The offseason is a time of optimism. You draft your team, agonizing over every choice before settling on a hand-picked collection of players who are sure to strike fear in your opponents' hearts. You are undefeated and the fantasy world is your oyster.

Then week 1 happens and suddenly everything changes. A few of your favorite sleepers apparently forgot to set their alarm clocks. Maybe that 12th-round running back is looking a little less like a flier and a little more like a starter for you. Possibly injuries or underperformance leave you feeling a little bit precarious at what you thought was a position of strength.

This is okay. The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry. The draft did not give you a finished product, it gave you a foundation that you can build on. Depending on how lucky— or unlucky— you are, half or more of your draft picks could be long gone by the time you see the season's conclusion.

If only there was a tool that helped guide your roster through the season the way the Draft Dominator helped guide it through the draft. A tool that understood your specific league's scoring system and lineup requirements. A tool that knew your roster and your needs, and the rosters and needs of everyone else in your league, too.

If only there was a tool like the Waiver & Trade Dominator.

Setting up the Waiver & Trade Dominator could not possibly be easier. If you've already walked through our introduction to the 5-Second Primer, then you're already done.

(If you haven't walked through our introduction to the 5-Second Primer, take five minutes to do that now. Seriously, I'll wait, because it's just that important. The 5-Second Primer will help you win more games and spend less time in the process. Once you experience it you'll wonder how you ever managed your teams without it.)

Everyone familiar with the 5-Second Primer now? Great!

To get to the Waiver & Trade tools, we start at the same place: my.footballguys.com, your home base for all of our specifically-tailored advice. Specifically, you're looking for the Waivers & Trades section, either at the bottom of the main menu or on the navigation bar to the left.

There are four subsections here. I'll take them a little bit out of order.

First up is the Roster tool. This is a place for you to self-scout, so to speak. All of your players are listed along with their projected value for the rest of the season; if any of the column titles are confusing, you can hover your mouse over to pull up a description.

Additionally, across the top of the page, there are four options, (circled above). "Roster" shows your team, "News" gets you the latest from around the league about your players, "Power Rankings" shows how we project your team compares to the rest of the league, and "Team by Pos" lets you view that same data charted by position so you can identify areas of strength and weakness.

The other place to self-scout is the "Top 200s" section. This gives you a traditional cheatsheet you know and love from preseason, but with projections that are updated weekly and stay relevant throughout the year.

Knowing your own strengths and weaknesses is good, but the real meat of the Waiver & Trade Dominator is its ability to give you advice about players who aren't yet on your team. You'll find this among the last two sections, "Waivers/FA" and "Trade".

"Waivers/FA" is, as the name would suggest, your home base for scouting potential free agents in your league. When you go to this section, the first page you'll see is Sigmund Bloom's world-famous weekly Upgrades/Downgrades report, but with all of the players who are already rostered in your league filtered out so you only see the bits that actually matter to you.

Click on "All Free Agents" at the top of the page and you'll see a list of everyone available sorted by the projected value they'll provide to your actual team-- how much they will improve your actual bench, how much of an upgrade they will be over your actual starters. No more wasted time hunting through your league's free agent list and guessing: this gives you everything you need to know to dominate your waivers and nothing you don't.

Finally, there's the "Trade" tab. If your league is like most, in-season trades happen maybe once or twice a year, tops. The reason why is simple: it's really hard to come up with trade offers that both parties feel make their team better.

At least, it's hard for people. For the Trade Dominator, it just takes a couple of clicks to analyze every possible player combination to see which ones would satisfy your specific trade goals. Simply set your goals, then scroll down and click "Search for Trades"

The Trade Dominator will attempt to find trades that satisfy your criteria and, failing that, will suggest the closest alternatives.

You can also click on any individual trade to get a more in-depth breakdown.

These breakdowns can help you balance three competing interests: the desire to have as many points as possible in your starting lineup, the desire to have as many points as possible on the bench in case of injury or underperformance in your starting lineup, and the desire for those bench points to be spread evenly across positions to protect against all eventualities.

We've done our best to make all of our tools as easy and painless to use as possible. If you have any issues with rosters syncing for your leagues, we have a troubleshooting guide that should solve any issues. For other issues, feel free to visit our help center at the bottom of the navigation bar on the left.

A well-known Chinese proverb offers that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. If you drafted with the Draft Dominator, you've trusted us to guide you through that first step. We greatly appreciate that trust.

But we aren't content to stop there. Our goal is to help you win your league, which means staying by your side and guiding you through the rest of your journey, too.