Three Things to Avoid in Fantasy Football
A 2020 fantasy football post mortem on what not to do
For the first time in years, I will not sniff the glorious fantasy football playoffs. I made about every mistake you can, so I wanted to put together a quick post mortem.
This is just the most I’ve written about fantasy football in years, and it's the worst I’ve ever done in my actual fantasy leagues.
I’m too distracted.
Some of these may seem self-evident, but it’ll be oddly therapeutic to lay them out. Here we go.
Be Wary of Hometown Bias.
I can’t be the only one out there who looks optimistically upon their hometown team.
I lost a lot of weeks starting the offensive juggernauts of the Philadelphia Eagles. I could always find a way to convince myself that THIS would be the week Carson Wentz came alive.
‘Oh wow, the Bengals this week? Zac Taylor won’t have a plan for this dynamic Eagles offense and its a must win.’
Wrong.
My most recent flop, which I noted publicly, was starting Jalen Reagor against Seattle because the Seahawks had the worst secondary in the NFL.
Knocked me out of the playoffs.
Part of the trap for me was the Twitter echo chamber that I groomed by following every beat writer in Philly. You can really talk yourself into great things and out of the playoffs.
Don’t Overthink Your Quarterback.
I went in hard on the Wentz as mentioned above and Daniel Jones. In another league, I grabbed Dak Prescott.
Knowing what we know now, you’d laugh at three quarterbacks out of the NFC East, but that’s hindsight. The amount of quarterback turnover in this division has been unprecedented:
Before Prescott suffered his brutal injury, he was a top-four fantasy quarterback.
In fact, Prescott still leads the Cowboys in passing yards (1,856) and he hasn't played since Week 5. One better, he has more passing yards than the rest of the team combined (1,813). I can’t even fathom.
It's harder to defend the other two.
Although there were no signs that Wentz would crumble, the Eagles are potentially looking at $60MM in dead money if they decide to move on without the former MVP Candidate.
Second-year man Daniel Jones had legitimate preseason buzz as a ‘breakout’ guy with legitimate rushing upside. It wasn’t that ridiculous to talk yourself into the New York Giants with a fresh coat of paint on the coaching staff. Ultimately they’ve stumbled their way to a bottom-dwelling unit in the NFC.
The reality is that I waited too long to draft a quarterback. You can outsmart yourself when you pass on guys like Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, or Russell Wilson.
When you’re searching for ‘the guy’ all season, it doesn’t matter if you have four starting running backs in a league where all your friends think you’re trying to screw them over with each passing trade proposal.
I will not make that mistake again.
Avoid the First Overall Pick.
First-year I’ve ever had the first overall pick, and I landed on Christian McCaffery. It would have been great if he had stayed healthy—Murphy’s Law.
Just search ‘Christian McCaffery fantasy’ on Twitter; it's dark.
Moral of the story being that, with your next pick falling in the early-’20s, if anything goes wrong, you’re doomed.
Not that it mattered much this year, but I’ll take a couple of mid-round picks over potentially stumbling out of playoff contention after my first overall pick goes down for the season.
I say it didn’t matter much because the first-round pool fell apart this season.
Players like McCaffery, Saquon Barkley, Joe Mixon, Austin Ekeler, and Michael Thomas all missed significant time.
Ezekiel Elliot, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, and Josh Jacobs were just okay.
Examining the ESPN.com preseason top twelve, only three players have averaged more than 15.0 fantasy points per week. That’s not what we’ve come to expect from our first-rounders.
I know this season has been an anomaly, but you’d have faired better picking towards the latter half of the first round, with a shot at an early pick in a stacked second round.
If you drafted too high this season, you handcuffed yourself, and I won’t do it again — just enough, PTSD.
