There’s 5 types of bench spots I can think of:
- Handcuffs for your own star players
- Handcuffs for other teams’ star players
- Players who aren’t set and forget and who you don’t start except for byes or injuries (ex. boom/bust players or players that get 5 points every week)
- Potential breakout players
- Stashed players for future weeks in streaming positions (ex. defenses for playoffs)
5 seems the most common, but 1-4 seems the most interesting to me.
For 3, do you start to drop these players in favor of other bench spots? If you’re never going to start someone because you have better players, is it better to make room for a playoff defense or a late season breakout?
For 1 and 2, do you hold on to your handcuffs through playoffs? Do you start to let go of other team’s handcuffs in favor of keeping your own? The other way around?
For 4, do you keeping late season breakout candidates? Add more? Or let go because even if they break out they’re too risky to play?
In general as you approach playoffs, does your bench makeup change? How?
This is about the time of year where I start cutting my depth in favor of positions that need streaming. I’m just trying to make sure I have as many good matchups as possible for playoffs (#5 on your list). I prefer to cut down to 3-4 startable RBs and WRs but will hold/pick up certain guys if my playoff opponents would almost certainly pick them up and use them against me. For example, even though he just had a shit game against Chicago, Dobbs has a great matchup against Detroit in week 16 when I’m likely to play the guy with Tua against Dallas. Tua has historically been pretty bad against top-tier defenses, so I don’t want to give Dobbs to my opponent if he’s still starting for MN then. Meanwhile, Keaton Mitchell is my RB5 and has bad playoff matches, so I’m not as worried about cutting him if I can’t get a trade done by our deadline next week.