Week 9 Guillotine League Strategy: Packing Your Bench With Backups and Avoiding Chargers

Happy Halloweek, Guillotine Leaguers! I’ll be here once per week answering questions from you, the readers. If you have a specific Guillotine-related question you want answered in this column, shoot me a tweet @jakenagy98 on the former Twitter. If the byes this week have you spooked, check out last week’s mailbag for my favorite Week 9 spot starts. If you need convincing, I had Joe Flacco, RJ Harvey, and Troy Franklin last week. Let’s not talk about Tyler Allgeier.

After this week, we’ll be halfway through the season. Is it time to transition from high floor players to high ceiling players?

The short answer is yes... but there are some caveats, so you may as well read the long answer. 

Obviously, we still don’t want to trust the likes of Jameson Williams and Rashid Shaheed, boom-bust players whose floors are as deep as the grave they’ll dig for your roster. This is less of a start-sit question than it is a roster construction question. We want to maximize our roster’s ceiling by rostering the correct archetype of player. Earlier this season, we wanted guys with guaranteed workloads that could get us through the first handful of games. I want to thank these players for their service here and now, because they should be dropped. Specifically, but not exhaustively:

• Tony Pollard: His best week thus far is RB16 in Guillotine scoring. That’s just not going to cut it anymore, especially with Tyjae Spears siphoning more work and looking more explosive.
• Nick Chubb: Exact same situation as Pollard. Woody Marks is simply better, and Chubb’s best week of RB18 isn’t going to save you at this point.
• Cooper Kupp: He rarely leaves the field, but doesn’t get enough downfield work to buoy your lineup.
• Dalton Kincaid: Opposite of Kupp, Kincaid leaves the field all the time. He simply does not play enough to be relied upon, even with Dawson Knox in and out of the lineup.

So, who should you roster instead? I’m filling my bench with high value handcuffs, with added priority if they provide standalone flex value if needed: Kyle Monangai, Blake Corum, Emanuel Wilson, Bhayshul Tuten, Dylan Sampson, Tank Bigsby, the list goes on. You’re better off rostering these guys over the Pollards and Chubbs of the world, because they offer immediate top-12 RB upside if their respective starter goes down, as opposed to Pollard and Chubb, whose upside will never get there even with injury.

Of course, none of the guys I mentioned above are going to help you fill a bye week or a short injury absence, so it’s worth rostering one or two of those middle tier guys that will at least not get you zero points. I would not bid more than $20 on these types of players, though. There are extreme schools of thought that take an all or nothing approach to bidding and roster construction, though, and I can see where they’re coming from. Take Jaylin Noel last week for example. He was free on waivers if you paid attention to the injury news out of Houston and gave you a very respectable 11.3 points before being sent right back to waivers. The all-or-nothing approach can be helpful if you’re low on FAAB, too.

How can I apply the Utilization Report to my Guillotine League?

If you want the full breakdown, check out Dwain’s musings over at the Utilization Report. In my opinion, it’s the best mid-week breakdown in fantasy football. We’re focused on how to apply Dwain’s points to our Guillotine Leagues.

Let’s talk about the Chargers. They’re a fascinating case study for Guillotine Leagues right now and for the rest of the season. Dwain walked us through a few of these guys, but we’ll take a look at each fantasy viable player.

• Justin Herbert is the easiest one, and the biggest beneficiary of the Quentin Johnston and Oronde Gadsden breakouts that have happened at different points this season. QB4 in Guillotine scoring is an easy endgame player in a pass-first offense with several elite weapons and a suddenly suspect defense.
• Kimani Vidal should be in starting lineups through Week 11 before the Chargers go on bye. I’m not concerned about Hassan Haskins, especially with how Vidal performed in his absence last Thursday. Assuming Omarion Hampton returns in Week 13, it gets really tricky for the endgame. Jim Harbaugh is the king of hyperbole, but he said Vidal is playing like a number one running back in the NFL. You probably can’t start either the week Hampton returns, since we’ll need to see how it shakes out. If they split work, neither is an endgame player; this team throws too much.
• Ladd McConkey, Keenan Allen, and Quentin Johnston have turned in seven combined WR1 (weekly top 12) performances through Week 8. That’s awesome! What’s not awesome is that no two WR1 performances have come in the same week since Week 1. Johnston’s best non-WR1 outing is WR22 overall. Allen’s is WR18. McConkey’s is WR20. There is simply not enough ball to go around, and each of these players is capable of either buoying or sinking you in any given week, as we saw with QJ last week.
• Further complicating matters is the emergence of Fantasy Twitter darling Oronde Gadsden. Gadsden has been running hot in the touchdown department, but what happens when that inevitably regresses? Per Dwain, he’s a low-end TE1 with high-end TE1 upside.

I explain all this to outline the heavy risk that comes with starting any Chargers pass catcher for the remainder of the season. It’s all about Dwain’s favorite word: VARIANCE. If you’re starting a Charger in your Guillotine League, as we all are for just about everyone except QJ, you have to account for that variance and play it safer elsewhere in your lineup. This also helps drive home the points I made in the previous question. You can’t bench your Chargers because of the massive ceiling they offer, but be wary of that low floor.