Over-analyze This

• Tweet

• Tweet

OK, OK, this is a tough time for fantasy football coaches. Your draft has already been held (maybe even months ago for those of us in the ultra-competitive wouldn’t-it-be-fun-to-draft-during-March-Madness-so-we-have-something-to-watch-besides-baseball leagues); now what to do?

After you are done rewatching the rebroadcasts of all the highlight shows and calculating your team’s projected numbers through, I don’t know, 2008, the only thing left is to make some minor adjustments to your roster, of course. It’s like a drug for some of us; start slow, just take a look at some of your late-rounders. I know you’re happy with your draft … but doesn’t Marcel Shipp look nice just sitting there as a free agent? What about Olandis Gary? Of course, it builds. Rookies never produce, I could just drop Andre Johnson for Doug Johnson, Onterrio Smith for Emmitt Smith. You feel like if you’re not doing something – anything – with your team, you’re falling behind. Soon, you’re grabbing has-beens like Andy Reid grabs pasta.

It gets so bad for me most years that I’m replacing the next new thing with the last new thing, just rotating around my bench guys until some combination feels better than another. Just remember before your roster has a bunch of guys starting (or possibly starting) for sub-par teams (read: NOT producing fantasy points) that someone will emerge this year as the next LaDanian Tomlinson, the next Clinton Portis, etc. You don’t want to be the guy who waited too long to grab him because you were too much in love with Seattle’s backup tight end who could slip into the starting spot by week 14, or worse, drafted a stud rookie and dropped him because you weren’t hearing any news about him, only to kick yourself in week 3 when he’s producing and you have to hear about it all year from the owner who picked him up. Veterans who didn’t get drafted usually didn’t get drafted for a good reason, and you have much better odds of having a young guy shoot up the charts than an already proven-to-be-average guy playing above his potential.

Also be wary of trades early in the season. Don’t trade just to “shake things up”, and don’t be afraid to decline a trade. It’s your team, after all; you have every right to say no. I’ve been dealt the short end of the stick on early season trades often enough to just wait a week or two and see how everyone performs.

The other big mistake I see owners making during this waiting period is concentrating too much on matchups, weather conditions, or past performances against current opponents. Admittedly, some of these become actual streaks (the Packers not losing below freezing, the Raiders not losing on Monday Nights during the 80’s and early 90’s) that have to be considered, but for the most part it all becomes a crap shoot (see: Green Bay’s last two games at Lambeau last season). Some owners tend to put too much stock into opponents or weather forecasts, and as a result don’t field their best possible team. If you draft Donovan McNabb in the first round and then decide you don’t want to start him against Tampa’s defense, then it was a mistake to draft him that early. You are in effect saying he’s interchangeable with, say, Trent Green, or whoever else you would consider replacing him with.

The way I look at it is this: unless the players you’re looking at are, in your opinion, equally talented and equally able to produce points, go with the best guy. I personally had Ricky Williams as my top draft choice. My number one guy. In making that declaration, I declared I would start Ricky against the ‘85 Bears. Hell, I’d start Ricky against 85 real bears. My first few seasons of fantasy football, I put waaaay too much emphasis on opponents and matchups, and got taken to the cleaners. I have to admit it is a good feeling when your 16th round pick has a breakout game because of a weakness you saw in the defense, but your winning percentage will go down if you over-analyze to the point of sitting your best players.

This next one is more for later in the season (playoff time): I see owners benching guys they’ve rode to success all season in bad weather games. While it seems like scoring would be down in extremely cold weather, that’s not always the case. I live in Las Vegas, and would not like to see the amount of money I’ve lost betting the under in Green Bay or New England in December and January over the years. Remember the Jets hanging 41 on the Colts in the playoffs last year in conditions that would have been inhumane in a Siberian prison camp? Chad Pennington threw three touchdowns, and Lamont Jordan went over 100 yards on the ground, both good fantasy numbers. Brett Favre has thrown for over 300 yards 35 times in his career. 11 of these games were at home in November or later, plus one game in Chicago and one in New York (in December and January, respectively). If you call the weather in these 13 games “bad”, that means that roughly 37% of Favre’s 300+ yard passing games have come in bad weather. Of course, Favre has always been known as a cold weather quarterback, but all this illustrates my point that weather does not always play to the extent that fantasy owners predict.

My final words of encouragement are, of course: don’t over-analyze this article. Good luck this season.

 
Issac Withrow is a member of the Cafe’s ever-growing Seahawk contingent. You’ll find him posting in the forum as hawksfan896.