Fantasy Football: 5 Moves To Clinch Your Championship

With the 2011 NFL season entering the month of December, the fantasy football season is winding down. With this week marking the end of the regular season in many leagues, the thrill-a-minute madness that is the fantasy playoffs will be kicking off before you know it.

For those fantasy owners fortunate enough to have locked up a playoff berth and who are looking to tighten up the proverbial ship before the water gets even choppier, here are a handful of tips that can help transform your squad from playoff contender to league champion.

1. Blow Your Depth Charges

As fantasy football teams progress through the regular season, having depth at each position on your roster is vitally important. Capable backups can be a true season-saver if a star player goes down early, such as was the case with Kansas City Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles.

However, we've now reached the point where we're about to start what amounts to a two or three-game "second season," where individual matchups and single contests rule the day.

So don't be afraid to cast aside benchwarmers or even injured starters for lottery ticket or matchup types, especially in fantasy football leagues that shut down the waiver wire at the end of the regular season.

2.) Batten Down the Matchups

There's a prevailing school of wisdom in fantasy football that states that you should "Always Start Your Studs," which means that star players such as San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore should be started on a  weekly basis no matter the matchup.

However, in the playoffs, one loss is all it takes to end a fantasy football season, giving each week's matchups added weight. So in a week such as Week 15, where Gore faces a stout Pittsburgh Steelers defense while a "lesser" option such as Cincinnati Bengals running back Cedric Benson faces a much softer St. Louis Rams team, that school of wisdom may not be so wise after all.

3.) Weather the Storm(s)

During much of the football season the weather is more or less an afterthought, a minor annoyance that only occasionally manifests itself as a factor in statistical output, such as when the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars played earlier this season in a driving rainstorm.

As winter and the fantasy playoffs get rolling that all changes however, as the weather can have a huge effect on players and their fantasy output, especially in places such as Buffalo and Chicago. So knowing what the forecast can be a sizable advantage when choosing a lineup.

Also, while snow and rain may look bad on TV, they're not the biggest enemy of fantasy fanatics that Mother Nature has in her arsenal, as high winds can screw things up a lot worse than precipitation will.

4.) The Future Is Now, Matey

This tip applies mainly to fantasy football owners in keeper and dynasty leagues, as in most redraft leagues the trading deadline has long since come and gone.

If you are able to make trades, have positioned yourself for a run at the championship and want the trophy badly enough, you may want to consider dealing future draft picks to teams that are set to pack it in for that missing piece of your championship puzzle.

It's generally easier to pry older players from rebuilding teams, so a fantasy team with a need at tight end might be able to acquire Tony Gonzalez of the Atlanta Falcons from a cellar dweller at a price that won't completely mortgage the future for the sake of the present.

5. RELAX!

This is almost certainly the best advice I can give you.

You've made it this far and deserve congratulations for that, but as a wise man once told me, the fantasy playoffs can be a "random monkey humping luck fest," so sometimes even after doing all the necessary legwork and agonizing over your lineup you may still find yourself on the losing end thanks to a freak game by New York Jets running back Shonn Greene.

It may be an incredibly frustrating way to end a season, but there's no point in letting it drive you insane, so just close your laptop (gently), sit back, crack open a cold one and chill.

Besides, there's always next year.