Another fantasy football season is in the books.
Because of COVID-19 and eventually shifting protocols, fantasy football in 2021 was as challenging as ever. The sport’s constant injuries make it tough enough already, but this year you had to be that much more prepared for your best players to suddenly be pulled from lineups.
Fantasy always rewards the grinders, the players that put the most time into their leagues. This year, it seems that was truer than ever.
In a different way, though, one that isn’t quite as obvious, fantasy football is getting easier.
There is a steadily growing amount of tremendous content and analysis available to players. NFL teams seem no more inclined to tell you the truth about injuries or their players’ roles, but the many excellent analysts who parse through the available information and give you something actionable is greater than ever.
2020 afforded me unique and special opportunities to compete with some of the best and most popular analysts in the business, as well as several prominent high-stakes players. I did it, I loved it, and I held my own.
Holding your own, however, is not the same as winning. So for 2021, as I stated here back in the summer, my goal wasn’t just to be included with these players – my goal was to beat them.
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Well, I did some of that. I accomplished my goal, and in the process learned a ton more about how to play this game.
It’s easy to think you know a lot just from watching football, consuming a regular amount of sports talk, maybe subscribing to a fantasy site or two to use as research.
This pretty much has been me until this year, if not last year. You play in leagues with friends, guys you know. Some guys get it, other guys go into a rage and trade their best players after one or two bad weeks. You know who they are, and you know how to play them.
These guys at the expert level, their process includes factors I never would have thought of. A mastery of league rules so that, for example, they never get caught without a playable pivot option on a Monday night. Never ignoring a team you’re accustomed to low scores from, availing to late-season surges such as the ones we just got from Amon-Ra St. Brown in Detroit, and Rashaad Penny in Seattle. Considering all the possible reasons for why players may have been used the way they were; Christian Kirk and A.J. Green were the higher-ranking Arizona Cardinals receivers after DeAndre Hopkins went down, but Antoine Wesley turned out to be the one essentially playing Hopkins’ position.
If you, somehow, started St. Brown, Penny and Wesley in your championship game last week, you not only likely beat your opponent who had all the usual season-long studs, you probably drove him crazy.
These things all lie in season-long management. Drafting is a science all its own.
The basics: We know who the good players are, we know which teams are most likely to be strong, we know how many players at each position we want, etc. Not everybody in fantasy cares enough about this to consider it during drafts, but we can know which teams have which bye weeks so that we can do that little bit more to avoid in-season trouble.
Generally, it’s not a big one, but in FFPC (Fantasy Football
Players Cchampionship) tournaments where the playoffs start in Week 13, players with the latest bye weeks were, at least, a little less desirable. Jonathan Taylor, Jalen Hurts and Aaron Jones owners in 2021, you may know first-hand what I mean.
These guys on the expert level play the schedule almost like they have it memorized when they sit down to draft. Maybe they discounted the Green Bay Packers and Indianapolis Colts, for example, because of their late byes. Maybe they upgraded the San Francisco 49ers because they had home games in the championship playoffs against the Atlanta Falcons and Houston Texans.
Whatever they did, the bottom line is that no stone was left unturned.
When you venture into FFPC land, and other high-stakes leagues, rest assured this is what your competition is doing – and if you’re not willing to prepare like that, you’re playing at a disadvantage.
Those leagues are expensive, and many of us split teams to make it more affordable.
The team that won the FFPC Main Event’s $500,000 first prize was run by three guys from Buffalo. Having three owners, according to one of them, Nick Costantino, meant that they were always able to break a tie. (Think “Reverse AFC Power Rankings”.)
My main playing partner this year was Louie Gee, and he and I developed a nice ability to settle disagreements. There are moves you want to make, and there are moves you really want to make. If something fell into that category for one of us, the other would defer. The year went very smoothly, and we turned a nice profit on our Main Event teams.
For those teams, the season ended, however, disappointingly. In the Main Event, you play a 12-week regular season followed by a two-week playoff. Two teams (sometimes three) qualify from each league to play in the ensuing tournament, held weeks 15-17. That’s for the half-million, and there are prizes for the top-125 teams (out of about 600).
Both are teams were primed going into Week 17, but both just missed.
On one, all three of our quarterbacks were inactive. (Once you advance to the tournament no more roster moves are allowed, because teams are from all different leagues which would mean mass confusion about who would be available for pick-ups.) We lost Kirk Cousins, Jimmy Garoppolo and Justin Fields for Week 17 games, and missed the money by five points.
The way our other team’s season ended would haunt me if we didn’t already have the good year we did.
That team was in the money all weekend and well into the Monday night game. All we needed was, well, for Najee Harris to not break a long insurance touchdown run to cap the Pittsburgh Steelers’ win. When that happened, four Harris teams jumped over us and pushed us out of the money.
It happens.
Louie and I were able to win one Main Event league, and I won two FFPC FootballGuys Challenge leagues as well (out of four). That was a very nice return – and, on the FFPC site, the coveted green star you get beside your name as a league champion. This is done so players can know a little bit about the experience levels of the players around them. The green star is like the blue checkmark on Twitter.
Glad to have it!
Winnings are good, but I leave the 2021 fantasy season with more than that.
I’ve become friends with many of these top players and analysts, and I’ve learned so much from them. I have both the appetite to learn more, to prepare and work like so many of these guys do, and the confidence to be able to succeed.
These two COVID-19 years may have lots of players bummed out about fantasy, fatigued and dismayed by all the unpredictability from it. But if you’re willing to do the work, this sort of fluidity can benefit you.
I’m ready right now for 2022 – and with postseason tournaments and dynasty leagues, it’s already time to get to work.
