The Psychology of Dynasty Ownership, Session Three: Dynasty Depression

Jeremy Schwob Posted On April 15, 2020

Editor’s Note: If you missed this series last year, click here for session one and here for session two. This article is also written by Jeremy Schwob, one of our Member Corner writers.

Session 3: Dynasty depression: Similarity between mechanisms of depression and blaming of our players

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways. Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.” – Sigmund Freud

Biases are part of the common vernacular throughout the dynasty community. Most, if not all, have heard terms like recency bias (being influenced by events or performances occurring more closely to the present), confirmation bias (seeking out evidence in support of a claim or perspective while ignoring that to the contrary), and hindsight bias (perceiving events as more predictable afterward than they were before they took place). However, biases are inherent within all of us. They comprise some of our individuality. Even us most data-driven individuals are biased by what metrics we attend to, and what variables we input into our models.

So why are biases viewed as such bad things? Typically, biases that are influencing our perceptions, interpretations, and decisions occur unbeknownst to us. Often, we have to be told our logic is faulty or we have a biased perspective. As Freud tells us, we need to be honest with ourselves. Someone claiming they are completely unbiased displays their ignorance or misunderstanding of what biases are in principle. As dynasty owners reading this article, the goal will be to increase your understanding of a specific pathway that may form biases and impact our player perceptions. This trajectory also looks eerily similar to the formation of clinical depression.

Depression in the context of dynasty could at the surface mean being sad about your cellar dwelling or stagnant team. Yet some are very pleased with their structure, process, or direction of their rebuilding squad. This circumstances-focused view of depression is quite a misconception. Depression is not simply an accumulation of difficult external circumstances. While external hardships play a role, we need to dig much deeper to better understand how the mechanisms of depression impact our dynasty rosters.

Coining a “dynasty depression” term is by no means an attempt to make light of clinical depression that you or someone you know may be experiencing or have experienced. I have the opportunity to conduct psychotherapy with individuals battling depression on a weekly basis, and I empathize with its severe, debilitating nature. Instead, discussing dynasty depression will hopefully present a way to better understand a mechanistic structure of depression and how dynasty decision-making can be negatively influenced.

Depressive Beginnings

A common way for depressive emotions to initiate is with excessive attention toward a particular negatively perceived trait (e.g., insensitivity, selfishness, unattractiveness, etc.) or another presumed deficiency. By overemphasizing the presence of such an undesirable characteristic, the individual makes oneself the target of attack. This becomes routine as the individual begins to regard the self to be at fault for the deficiency and deserving of blame. This view begins to spread from a particular trait to totality of the self-concept and is often accompanied by feelings of self-revulsion. Ultimately, this results in self-rejection, dissatisfaction, and a depressed mood characterized by feeling down, worthless, hopeless, and empty.

This self-concept and associated negative feelings are maintained by downgrading qualities closely linked with gratification. In depreciating the self, the individual communicates they are no longer deserving of positive regard. The loss of gratification creates a mechanism reversing the direction of excitement from gratification and maintains negative emotions. Further, the individual tends to lose interest in activities or aspects of activities previously enjoyable. Socially, the individual may then isolate themselves due to their perceived lack of appeal, diminished energy, and aforementioned decreased interest.

Dynasty Depression

The same mechanism appears to exist in placing blame on others – or for dynasty purposes, your players. Considering this sequence, you may find some negative trait (e.g., drops, injuries, a bad route leading to an interception, dud games or instability of performance, etc.) you notice in a player. You may overemphasize such a trait and generalize this perceived characteristic flaw to encompass the total image of the player. You may say “he has terrible hands,” “he’s always injured,” “he’s a bad route runner,” or “he’s so inconsistent.” What started as a perceived negative trait may envelop the entire characterization of the player until you completely sour on them. Subsequently, the player may be deemed at fault for a lack of success in a certain match-up or across a few weeks. This can be especially true if such weeks are perceived as particularly important (i.e., crucial match-ups leading up to or during the dynasty playoffs). Eventually, you may lose hope for such a player and develop an overall down mood toward them with decreased expectations for their performance.

With the assumption they are worthless and hopeless contributors, the player may be viewed as a stagnant or declining asset you hate to look at when you pull up our roster. After such judgement, you may consider ways to punish the player (maybe refusing to start them in your lineup or reconsidering if the player is still in your long-term plans). Finally, because the player has brought you distrust, frustration, or anger, you may want to sever the relationship and seek out a trade. The consequences of this could be selling extremely low on a player simply because you have soured on them. Additionally, you may be giving in to bias while abandoning a player who fits your defined process.

By downgrading gratifying qualities (e.g., solid games, overall production, or attractiveness of situation), you take away gratification from associated with the player. In depreciating the player’s performance, the dynasty depressed owner is in effect saying, “I can no longer enjoy this player, their positive performances, or the benefits he has provided my team.” The familiar mechanism reveals itself through continued frustration around a player regardless of their output.

Dynasty Depression in the Community

We also can be dynasty depressed as a community as negative news and chatter on Twitter turn into dynasty mock drafts, which become real startup drafts, accumulate into ADP, and then are quantified into a component of trade calculators. This culminates into that player’s “value” and that to me seems a little dangerous. It subjects us to community bias which can be emblematic of a Groupthink mentality if we aren’t careful. Dynasty owners may even seek out other negative opinions of the player they have developed an aversion toward to further depress themselves toward a player.

This is why I present an overall caution against overreliance on “value.” This construct can subjectively switch very quickly even on a community-level. I am a very strong proponent of the use of DLF’s amazing tools like the DLF Trade Finder, DLF ADP and Rookie ADP, and DLF Dynasty and DLF Rookie Rankings from our great team. However, these tools should augment your process and inform aspects of your decision-making. Frequently, I see Twitter commentary or in a trade offers citing a screenshotted trade calculator value indicating an uneven deal. The use of such tools in isolation to make your case can produce bias toward your stance or desired outcome. Again, the important piece is awareness. Being cognizant of how these things can influence (or have been influencing us), can help us prevent regrettable decisions that do not align with our process. It’s important to be Bayesian and adjust as necessary, especially when the entire community is adjusting. However, make alterations within the confines of things that are important to you and your process, not just because others are doing it.

As with my other articles, I want to leave you with a take-home tool to help identify any patterns that could be problematic if you are unaware of their influence.

Dynasty Depression Exercise

First, go through your rosters and determine which players you own most frequently across your leagues.
When you have a list of about 7-10 players, go individually and think about what pops in your head for each player? Remember, Freud tells us to be honest here. It doesn’t benefit you to excel at this exercise if you are hiding your biases.
Dissect what few things for each player popped in your head. Is it an NFL team, college affiliation, or draft position? Is it a film grade or something you saw on tape? Is it an athletic profile or metric(s) significant to you for better or worse? Is it more of a personal experience like an injury or poor performance that derailed a playoff run? Did you draft them highly in a startup or rookie draft but they have never met those expectations? Do you have trouble feeling confident in starting them week-to-week? Is it an injury history that you have an opinion about?
Ask yourself then if any of these aspects biasing you toward an opinion of that player? The short answer is likely yes, if you’re being honest. More importantly, is something that came to mind to conceptualize that player drowning out other things?
Repeat each of the steps with players you have very little exposure to by looking at DLF ADP. It may be valuable to ignore some of the top players who you may not have had the opportunity to own due to their difficulty to acquire. It would be more informative to look for players you have chosen against over and over again in startups or not sought out in trades. I’d suggest focusing on players 25 – 150. Some players may quickly jump out to you, whereas others you may scan over. Go through the DLF ADP list at least twice to get a mix of each of these with about 7-10 total names. Find out if there are any biases against particular players. Again, be honest.

In an upcoming article, I will discuss how one of these fractured relationships with a player may be mended when I take you and the player to couples therapy. But for now, I’ll only challenge you to identify biases related to certain players and see if they are negatively impacting your teams.

One of the driving forces behind the maintenance and worsening of depression is declining social connections. In the spirit of overcoming your dynasty depression, utilize your social connections! Ask another dynasty player to complete the exercise with you. Have them guide you through the steps. I have mentioned we are frequently unaware of our biases. The other person may attend to the specific phrasing you use to describe a player you didn’t recognize. You can also continue to do this with basically any player and see where you have intentional or unintentional blind spots that may be driven by biases.

I hope you have gathered general knowledge of biases and depression, a better understanding of how these concepts can impact us as dynasty owners, and (as always) an exercise to increase awareness of dynasty depression thinking traps that may trigger poor dynasty decision-making.

That’s all we have time for today. I look forward to seeing you for our next session.

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Jeremy Schwob

Contributor at Dynasty League Football

Jeremy is a doctoral student in clinical psychology at Penn State. He is an avid fan of St. Louis sports and the Dayton Flyers. You can find him advocating for wide receivers and pushing that value is misused as fact on Twitter.