Photo: Andrew Weber, USA Today Sports

The Big Takeaway

Here at “Dynasty, in Practice”, our mission statement is “providing specific, actionable suggestions for dynasty success”. We’re not like those dreamers over at “Dynasty, in Theory”, sitting around in their ivory towers pontificating about esoteric theories of dubious practical value.

In fact, our corporate lawyers once tried to brand us together under one banner as “promulgating a client-centric series of best practices to synergistically leverage a holistic approach to dynasty domination”, but we threatened a revolt. We’re straightforward people providing straightforward solutions to straightforward problems. If we were to follow a formula, that formula would be “If X, then Y, resulting in Z”, where Z is always “success”.

While our mission statement demands both specificity and actionability, no mention is made of importance. Sometimes we will write about things that have earth-shaking consequences for the balance of power, and that’s great.

This isn’t one of those times.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

You’ve probably heard this rhyme before, or are familiar with the sentiment it espouses. The sentiment is also sometimes known as the “butterfly effect”- the idea that a butterfly could flap its wings and start a chain reaction that resulted in a hurricane on the other side of the world. Basically, small advantages or small disadvantages can compound into huge swings.

My experience in one of my leagues this week made me think of one of those potential small advantages. The overwhelming majority of the fantasy community is under a seemingly trivial misapprehension. Most owners believe that, when setting a starting lineup, their primary consideration should be selecting the players who will score the most points. Surprisingly enough, this is not the case.

You see, our goal in any given week is not to score points. Our goal in any given week is to win our game. We shouldn’t be thinking about what we can do to score the most points possible. We should be thinking about what we can do to maximize our chances of winning.

This seems like an insignificant distinction, since scoring points is the primary vehicle by which we win matches. And 99.9% of the time, it’s true, both mindsets will lead to the same place. But for those who think the distinction is meaningless, I’d like to suggest a hypothetical.

Imagine you are playing in a touchdown-only league where all TDs (rushing, receiving, and passing) are worth six points. After Sunday’s action you are behind by one point. Your opponent is starting Drew Brees in the Monday Night game, and you are faced with a choice between using Jimmy Graham or Khiry Robinson.

The “maximize points” crowd knows that the Jimmy Graham is the obvious choice. Since the beginning of the 2011 season, only Marshawn Lynch has reached the end zone more often. Robinson, on the other hand, has scored three touchdowns— not just for this season, but for his entire career.

Think that situation through, though. In order to win, you need to start a player who scores more touchdowns rushing and receiving than Drew Brees scores passing. A receiving touchdown for Jimmy Graham, however, is also a passing touchdown for Drew Brees (barring an injury to Brees or a gadget play, of course). Jimmy Graham could have a 9-touchdown day and you would still lose, because Drew Brees also had a 9-touchdown day, (at least). Starting Jimmy Graham maximizes your points, but gives you no chance to win.

Starting Khiry Robinson is a long-shot, of course. The odds that Khiry Robinson has more rushing touchdowns than Brees has passing touchdowns are minuscule. They are still better than the odds you will get when you start Jimmy Graham. In this case, taking the option that will likely produce fewer points gives you a better chance of winning.

Obviously this is an obscure situation— few people play in strict touchdown-only leagues anymore— but the principal applies more broadly. This last weekend, I found myself down by 50 points with only Rob Gronkowski left to go. My opponent had a choice between starting Cincinnati’s defense or New England’s defense. Rob Gronkowski’s career-best game was only 49.0 fantasy points, but the scoring system was performance-based and defenses can, (and frequently do), score negative points.

Clearly Cincinnati’s defense was the better play in a vacuum. They had outscored New England’s defense by a significant margin, and New England’s offense had looked horrible in recent weeks; they had been shut down in back-to-back games by Oakland and Kansas City. Pretty much every expert had Cincinnati’s defense ranked ahead of New England’s.

Nevertheless, based on the particulars of the situation, New England’s defense would have been the better play.

Consider: my only hope for a victory was both (1) a big game from Rob Gronkowski and (2) a bad game from whatever defense my opponent started. Now, a big game from Rob Gronkowski would directly correlate with a bad game from Cincinnati’s defense. If my opponent started Cincinnati, every Gronkowski touchdown would count twice- once for me, and once against him. On the other hand, there would be almost no correlation between how well Rob Gronkowski performed and how well New England’s defense performed*.

In other words, if my opponent started Cincinnati, I only needed one thing to go right to win my game- I needed Rob Gronkowski (and New England’s offense in general) to have a big game. If my opponent started New England, I would need a big game from Rob Gronkowski and a big game from Cincinnati’s offense. That’s two things that would have to go my way, and as anyone who has ever bet any parlays knows, the more things you need to go right, the less likely it becomes that they all will.

By starting Cincinnati instead of New England— by going with the “chalk” pick and maximizing expected points— my opponent simplified my path to a victory. The story of how I could win became much less complicated. And, in fact, that’s exactly what happened- New England’s offense came alive, Rob Gronkowski had his best game of the season, and I walked away with an improbable come-from-behind victory.

So what is the specific, actionable advice, here? It is this: never forget that your goal is not to score points, it is to win games. When setting your lineups early, it's probably best to select the guys you believe will score the most points. But whenever you get an opportunity after Sunday's games, take a look at who you have left to play and see if there are any situations like this available to you, where you can swap players around and make the story of your opponent's potential comeback significantly more complicated to tell, (or, alternately, the story of your own comeback substantially easier to tell).

Situations like mine last week are rare; you might play fantasy for a decade and only come across one or two. The odds that both owners have exactly the right combination of players for considerations like hedging or variance to be a factor are remote. And even after my opponent started Cincinnati, by far the most likely outcome was that the decision would be rendered irrelevant and I would lose either way.

Still, you never know when small advantages like these might result in the one extra win that makes the difference between a fluky championship run and missing the playoffs. Sometimes one small nail is all that stands between the kingdom and collapse.

 * One note: it could be argued that there is a slight correlation between how well Gronkowski performed and how poorly New England’s defense fared, in that a big game from one offense often leads to a shootout. If Gronkowski caught a couple of early touchdowns, Cincinnati might open up their offense in response and score more points. Likewise, if New England gave up a lot of early points, they might unleash Gronkowski to try to get back into the game. Whether this argument is true or not is actually irrelevant to this hypothetical; if New England and Cincinnati got into a shootout, then both defenses would have fared poorly and it wouldn’t have mattered which one my opponent started.

The Big Takeaway (Special Bonus Edition)

Given certain events over the last week, I wanted to write a second takeaway. It seems that every year we are given a new crop of boring incumbent running backs, and a brand new crop of exciting, unproven talents eager to unseat them.

As fantasy owners, it’s only natural for the excitement to get the better of us, but it’s important to remember that “has potential” is just a buzzword for “hasn’t done anything yet”.

Ben Tate served as the most recent example this week. Tate is a 26-year-old veteran who drew little enough interest in free agency in the offseason. He was backed up by two highly-regarded rookies. When Tate was injured early in the year, many assumed that it was only a matter of time before one of the rookies took the Cleveland RB job for his own.

Instead, despite solid performances by both West and Crowell, Tate returned to action and immediately resumed his stranglehold on the starting job. This turn of events mirrored a pattern we saw earlier with Rashad Jennings (who held off the hyped rookie Andre Williams), Knowshon Moreno (who returned from an injury during the offseason to immediately reclaim his starting job), Matt Asiata (who thus far has held off the scintillatingly athletic Jerick McKinnon), Steven Jackson (who has yet to give way to rookie Devonta Freeman or the electric Antone Smith), Justin Forsett (who is experiencing a career renaissance at the expense of the trendy sleeper Lorenzo Taliaferro), Shonn Greene (who keeps getting the starting nod over Bishop Sankey, the first running back selected in this year’s draft), Darren McFadden and Maurice Jones-Drew (over the exciting Latavius Murray), Zac Stacy (over Benny Cunningham and Tre Mason), and Stevan Ridley/Shane Vereen (over offseason star James White).

Even San Francisco and Seattle fit the trend, with rising young stars Carlos Hyde and Christine Michael unable to break through past incumbents Frank Gore and Marshawn Lynch, who some seem eager to shuttle off to the side despite their past success. And while Montee Ball is just a sophomore himself (and was one of these “exciting young talents” that everyone expected to unseat boring incumbent Knowshon Moreno just last season), many seem ready to kick him out and hand the reigns over to undrafted C.J. Anderson, who was a healthy inactive in Denver’s last game.

The point is that these incumbents are not sexy. Most of them probably hold little long-term value. But if history is any indication, they are great bets to continue holding off the next generation, at least in the short term.

Fantasy owners are always eager to see the next big thing in action. NFL franchises tend to place a higher value on boring things like blocking and experience and familiarity and chemistry. It may not be sexy, but if it results in touches, fantasy owners would be wise to take note.

Second Thoughts

Speaking of Montee Ball and boring incumbents, here are my thoughts on the Denver running game. I believe that Ronnie Hillman is really the #2 back on that team. He sat out the 4th preseason game while C.J. Anderson played, suggesting the team already know what they had in Hillman while they wanted to evaluate Anderson more. Anderson played less than Hillman against Seattle, (indeed, Hillman received the majority of the snaps when Denver was in do-or-die mode). Anderson was inactive against Arizona. Most of the signs point pretty clearly to Hillman getting first crack at the job.

On the other hand, nothing in Hillman’s career to date inspires much confidence in his ability to do anything with the job, and Denver clearly liked Anderson enough to keep him around on their 53-man roster last year, despite receiving little in the way of actual contribution. Next week, things might well look different.

One thing I do believe, though, is that when Montee Ball is back healthy, Montee Ball will take back over as the lead back. He’s not a trendy pick right now. He’s not been playing phenomenally, although much of his struggles have not been his fault. But remember what I was saying about boring incumbents. Montee Ball topped the depth chart because of what the coaching staff had seen over the last two years. I doubt they’ll see enough in the next three to four weeks to change their mind dramatically. Montee Ball is a decent buy-low while his value is at rock bottom and people are waiting for him to be Wally Pipped.

I’d imagine a disproportionate number of my readers owned Percy Harvin during Monday night’s heartbreaker of a game, given my well-documented opinion of him. While losing all of those fantasy points is a gut punch, the fact that he scored the three touchdowns in the first place is undeniably a positive sign. Better days are on the horizon.

I’m not sure that I buy the idea that the switch from E.J. Manuel to Kyle Orton is what set Sammy Watkins free. Watkins was due for a good game just through simple regression. One thing that I do buy? Sammy Watkins has the skills to excel in the pros. Every time I see him play, he’s getting open. Not just NFL open, but college open. It’s rare to see a receiver consistently get that much separation. It’s rarer still to see it from a rookie.

I know that I have been a Cordarrelle Patterson hater in the past. I don’t think he’s good enough without the ball in his hands to be an NFL receiver right now. Cian Fahey had an excellent write-up on him this week. With that said, I’m quickly turning into a buyer on Patterson as his owners begin to panic. We knew he was going to be raw coming into the league. We also knew that, other than Percy Harvin, there wasn’t a receiver in the league who was more dangerous with the ball in his hands. Both of those things remain true. Patterson is a prodigious talent with tremendous upside. Clearly the short-term expectations were too high, but the long-term upside that everyone loved a month ago is still right there.

Speaking of raw receivers, Brian Quick is a great example of how short everyone’s memory is. Quick was drafted with the first pick of the second round in the 2012 NFL draft, (and as many of you know, I’m a big fan of draft position as an indicator of player talent. The consensus on him at the time was that, coming out of tiny Appalachian State, Quick was a project who would need several years to develop. After two seasons, everyone gave up on him. Now he’s looking like that initial scouting report was correct- he was a talented receiver who needed some time to develop. Some receivers— and especially athletically-gifted small-school receivers like Vincent Jackson and potentially Brian Quick— need a little bit longer to marinade before they’re ready for the bright lights. If you’re going to commit yourself to drafting a project in your rookie draft, be sure to be patient and give him the time he needs before giving up.

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