If you're like me, you like to win. If you're really like me, you hate to lose. In fact, I hate to lose far more than I like to win. This combination of competitiveness and utter distaste for failure makes me a very difficult adversary. This is because I am absolutely relentless in my efforts to improve my team so that I will avoid losing. I want my team to win every game it plays by as many points as possible. I offer my opponents no quarter as I seize every available opportunity throughout the season to win the championship…preferably undefeated.

It is important for you to recognize that there is almost always an opportunity to improve your team week in and week out. Sometimes these improvements are just minor adjustments to which players are riding the pine in any given week yet these can be important decisions none the less. Every decision becomes increasingly important as the playoffs approach as these are the games that really count. I expect to win these games and I know it is important that I prepare my team to play to win. This article is offered to provide you with some ideas for managing your team that consider the role your opponent plays in your effort to win.

There are three distinctly different skills required of championship owners in fantasy football. These skills are

1. Drafting a full roster of players at the beginning of the season
2. Acquiring players via free agency and trades during the season
3. Managing your roster so that you will field the best possible team each week.

The objective of a championship owner is to use these skills to field the most productive team possible throughout the season. A highly competitive team will give the owner the opportunity to qualify for the playoffs and to be in an excellent position to win the league championship. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that proactive and skilled owners field strong teams that win more games and championships than owners that simply look to lady luck.

There are many ways to prepare for the draft. I have developed very specific strategies to successfully draft a top notch team for each of my leagues. This is true of the other owners too and when combined with their favoritism toward specific teams or players they sometimes become very predictable. This predictability provides an opportunity for you to gauge your player selection decision making based on the given tendencies of other owners. Round after round you should be able to determine several players you would like to select with your next pick and actually get two of them instead of just one of them. This is because you will predict which order those players will be selected based on your knowledge of how and whom other owners will draft. It is a skill that takes time to develop but is valuable in selecting a superior roster for opening day.

I am in leagues with fans for the Raiders, Cowboys, Vikings, Broncos, 49ers Seahawks and Cardinals. It's never a surprise when one of these owners selects a player from their favorite team. I just need to look at their roster in the middle of the draft and who's still available to draft and I can hear the player's name in my head before they actually say Tim Brown, Jake Plummer or Emmitt Smith is their next pick. Also, it is amusing to see owners use their first nine picks to fill out a starting lineup before selecting important backups. I can usually predict if certain owners will take a place-kicker or defense in round eight instead of an extra WR.

Acquiring new players is paramount for improving your team throughout the season. As the weeks pass it is inevitably that certain players on your roster will prove to be disappointments or simply outlive their usefulness. You must discard them and find more useful players to replace them on your roster. There are two ways I recommend to acquire players. The first way is to monitor the top three to five available free agents at each position each week. Be aware of them and how they perform in relation to the players on your roster. The moment you realize that a free agent is more valuable to you than one of your players it is time to drop them and pick up the free agent before another owner gets them. You should expect that at least one other owner in your league will be interested in acquiring any free agent you have just decided to select so it is necessary to act quickly to acquire players you desire before the opportunity passes.

There are countless examples of free agents that suddenly become quality starters at some point during each season. Just off the top of my head I can recall acquiring the following undrafted free agents including Jeff Garcia, Steve McNair, Brian Griese, Dorsey Levens, Maurice Smith, Jamel White, Antonio Freeman, Donald Driver, Chad Johnson, Randy McMichael, Mike Vanderjagt, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the St. Louis Rams. I usually pick each of them up just in the nick of time and ahead of my competition. Some of these players were productive for just a few weeks and other player had breakout years of top notch productivity. But in each case they made my team more productive for a period of time. And that extra productivity means wins.

The second way to acquire players is to review the rosters of all other owners each week looking for potential trading opportunities. The most effective way to trade is to cut a deal that allows each owner to trade away excess depth for a player at another position that they can start instead. Although I enjoy having depth at each position it is far more important to possess quality starters. Depth is always expendable once I lack a quality starter at a given position. There are usually one or two teams in your league where a trade can be made at any given time that would improve both teams. Making a trade will put both teams at an advantage over all the others.

A few years ago I traded WR Terry Glenn for TE Kyle Brady. I had better WRs than Glenn so he was sitting on my bench but I lacked a good TE in Marcus Pollard. Another team had both Brady and Freddie Jones so moving one of them for a badly needed WR was a good deal for them. Interestingly enough, I ended up winning the Super Bowl by six points when Brady scored eleven points on a touchdown, two-point conversion and 30 yard in receiving. This was the last season I considered a good TE of marginal importance.

Full roster management is an overlooked and highly valuable skill. It is more than looking at the upcoming week or carrying an extra defense for a bye week at mid-season. It is about assessing all of the remaining weeks during the year and considering your starting lineups and bench depth for several weeks in advance. A regular review of this kind will allow you to consider the implications of maintaining your current roster or restructuring it to meet your needs throughout the season. This is particularly valuable routine when it comes to managing tight ends, place-kickers and defenses.

I regularly forecast my weekly lineup for at least three weeks in advance and sometimes up to six weeks. I always forecast the rest of the season once the playoff are near. This practice highlights potential lineup issues ahead of time and provides an opportunity to develop a plan to deal with them. I get a much better idea of how bye weeks will play out at all positions and how they will impact my starting lineup. It also provides the ability to predetermine when bye week players can be dropped freeing up space for handcuffing backup quarterbacks and running backs for the playoffs. A favorite technique of mine is to reserve just one roster spot for covering the bye weeks of my tight end, place-kicker and defense positions. Rather than carry a second player at each position, I merely add and drop players as needed to fill in for the individual bye weeks and thereby allow for more roster space to be allocated to valuable depth at quarterback, running back and wide receiver.

Once the playoffs arrive you should also consider the starting lineup of your current and potential opponents. An interesting technique I have developed is the purposeful depletion of the free agent pool my opponent may draw upon. This practice can be used on occasion when the situation presents itself during the playoffs. All you need to do is assess your opponent's likelihood of making a free agent pickup to shore up a given area of weakness and beat them to selecting the best available free agents at that position. However, you must be careful not drop useful players at other positions to the free agent pool in order to execute the block.

One year I anticipated playing a certain team in the Super Bowl before either of us won our semifinal playoff games. We were the clear favorites so it seemed reasonable that we would advance to the final game. They were going to have a bad match up with their defense in the Super Bowl so I picked up the best available free agent defense which was the Steelers and dropped a useless QB. Interestingly enough, they lost and I played a different team which also had a bad defensive match up. The Steelers sat on my bench and scored twelve more points than their Buccaneers and I won the Super Bowl by less than ten. They even commented afterwards that they wanted the Steelers but I had already grabbed them the week before.

Everything I have shared hinges on your ability to plan ahead and beat your competition to the punch when it comes to taking action by making good decisions first. A relentless effort to improve your team will pay significant dividends over time. I must emphasize that even small improvements will add up over the course of the season. You don't have to win too many close games to realize that this is true.