Blowback
Injuries, and at times, pure stupidity, are such a brutal aspect of dynasty fantasy football. As we’ve seen in this off-season, players rarely do exactly what we drafted them to do. Just like us, they’re human as much as we forget that from time to time. Just like us, they get hurt, and just like some of those in society, sometimes they make incredibly bad decisions in their life. If we looked at a dynasty team following the Super Bowl last season that featured Aaron Hernandez, Michael Crabtree, Jeremy Maclin, Percy Harvin, Joseph Morgan, Danario Alexander and Dennis Pitta on their roster, I think anyone looking at this team just two months ago would have agreed they would likely be an odds on favorite to win at least some money this season. However, as I said, players are human, and as humans, they have the ability to disappoint us at any given time.
Deep inside, we all know the possibility exists that any one (or more) of our players could suffer an injury or do something that will affect their playing time. Football is a dangerous game played by human beings who have lives outside of their job, just as we all do. In the end, we ignore this. We even put it out of our minds, because doing so allows us to be able to look at what a player can do for our team, not what they can do to it. Ultimately, when one of these unfortunate events occurs we pretend in our own ways to be shocked, but deep down we knew it was coming – we just didn’t know who it was going to happen to.
What happens after the event is what is truly the amazing part – people flat out lose their minds.
Whenever a major injury or event that endangers a players playing time occurs, people immediately overreact. At times, I do it as well (I’ll share later). People who are very steady dynasty players through the season suddenly turn completely kneejerk. More often than not the kneejerk reaction isn’t the best action to take. Many times, in fact, kneejerk reactions can hurt your team more than staying the course would have. In short, very rational people have a tendency to turn completely irrational when faced with a situation which places a great amount of stress on them or on those things they value, such as a fantasy football team. This behavior is why people refuse to evacuate in disasters, it’s why people buy absolutely everything in supermarkets before a disaster hits even if they don’t need 18 bags of flour, and it is also why people panic sell when the stock market drops substantially. In the end, this kind of behavior is often very destructive to those who engage in it. For instance, if someone didn’t evacuate in the face of a disaster, they could lose their life protecting a home that gets destroyed anyways. If a person buys 18 bags of flour, they will be unable to use it before it goes bad and regret not targeting something much more immediately required like water or ready to eat food. Finally, selling off stocks in a panic just helps solidify the loss an investor was initially worried about as opposed to holding those stocks until the stock market turned around.
So, why am I sharing this dark part of human psychology?
Simple, this same behavior gets played out after every major injury and stupid decision a player makes. We all see it, some of us even engage in it anywhere from every once in a while to every time a similar situation arises. How many of us honestly think Visanthe Shiancoe is going to be all that viable either short or long term? However, if you play in a few leagues you likely saw him picked up on waivers after Dennis Pitta’s injury. Sometimes it was by the Pitta owners and at other times it was by someone looking to either get one over on the Pitta owner or hoping that they can get a breakout player. Suddenly, we are all digging for any tidbit of information about who the affected NFL team is looking at or going over that team’s depth chart with a microscope. Names like Ricardo Lockette and Damaris Johnson suddenly appear like a rabbit manifested from inside a magicians hat. Are these players even worthy of a mention, much less a roster spot? Rarely, but like clockwork they suddenly fly up most recently acquired lists on various fantasy hosting sites. Owners attempt to grab them before one another like pigeons trampling one another for a bit of bread or carp writhing in anticipation and gluttony over any item tossed into the middle of their frenzy.
Don’t do it.
Pause.
Step back.
I understand just how difficult it is to not partake in this behavior, I want to do it as well many times. The behavior is bred into us, it’s part of our nature to want to obtain a resource before others do. However, just because it is part of our nature doesn’t always make it right. Want proof? Try this instead – take a look back at the waiver transactions that occurred on the weekend of July 27th and July 28th. Maybe your league is more disciplined, but in a huge number of leagues people were scooping up Riley Cooper, Arrelious Benn, Ed Dickson, Jason Avant and the aforementioned Damaris Johnson and Visanthe Shiancoe. In a large majority of these cases, the rush is completely unwarranted. Short of Damaris Johnson, who has yet to see much significant playing time, do any of us realistically believe any of these players are going to be all that productive? Unfortunately, the book has already been written on Benn as he’s joined others on the shelf with a torn ACL of his own.
Now, take a closer look at those transactions. Look on the flip side of each move and look at who was dropped. In many cases (not all, but many), the dropped players have a much greater long term value than the player most owners were acquiring. Greed, desire and a varied collection of other irrational behaviors were on display that weekend. I personally saw a lot of players dropped who should not have been. So, you know what I did? I went and picked up the dropped players, but largely ignored the name of the hour (or minute in some cases). Obtaining dropped players, provided the value is right, is what I affectionately call “taking advantage of the blowback.”
The word “blowback” is widely used in the intelligence community to describe an unforeseen consequence that occurs due to the actions of an intelligence entity. For all intents and purposes, it describes the action/reaction relationship that occurs during a miscalculation. In the fantasy football sense, many owners will miscalculate when they attempt to grab the hot new name on everyone’s lips. In their attempts to acquire those players, they usually must make room on their rosters to accommodate the targeted player. In most instances, the players they drop aren’t worth much, however, usually in leagues that have positional limits, owners may face harder decisions. It is in these instances that you see some of the most interesting roster drops.
Usually to accommodate an offensive player, owners will have to drop a player from the same position. In an effort to obtain the newest “must have” player, many owners have been unwisely dropping players with much better long term prospects than those who they are attempting to capitalize upon. For instance, here are some of the players dropped in order to chase the players I mentioned earlier: Julian Edelman, Scott Chandler, Jeremy Kerley, Lance Moore, Martellus Bennett and Andre Roberts. Now sure, most of these players aren’t what you could classify as studs, but each of them have a good amount of value for different reasons. Take Edelman, for instance. There is a lot of talk he will see the field more than most people expect, his upside is at least equal, if not greater than Jason Avant. How about Jeremy Kerley? Here is a player I’m grabbing everywhere I can because I feel he could be the next “PPR machine” we are talking about, perhaps as early as next season. When an owner discarded him in one of my leagues in order to grab Ed Dickson, I couldn’t contain my glee and scooped him up immediately. Andre Roberts was dropped by an owner in order to pursue Riley Cooper. While I can understand the desire to grab Maclin’s replacement, you won’t “replace” Maclin, you’ll simply have the player who plays in his position while he is out. Losing Roberts in order to grab that player is short-sighted to say the least.
Judging from the numerous conversations on Twitter, as well as the various questions I’ve been asked there, this kind of behavior is occurring with a good degree of regularity. If you are seeing this behavior in your leagues, I would like to caution you against joining in with the anxiety and conducting fear transactions of your own. I have found the best course of action is to simply let those engaging in this behavior do so on their own while you sit back and reap the true benefits. More often than not, you can find very solid depth in the hastily discarded players who were formerly on the rosters of the knee-jerk owners engaging in this behavior.
Every season we see “must have” names flare in popularity after a significant injury only to see those same players fizzle out or never produce. Waiver wires are filled with these names like Montario Hardesty, Evan Royster or Kevin Ogletree. Each of these players saw significant runs on their value following an injury to the player directly in front of them on the depth chart. These players and countless more simply weren’t worth what people usually drop in order to obtain them.
There are so many adages I could quote to close this story like, “A fool is born every minute,” or “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” but perhaps the best way to sum this article up is with a quote by a very smart man, one who knows a little something about value, Warren Buffet. Buffet has been quoted saying, “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” The quote is certainly profound in its simplicity and frankness.
While there isn’t much to add to that quote, I’d like to at least try. When applying and extending the quote to fantasy football, the price IS the value one gives up for the new waiver “superstar.”
The value that is regularly given up for being able to temporarily gloat or succumbing to one’s fears or greed usually comes with its own price – losses during the season.
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