| If I’ve learned anything from fantasy
football this season (and usually I don’t), it is that sometimes it just doesn’t
matter how good a player is. It’s all about the opportunity.
No matter how much I believe that Fred Taylor is one of the best running backs
in the NFL, he’s obviously never going to show that for a 16-game season; he’s
only going to continue to tease those of us who still believe in Taylor’s enormous
potential.
But this is where I always get burnt.
Instead of cultivating my talent base based on who is going to be there at the end of
the season and getting the job done for me in the big games, I’m usually watching
others battle for titles at this time of year.
Somehow I did manage to stumble into one league championship this season, but
that’s more the doing of my opposition than anything spectacular my own roster
managed to put together.
I’ve really got to start settling in on players who have a chance to shine, rather
than speculating on players who will only shine with a chance.
Make sense?
Well, I’ll admit it doesn’t always make sense to me either.
But I dropped the ball on several players this season, and I’ll explain how.
I have a nasty habit of filling out a core of starters and then after doing that, I
start throwing darts at the board, hoping for boom-or-bust picks. Some boom, but much more
often than not, they bust, leaving me with little depth and nowhere to turn.
It’s a bad habit, but ever since I got Curtis Martin in the 12th
round in his rookie season, I’ve held my ground and continued to draft with a
gamble-heavy draft strategy.
This season, for example, I repeatedly passed on New England RB Antowain Smith.
Over and over again I rationalized that if Smith wasn’t good enough to establish
himself in an extremely muddled Buffalo backfield situation, why would New England be any
different?
But this is why Smith would have made a much better pick on Draft Day than several of
the other fliers I had hoped to strike gold with — Smith had the opportunity to
shine.
And sometimes that’s all you need.
Granted, flier picks like Shaun Alexander were very good in this strategy,
whereas flier picks like Dorsey Levens and Richard Huntley haven’t
necessarily reaped many rewards.
Draft lists buried Smith and rightfully so, based on past performance. But he never
should have been ranked below some of the highly speculative choices that I saw in some
places.
Sometimes I believe I should go back to my base RB strategy from my early years of
playing fantasy football. Take the 31 running backs expected to start, rank them 1 through
31 and don’t deviate from that list at any time until ALL 31 of those backs have been
drafted.
Then take all the chances you want.
Of course, you can eliminate all the agony before you get to that point, and just make
sure you avoid Taylor.
He’s not worth the aggravation. |
