selections, so let’s go over how to approach each situation in your fantasy football draft.

First Round
Never incorporate late-season schedules into your first round fantasy picks. Plain and simply, you want to get the player that is going to score you the most points, and to shortchange yourself on an elite player for another player who might have an easier schedule would just be stupid. Period!

Quarterbacks
When it comes to incorporating the final few games of a quarterback’s schedule into your fantasy football draft, I’m a little iffy on it. On the one hand, you probably don’t want Donovan McNabb if he has to go up against NFC East teams 3 out of the final 4 weeks of the fantasy football season. But then again, do you really want to pass up on Kurt Warner if he has to play the Jets, Ravens and Titans to finish the year? To be safe, I recommend using the schedule in your decision on quarterbacks only when the quarterback is outside of the top 5 or 6 in the league. After you get that low on the list, you’re not talking about a lot of variance, so you would be better off passing up on the 7th rated QB for the 10th rated QB if the 10th rated QB has a cupcake last couple of weeks.

Running Backs
The only time you should ever incorporate late season schedules into selecting a running back is if there is a tie. Fact of the matter is, you never really know what a running back is going to do against a particular defense, no matter how good they are? Remember the Ravens great defense last year? They got ran over by Brandon Jacobs and the New York Giants. Remember the Giants great defense last year? Brian Westbrook gave them the business. Fact is, picking a running back based on schedule could get you burned, especially if it’s dual-threat running back. So only incorporate running backs’ schedules when you have no other way to decipher between the two.

Defenses
This is where you should put the most credence into the late season schedule. You don’t want to have the Steelers defense if they’re playing the Patriots, Colts and Saints in Weeks 13-16. No matter how good the defense is, you don’t them to cost you a victory during the fantasy football playoffs, and sometimes even the best defenses can be victims of the schedule.

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