On Fantasy Football Playoffs and Luck

This is why we play. Weeks 14,15,16, Da Playoffs! If you've been lucky and or good enough, you are still playing, and if you've been really lucky/good, your team came in first or second and has the coveted First Round Bye. Congratulations! But how did we get here? Were we awesomely prepared for the draft, with a full understanding of all rules and settings? Did we draft some huge upside guys that paid big dividends? I will never discount the importance of knowledge and good draft strategy, but I will submit here that these are not the only keys to success or failure, but merely the ones we can control.

Fantasy Football is a game that heavily depends on luck, be it good or bad. You have 13 shots to get into the playoffs, unlike baseball, basketball, or even hockey, which are played almost every day during their respective seasons. 13 Sundays and Mondays, with a few scattered Thursday games on a network 60% of the country can't watch. And that is that. In the other 3 main fantasy sports, if your First or Second Rounder gets hurt, there is a good likelihood that you can pick up a decent enough replacement to get your team through until said stud returns, and you typically can recover over the course of a long season. In football, losing a key player is often a season long ordeal, which gets even worse if his NFL team decides to keep him on their active roster. See: Steven Jackson, each of the last 2 years. This situation can be equally or more devastating than losing a top player to a season ending injury, a la Tom Brady this year. I would speculate that a huge percentage of teams that drafted Brady with their First Round Pick are now eagerly anticipating the start of Spring Training. However, from a Fantasy standpoint, those owners were lucky in that Brady went down in Week 1, and was immediately placed on the IR. A crushing blow, certainly, but at worst an 0-1 team record with 12 weeks remaining to patch the QB position together.

Now let's look at good vs lucky, keeping in mind that even the most knowledgeable, strategy wise managers can have shit luck - the bad type. Here's a theoretical first 6 rounds that would have looked pretty solid on draft day, but would have you WAY on the outside looking in right now:

1- S-Jax or LJ
2- Lawrence Maroney or Darren McFadden
3- Chad Johnson or Tory Holt or Marques Colston
4- Edge James or Jonathan Stewart or Carson Palmer
5- Derek Anderson or Marvin Harrison or Fred Taylor
6- Chris Chambers or Kevin Curtis or Jeremy Shockey

I'll stop there, as I think the first 6 rounds are the most crucial ones, with the rest of a draft consisting of building depth, taking a few flyers, and finding serviceable options at TE, K, and DEF. After 6, I'd like to have 2 solid RB's and and a backup, a WR1 and WR2, and either a TE or QB, all NFL starters. The players referenced above all meet the criteria, and were all picked in the referenced rounds in what I consider my most competitive league, the H2H Super Bowl. Most managers would walk away from a draft with some combo of these guys feeling pretty good about their team, and would be considered by most to have done at least an acceptable job in the early rounds.

And they would be totally fucked. All of these guys have either been hurt, lost their jobs due to underperformance/assaulting women, or have just plain sucked. Teams who own them have been scrambling all year to recover, and as all the aforementioned are pretty much regarded as players that just can't be cut, have been stuck with them. Really bad luck.

Here's my PAT RiotZ draft in this league (draft position 2):

1- Purple Jesus, Adrian Peterson. Easy pick. Also lucky, as the guy ahead of me should have taken him at 1 and I'd have probably sprained 3 fingers trying to punch in LDT at this spot...
2- TD Hoosh - I thought he had a solid chance to be the best WR in the league, especially with gunslinger Palmer throwing to him. He's been very good even without CP, but what could have been?
3- Mike Burner Turner - Finally getting a chance to start, has exceeded everyone's expectations. Props to Matty Ryan for being as good as we knew he could be, alomost immediately. Turner wouldn't have done nearly this well if opposing D's didn't have to worry about an above average passing game.
4- Calvin Johnson - Could be the most talented WR around, but he's on a miserable team with an endless list of really shitty QB's. He and rookie RB Kevin Smith have been the only bright spots for the worst team in the history of the league - oh and sixteen is a mortal lock. Suck it, Tampa Bay, you've got company...
5- Marvin Harrison - Was happy to get him as a WR3, but he hasn't done much. Luckily, I've only had to use him 6 or 7 times, and I did have him in for all the games he scored a TD - 4 total. There's that luck word again.
6- Jay Cutler - Who knew that Rat Shanahan's run first offense would come down to Peyton Hillis and the 2cd string towel boy? Who knew that the Denver D would be leakier than a levee in the Big Easy? No one, that's who. But it turned out exactly that way, and Cutler owners have benefited greatly. His off season diagnosis as a diabetic and subsequent medical treatments have helped his stamina. Would I rather have had Brady, Palmer, or HorseBalls Anderson going into the season?
Fuck and Yes, and I shudder to think what may have been. None of my first 6 picks had major injuries this season - shit luck, the good kind.

I've made my share of blunders this season, on a variety of the 6 teams I manage. All 6, amazingly, are in the playoffs - 2 #1 seeds, a 3, 2 4's and a 6 - and I would have been VERY happy if 3 or 4 got in. I had Ronnie Brown on the bench against the Pats, 5 TD's. I had Burner Turner sitting against a tough Carolina D, 4 TD's. I did sit Cutler one week, 60+ points in a PPC league. As you can see, I obviously didn't make the greatest decisions week in and week out. But I've had more good luck than bad.

More on the good side - Reggie Bush scored 2 punt return TD's late in a game and I squeaked by a worthy opponent by a couple points. I honestly didn't even realize that punt return TDs counted until later that evening. I had Cassel going as a Romo injury replacement for both of his 400 yard performances. I'm sure I could go on here, but I'm about to put myself to sleep and don't wish to do the same to anyone who's still reading this. One last fond recollection though, and then we'll wrap.

I run a cut throat league in which the winning team gets to take a player from their opponent each week. In Week 1, my First Rounder, Mr Brady, went down, I got smoked, and I had Thomas Jones taken from me as a result. Sweetening that pot is the fact that my opponent just happened to be the fine woman I live with. AAARGH! Anyway, I stumbled out to a 1-3 start, then slowly and not real surely worked my way to 6-6 going into Week 13. I could get to the postseason with a victory and good point total against a 5-7 team, combined with a 7-5 team losing with a low point total against a 2-10 team. Things looked pretty bleak, then 2-10 Team Member Plaxico Burress shot his bad self in the leg and was replaced by Mark Clayton off the waiver wire, where he'd been languishing all season. Clayton put up a meast week, 2 TD's and 160+ yards receiving, the 2-10 team is now 3-10, and my team scored enough to win not only its matchup, but the 6 seed tiebreaker as well, by 12 points. More shit luck, type: good. Well, except for Burress himself, I guess. I'm not sure if I can name either him or Clayton as my team's MVP, but I'll give them both serious consideration!

The Wrap: My Pat RiotZ team from above ended up 12-1, the only loss coming during Peterson and Cutler's common bye week. The H2H Super Bowl is a great league with some serious competitors. There are about 120 teams playing in 9 different leagues, and the Top 14 will move into the elite H2HSB league next year to crown the Super Bowl Champ. I believe my team is the #1 seed in the entire competition, there are no other 12-1 or better teams from the regionals that have kept their standings posted. I feel a sense of pride for having a team do so well at this level, but I'm also very thankful that luck has been mostly on my side. And I hope to Christ I don't get drilled in the First Round next week...

If you are still playing, Good Luck! If you're not, Spring Training starts in just about nine weeks.