The 2019 Fantasy Football season is coming up, and it is time to ask a question. Why do we play fantasy football? Seems simple enough. We love NFL football and want to feel closer to it, more involved. Fantasy football allows us to take it to a granular level, to use our fingers to wipe away the sand and have an ownership of sorts in a sport where there are only 32 owners. See, simple.
It’s not that simple though. We also play fantasy football because it allows us to gamble in a socially acceptable way. Eight-hundred numbers for players addicted to fantasy football don’t exist. Trust me, I checked. There is no stigma attached when you mention fantasy football in casual company…well, not anymore. There was a time when the act of checking scores would be deemed a bit nerdy or weird, but not today. Today it is a multibillion-dollar industry. Like all industries that can make and destroy the fortunes of millions, it lay in the opaque ethical framework of self-determination.
What is good fantasy football advice?
When players win in fantasy football, they are endowed with a quality of knowledge that others are lacking. I have won a good bit of fantasy football, which is why you are reading this space. Most of my success is a mixture of understanding quantitative analysis and knowing about football. Research into matchup opportunities and pure dumb luck are equal participants as well. The open secret is that chance is very often the determining factor in success and failure, especially in season-long games.
Daily Fantasy or DFS tournaments are a murky sea of algorithm-based betting operations that use a variety of quantitative tools to leverage probability and human bettors who end up covering most of the payouts. Still, Daily does offer the most significant payouts for minimum investment, and that gives them the combined thrill of fantasy football and a lottery.
What are my goals?
The goal, of course, is to make us believe that luck is the product of the work we put in, which it isn’t. We have no control over the outcomes once our lineups go live. A running back blowing out his knee on the first snap. A wide receiver pulling up lame midway through the second quarter on a busted coverage. A quarterback being knocked out because some street level free agent tight end blows a blocking assignment after being forced into action for whatever reason. They can kill your daily ticket. They can ruin your season long leagues, delivering a loss that would have been a win otherwise. We control none of it. Which means you have sat through or forced others to sit through some version of, “let me tell you about what happened to my fantasy team…”
That’s a hard truth for anyone asking you to listen to them to tell. That luck is going to play a far more significant role than anything I say, or anything you read or hear, in any space on the internet. Here is where I tell you about the rub…there’s a lot of luck in being successful at fantasy sports, but we can put ourselves in a position to be on the receiving end of good luck. That happens through preparation and I am nothing, if not prepared.
As the summer unfolds, I will be offering different strategies for different types of daily plays. Think of them as a primer to help you contextualize the approaches I take. As I begin to recommend plays when the season starts you should see the connections. Along the way, I will throw in a story or two. I will try to keep what can be a very technical topic as enjoyable as I can. Don’t forget to check out PFN’s main page and new Fantasy Football section. @Houtz has assembled a crew to help you win your league no matter what the format.