Tennessee Titans defensive end Marques Douglas
chases down Peyton Manning in the first quarter
of the Week 17 game on January 2.
It's hard for me to say what exactly went wrong with my fantasy football season this year. After back-to-back championship years, my team went 5-8 in the regular season and ended at 8th place out of 10 before the playoffs. At the beginning of the season I had thought I had a good team after a good draft. But as soon as the season began I realized I had made several mistakes in the draft. Though I had picked Maurice Jones Drew in the first round and Peyton Manning in the second, which were good choices since they provided a stable source of points, my other running backs and wide receivers were weak or inconsistent. I scrambled to find replacements for Brandon Marshall, Donald Driver, and Kevin Walter. Some of my later picks in the draft did fairly well, including Darren McFadden and Hakeem Nicks. For some stupid reason I chose the 49ers defense because it was ranked higher than others. Stupid, stupid, stupid. What was I thinking? By the end of the year I made several changes. I dropped most of my running backs and wide receivers, but the new ones still didn't do very well. Week after week many of my players would only get a few points. Anquan Boldin had one good game when he caught three touchdowns, but he had 10 games in which he gave me 6 points or less. I did make some good additions, especially when I picked up the Jacksonville tight end, Mercedes Lewis. However, my biggest mistakes during the season came from when I made trusted my gut and moved players onto the bench just before they had a huge breakout game. Anquan Boldin scored 32 points in week 3, but I had him on the bench. I would have won that game if I had left my roster alone. Then the Patriots defense scored 33 points in week 4, but I dropped them from my team hours before the games started that Sunday morning. Again, I would have won that game. If not for those two moves, I would have had a 7-6 record. That would have put me on the cusp of the playoffs. A little bit of luck could have also helped. There were multiple games that I lost by only a couple points after some running back or wide receiver I never heard of and will never hear from again had a spectacular one-hit-wonder game.
After I got my act together and made the right adjustments at the end of the season, I throttled my opponents in the consolation games. In these last 4 weeks I moved from 8th place to 5th place, which was the best I could have done once the playoffs started. If I had been in the playoffs, I would have given those teams a run for their money. Oh, well.
So at the end of this fantasy football season, I've decided to take some lessons away so that I might have a bit more success next year:
1) Before the draft do more research about which running backs and wide receivers are overrated and underrated. This past year I didn't have the chance to do this research since I was working on my dissertation in Scotland. Next year I could choose to draft those players who are on teams who made it to the playoffs or should have made it to the playoffs.
2) Concentrate more on running backs than wide receivers. There are so many other wide receivers on a team. It's hard to guess which player will catch the TD pass. However, there are fewer running backs who could steal TD runs. RBs provide more points consistently than WRs, who tend to be boom or bust. Therefore, I should have 3 RBs and 2 WRs each week instead of 2 RBs and 3 WRs.
3) Participate in at least 2 fantasy football leagues. If I make smart decisions in the draft, then at least one of the teams will do well. Success in fantasy football needs luck, and it makes sense that one of my teams won't be lucky. If I had one lucky team in one league, then that would make the fantasy football season more fun.
4) Stay away from the NFC West. Drafting a player from this wasteland of NFL football is kinda like doing tequila shots on your birthday. At first it might sound exciting and fun, but just don't do it. It's a bad idea.
Next fall I'll get to see if these lessons were good ideas or not.
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