Hidden Bloggers know my passion for fantasy baseball, that sport where players' real-life statistics are translated into a point system that accumulates over the course of the season.
After six championships in nine years of playing, including the last five seasons in a row, I've concluded that skill plays at least as big a part of the game as luck.
In fantasy football, not so much.
As I look at the top-ranked players in the preseason, it seems clearly better designed for lottery contestants than strategists. If you bought into top-ten names like Michael Turner, Matt Forte, LaDanian Tomlinson or Steve Slaton, then you spent several Sundays this year shredding fantasy magazines with your bare hands.
Nine weeks into the season I was 4-5. And then I went on a remarkable run, winning seven straight weeks en route to my first fantasy football title! So while it resembles an exercise in predicting next week's wind based on last week's, it's interesting to recap my roster and see what the root cause of the success was.
QB - Donovan McNabb (212 points). QBs in this league consistently rack up more points overall than any other position. As case in point, my third-highest scoring player this year was on my bench... my backup QB Joe Flacco of the run-happy Ravens. McNabb's not recently been a top-tier QB due to injuries, but he was still projected to earn a lot points so I passed on names like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. And true to form, McNabb did get hurt in the season's first week and miss several games. He was back to full health in time for the fantasy playoffs though, outscoring Matt Schaub in the championship game.
WR1 - Larry Fitzgerald (169 points). My first-round pick performed favorably, though down somewhat from his outstanding totals of a year ago. Compared with other first-rounders mentioned earlier he was a star. Because RBs generally score higher, and are in shorter supply due to a recent wave of job-sharing in the NFL, I usually give them higher weight. But Fitz has been so consistent, durable, and above his peers that it was worth it to me to slot him high.
WR2 - Roddy White (143 points). Great story here. Durability is a big factor for my rankings, and like Fitzgerald he's been as steady as they come. Playing indoors for a team on the rise, he seemed a lock for comparable stats to last year, but the game's randomness bit when he got hurt as well as his quarterback Matt Ryan. As the lowest-scoring receiver on my team and one of my higher picks, he was largely a disappointment. Then fortune came on like gangbusters in the championship match, as he and Ryan got healthy just in time to catch 2 TD passes and 139 yards, good for the top score on my team.
WR3 - Miles Austin (181 points). Got to take credit for skill on this one. The WR3 I drafted was the Colts' Anthony Gonzalez, whose knee gave way in the first offensive series of the year and shelved him for the entire season. I kept an eye on the waiver wire of undrafted players every week until Austin busted out for over 200 yards receiving and caught my eye. With little to lose, I snapped him up and he became my top receiver (and perhaps the best in the league).
RB1 - Ray Rice (224 points). This is all me too. I love running backs who catch passes too, and based on my pre-season readings it looked like he was primed for a breakout year and I was right. I moved him way up my draft list, and smiled all season long as he led my team in scoring. And in the championship game, he rushed/received for 135 yards. His opponent DeAngelo Williams, a top-five draft pick? Zero. Injured.
RB2 - Beanie Wells (114 points). Speaking of injured, my highest wasted pick was of Miami running back Ronnie Brown, who did well to start the season but was lost to injury midyear. Oh, and did I mention that my originally drafted RB2, Kevin Smith of Detroit, also headed to injured reserve just before the playoffs? For those keeping score, that means that at the 2nd-highest scoring position I'd lost all my starters. But in addition to the Rice gold mine, I grabbed Wells just as he was settling into a rhythm toward the end of his rookie year, and on championship day he even topped Rice with 15 points.
TE - Visanthe Shiancoe (97), K - Ryan Longwell (123), DEF - Minnesota (121). Am I being too proud to point out that these guys' stats don't even matter in championship week? Yes, I was so far ahead that even if they all score zero points for the Monday night game I still win in a walk. This Minnesota-heavy trio was appealing and what I targeted, and why not? Getting 100 points out of the TE slot is terrific and knowing what Favre dishes out to TE's I figured he was good for it. Kickers are a dime a dozen, really, the goal is just not to pick a horrible one. And I always push the top defenses up the rankings to make sure I grab at least one, and the Vikings haven't disappointed.
So there you have it... lots of success through pre-draft prep to spot some diamonds in the rough, waiver-wire scouring to overcome the inevitable injuries, and generally good health by concentrating on durability.
And I must point out one especially critical factor, namely strength of schedule. Way back on day 1 of setting my rankings, I gave extra credit to players who were facing soft defenses during the 2009 fantasy playoff weeks (15 and 16) based on 2008 defensive data. Which teams were looking months ahead at patsies back in September? Philadelphia, Arizona, Atlanta and Dallas - that is, five crucial members of my starting lineup. So in a sense the season unfolded exactly as planned, sacrificing some victories early on in exchange for fertile scoring ground in the playoffs.
So maybe fantasy football does have plenty of room for skill. Tune in a year from now and see if it's validated!
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