Can you believe it? The end of September is here, and we’re headed right into the fourth week of the fantasy football season already. Hopefully, all newcomers to the hobby are feeling good about joining a league in 2025 and have learned a great deal from this series to date.
But if this is your first visit, here’s the lowdown: Each week, we’ll talk through the five most important things to be aware of for the NFL week ahead and how it matters for fantasy football in a straightforward, teachable way. My goal is for you to elevate from beginner status to being a top-notch team manager who can win a championship.
For those up for the task, here are a few key tidbits to remember in Week 4:
Thing #1: Giving Up Guarantees Failure
What we’re not going to do is sit here and pretend everyone reading this right now is playing with a winning team. Plenty of folks are out there with 1-2 and 0-3 records on the year so far. Sure, it’s demoralizing, and I get it — I’m 0-for in a couple leagues myself to be honest.
It sucks, losing is never fun, but you know the worst thing you can do in this situation is? Stop trying. There is a 0% historical success rate of winning a fantasy championship through giving up. Remember, we’ve got three months of the regular season left. Circumstances can change, and effort goes a long way. Stay engaged and fire up a turnaround effort.
Thing #2: Set A Regular ‘Fantasy Routine’
Following that same vein, we left off last week’s edition with a reminder that the true in-season grind has arrived. By now, data sample sizes are larger, injuries are piling up, and you need to be active now more than at any time up to this point. A great practice that managers can follow to keep up is developing a “fantasy football routine” to do every day:
Check in with your roster/starting lineup
See who’s hurt and look up injury reports (which can always be done here)
Give the waiver wire a good scan; identify potential targets
Look ahead for strong D/ST matchups in upcoming weeks
Depending on how detailed you want to be, this could take up to an hour or more, but a quick status report can be easily accomplished in 10–15 minutes. Choose a regular time that suits you. Maybe a lunch break, after dinner, before bed, any sort of block you can budget out. Staying with the flow and being engaged daily is crucial to achieving fantasy success.
Thing #3: How To Stream Kickers
In case folks don’t remember or may not know, streaming is the practice of identifying good weekly matchups and picking up/dropping players from waivers to plug into starting lineups temporarily. We discussed how this works for D/ST units last week, but now, here’s a free tip of something to look for when streaming kickers in fantasy.
There’s no exact science to picking the right guy every week; however, I’ve found one particular indicator to be helpful when choosing a streaming kicker: checking individual game over/unders (O/U) set by betting platforms. Not sure what that means? Let’s break it down:
The O/U total is the combined number of points oddsmakers expect both teams to score in a game. A high total means Vegas expects a particular contest to be a high-scoring one, and a low total implies the opposite. All of this can be Googled. If you're streaming, target kickers on teams in games with high weekly totals. Big scores = big opportunity for field goals and PATs.
To be clear, this is not a foolproof shortcut to nailing the kicker position weekly. Wild stuff happens in football all the time, and there’s always the element of weather at play as well. Still, there’s a strong correlation between fantasy points and team success. This game doesn’t always have to be complicated. Kickers on good teams are usually good for fantasy.
BONUS TIP: All weather reports for upcoming games can be found at Fantasy Points.
Thing #4: Bye Weeks Are Coming Up
Now, this is more of a general football thing, but it also affects fantasy. If you’re someone who knew very little about the real sport before hopping into a league this season (which is totally okay), this is the TL;DR crash course on bye weeks:
Essentially, a “bye” is a break in the schedule that the NFL gives to all 32 teams to recalibrate, implement new strategies, and get back to health. It’d be pretty tough to expect a group of athletes to play a brutal contact sport 17 games in a row without some rest period. Makes a good amount of sense, right?
Obviously, players on bye won’t be out on the field scoring points, so finding suitable replacements for them is crucial. The first bye week in 2025 will begin in Week 5. The list of teams that won’t be playing includes:
Atlanta Falcons
Chicago Bears
Green Bay Packers
Pittsburgh Steelers
Yep, that’s coming up really soon! But the good news is that everyone has a bench of backup players for events like this. If yours seems to be lacking in terms of immediate help, go check waivers, but hey, you learned what a bye is. No excuse for being caught off guard now.
Thing #5: Tune Into The Fantasy Points YouTube Channel
Look, there’s only so much advice we end up covering here. Plenty of player-specific analysis gets pushed aside to fit the birds-eye view approach of this series. I promise we’ll get more into that stuff soon, but did you know that my Fantasy Points colleagues go live on our YouTube channel daily throughout the season?
Whether you’re looking for start/sit help, guidance for playing in a DFS contest, or even managing a dynasty roster if that’s the format you started with, our team of experts has dedicated programming addressing all angles of fantasy football every single day.
Feel free to hop in the chat and ask questions. Not every show is designed to provide real-time answers to everyone, but numerous Q&A opportunities and formats exist to offer help to as many people as possible. Don’t be shy; we don’t bite!
The team at Fantasy Points is more than happy to weigh in and give insight into the specific issues facing your team in the upcoming slate action. Check our weekly content schedule, find a show that piques your interest, and let ‘em know Herms sent you. It might be the best fantasy football move you make all season.
Cheers to Week 4, and best of luck with securing that W. You’ve got this!
