Managing Risk on Your 2007 Fantasy RosterPosted 7/18 by Mark Wimer, Exclusive to Footballguys.comFantasy football is about more than just statistics and projections. While raw data about the players' anticipated on-field performance is useful and can help us on draft day in the selection process (once compiled and sorted), it doesn't paint the whole picture. Beyond what happens on game-day, we need to remember that players are members of a team - a political structure composed of human beings, with a dictator the top of the heap (usually the head coach). In addition, each player has behavioral/mental dimensions that may affect the level of success he achieves in the course of a NFL season. In order for your fantasy franchise to triumph during any given season, you need to manage the "intangible" risks that have bearing on your players' chances for success. What kind of risks can drag down your franchise's players? The list includes (but is not limited to):
Many times the mantra "you can't predict injuries" is repeated in fantasy circles - and in some cases, perhaps most cases, this is true. However, certain types of injuries - the "chronic" or "degenerative" injury - are definitely the sort of condition that a fantasy owner can rely on to manifest at some point in the season. For example, tendon and cartilage damage in a player's hip joint. Tendons/cartilage don't heal very well, because they don't get much blood flow - once they are damaged, a player needs to turn to pain management techniques precisely because the condition isn't likely to be reversed. A clear example of a player suffering from a degenerative condition entering 2007 is Denver WR Rod Smith. After aching for three years and being unable to sleep throughout the 2006 season due to the pain in his left hip, Smith went to seek medical advice and the doctors discovered degenerative damage, a torn labrum, injured ligaments, and bone spurs in his left hip. Corrective surgery was performed, but Smith's rehabilitation is proceeding slowly. He has yet to practice during 2007. If you draft a player with a known chronic condition, such as Smith’s bad hip, you'll want to also draft his backup as well, if possible. Attitude problems are another factor which can negatively impact a player's production - they can lead to sloppy practice habits, mental lapses during games, problems with teammates, or confrontations with the coaching staff. As we discussed at the top, a football team is a political entity - if a player becomes a "locker-room cancer", then the coaching staff might decide to put him in the doghouse ("Grab a piece of the bench and shut-up!"). Attitude problems don't always send a player to the doghouse, but they will help him on the way there. LenDale White of Tennessee is a prime example of a player entering 2007 with an attitude/motivation problem – he showed up to minicamps/OTAs overweight and out-of-shape, and promptly sat out of workouts due to a reputed hamstring injury, and then failed to report to a late-May minicamp at the appointed time. The Titans eventually re-signed Chris Brown to the roster as they got tired of White's continuing issues with attitude/motivation. Of course, attitude problems aren't the only way to get in the coach's doghouse. Another tried and true method of reducing one's playing time in the NFL is to holdout during mini- and training camp practices, or a large portion of them. At the least, a holdout will usually lead a player to a poor start, and some coaches believe that missing a large part of preseason camp practice makes players more likely to suffer serious injury, because the holdout often isn't at the same level of condition as players who have been participating in the full slate of practices. Also, at the NFL level timing is a crucial factor in most offenses/defenses, and "getting up to speed" requires many repetitions - which a holdout player will lack in proportion to the length of their absence from the team. This year, it looks like Larry Johnson may hold out as a result of glacial contract negotiations with the Chiefs (some reports indicate he may be traded, see below for a discussion of relocating as a risk factor). Individual defensive players CB Asante Samuel (NE) and LB Lance Briggs (CHI) are both threatening 10-week, regular-season holdouts due to contract squabbles with their respective teams. Obviously, Samuel and Briggs are very risky propositions when it comes to placing them on a fantasy roster this year. Positional battles are another pitfall that can reduce a player's fantasy worth. NFL teams are constantly on the hunt for bigger, better, faster players - that's what the draft is all about - and guys who didn't look very good as rookies (especially at WR) often blossom in their second or third season, and rise up to challenge an established veteran. Knowing the quality of the back-up players on the various teams will help you assess the likelihood that a veteran player may become "yesterday's news". The Marshawn Lynch/Anthony Thomas/Dwayne Wright dynamic in Buffalo is a prime example of such a contest playing itself out during 2007. Further complicating the Buffalo situation this year is the insistence of coach Dick Jauron that he’ll go with a running back by committee approach if necessary. As Footballguys' staffers Andy Hicks and Chris Smith point out in their Face-off here, the situation in Buffalo is very fluid entering mid-July. In the era of free agency, players are in constant motion among the NFL teams. Big contracts get paid out to unrestricted and restricted free agents every offseason, and some of the moves are positive - but others just don't work out. This is especially true when a player is not only switching teams, but also offensive systems - there can be a negative impact on the player's fantasy value. When a big-name guy switches teams, pay particular attention to how he looks in training camp and preseason games. While the preseason games are played against vanilla defensive schemes and, for starters, only small amounts of game-time, if a player is lost with his new team, you'll see it manifest as bad decisions, dropped passes, and etc. Willis McGahee in Baltimore and Jamal Lewis in Cleveland are two running backs with new teams this year – their performance with their new teams during training camp will provide clues for fantasy owners evaluating their probable value during regular season. Sometimes, players don't leave a team - instead, some or all of the coaching staff is replaced. For example, Atlanta is undergoing such a transformation this year, with Bobby Petrino taking over the reins from Jim Mora Jr. Michael Vick's off-field problems just magnify the difficulties that the Falcons face this year – but the bottom line is that all of the Atlanta skill position players face a steep learning curve as they will be playing for an almost-entirely reworked coaching staff. There is a large uncertainty factor surrounding players like Warrick Dunn, Jerious Norwood and Alge Crumpler simply because we haven’t seen how the new coaching staff intends to utilize their respective talents – and we won’t see the full-blown offense in action until the flag drops on the upcoming NFL season. Last year's statistics and distributions of touches are not necessarily indicative of this year's game plan. Offensive line problems are an insidious factor, because cohesiveness of the entire unit is crucial to forge solid line play. Line play is what opens holes for running backs to exploit and provides the time necessary for passing plays to develop. If a team has a lot of quality OL players who miss time in camp due to a plague of minor injuries, the "quality" unit may play worse than another team's unit of average OL players who enjoy lots of repetitions in camp. Therefore, it is worth your while as a fantasy owner to monitor the relative healthiness of the 32 OL units across the NFL in the days leading up to your fantasy draft, and to pay attention to it as the season progresses. On the other side of the coin, when a team upgrades their OL – for example, San Francisco is on the cusp of signing OT Joe Staley to their team well before training camp opens – then fantasy owners might want to bump up a RB on the merits of the improved unit (Frank Gore, in this case). Off-field problems can lead to league suspensions, which vary in length from 4 games to entire seasons - in extreme circumstances, a player can even be banned from the NFL for life. If a player has had a series of run-ins with law enforcement, or has a history of substance-abuse problems, that player is a higher risk for suspension than better-behaved professional athletes (although sometimes even "nice" guys can give you a nasty surprise). Chris Chamber’s recent reckless driving/DWI incident in Charlotte, North Carolina is an example of one of the "nice" guys ending up on the wrong end of the law. Adam "Pacman" Jones is an example of one of the most unreliable characters in the NFL – if reports out of Nevada are true, Jones is an "ankle biter" of the worst sort. Finally, sometimes fantasy owners are big fans of a particular NFL team, and they fill up their roster with lots of players from that team. This obviously leads to big problems on that teams' bye-week - but there are other problems, too. Almost every NFL team has games during the season where things just don't go right, and the offense stalls or the defense stumbles. Maybe they are playing in a torrential downpour, or dealing with the arctic cold of Lambeau field in the winter. Anyway, a fantasy team that relies heavily on one NFL team will suffer a similar "power-outage". Also, relying heavily on just one NFL team means that any OL problems the team suffers during the course of the season will be very damaging to the fantasy squad. The Kansas City Chiefs have suffered a lot of attrition on their OL over the past 2 years – can Larry Johnson overcome the losses (assuming he isn’t traded?). So, how do we translate all these possible risk factors into a tool that you can use on draft day? A common approach is to include a column on your draft sheet that says "Injury Risk" or simply "?". The more negative qualitative factors you believe a player has against him, the more question marks accumulate in that column. Then, when you are debating between two or three players during the draft, you can help break ties in projected point value by referring to a player's potential risk level. Evaluating each player on your draft list in terms of "risk" will help you to draft the most consistent and solid fantasy football team around. Simply being able to break numerical ties on the basis of your risk analysis will make your entire mid-to-late round efforts easier - it's worth the investment of time and effort. Happy Drafting! |
