Playing For Keeps: The Pros And Cons Of Keeper Leagues

Are you in a keeper fantasy football league? Well, I am. Keeper leagues have their fair share of challenges, but they are also ripe with opportunities.

In a standard league, all managers start with a clean slate and draft an entirely new team each year. In a keeper league, one or more players are kept on a fantasy roster from season to season.

The challenges of a keeper league include:

1. A shallower pool of available talent to choose from on your draft day. It’s never a good idea to take any missteps on your early round selections, but in a keeper league the pressure is all the more greater to come correct in the early rounds.
2. If you’re league has a salary cap (which mine does for better and for worse), you are often forced to seek bargain draft selections in the mid-rounds as well as sometimes skip rounds in order to have the necessary funds to bid on remaining free agent talent after the draft. The price of retaining one of your better players is often costly.
3. Lastly, it’s just a tough decision to select one or more players who you think are of high value, and depending on your league’s format, yet relatively inexpensive. Yes, it’s a paradoxical situation oftentimes, but the top fantasy football team managers have to play virtual GM not just during the year but during the off-season as well.

Keeper leagues are also pretty cool for its owners when the following scenarios arise:

1. If you acquired a player who far exceeded his rank or salary in the previous season, you are in an excellent position to build around that player(s) with premium, high-priced talent since your cap situation will be healthier than your competition.
2. If you are lucky enough to draft early in your upcoming draft, and have “franchised” a top player from 2010, you will likely have two of the top 10-15 players in fantasy football. Sure, it takes a well-balanced team to win a title (just ask the Miami Heat) but having two sure-fire studs damn sure doesn’t hurt your cause.
3. If you won your league or made the playoffs last season, you probably had at least one or two of your league’s best players. Simply put, if you’re able to retain one/more of your fantasy studs, you’re starting off the new season in good shape.

Keeper league or not, just make sure that you are now immersing yourself in draft preparation. If the NFLPA agrees on a new 10-year deal this weekend, fantasy football has officially begun in 2011!