Photo: Derick E. Hingle, USA Today Sports

This weekly feature has been exclusively about dynasty fantasy football since August, but I wanted to hit the pause button for one week and share a recent eye-opening experience. This goes beyond just how we view fantasy football. It is also a microcosm about how we can view the world and shrink our surrounding awareness to the point that we barely let the sun emblazon our faces and the refreshing wind grace our cheeks.

Over the past couple of weeks I dipped my toe into the world of daily/weekly fantasy football. The past few seasons my dynasty and keeper leagues have easily outnumbered redraft ones. I love the challenge of acquiring and trading away players for potentially the rest of their career, where keeper and dynasty leagues are the only options for that. In all honesty, I did not see the appeal of wiping the slate clean every single week for an entirely new outlook and strategy. That point is the very thing that struck me as the addicting appeal once I signed up, got involved, and built a few weekly football teams. I am officially hooked.

I realized that dynasty teams, for better or worse, put you into a box in a few aspects. Players can be acquired via trade, rookie draft, or the waiver wire. To get a player off your roster, they can be traded or dropped. All of those avenues require the assistance (or decision-making) of other people to allow you to acquire or draft a particular player. If you love a rookie, the only sure-fire way to get them is to have the 1.01 pick. Want a free agent? The waiver process stands in your way. What if a few teams in the league rarely, if ever trade? All stumbling blocks to having the team you desire.

In weekly and daily fantasy football, it is completely different. You can have any player you want, any singular week. That type of freedom was a little overwhelming at the outset. ‘What? I can have any player this week? For only this week if I choose?’ My once closed-off world of similar core players across most of my teams with the same spectrum of sit-start decisions weekly had been rolled up, thrown into the fireplace, and burned. The rules left. The restrictions were suddenly just a salary cap and sometimes not even that depending on the format. My world was turned upside-down and I liked it.

The data-head side of me (okay, I admit, 90% or more of my brain) immediately was rushing with an adrenaline I had not felt since preparing for my first few dynasty start-up drafts or keeper auctions years ago. ‘Yes! A new spreadsheet to update on a weekly basis!’ Yes, that really happened. Immediately I copied the player price lists from the daily sites and set up a few Excel sheets. My creative juices were alive again, thirsting for information.

Fantasy football with player salaries has always appealed to me because it creates a secondary decision to player selection. ‘Yes, you can have any player you want, but it will cost you X’ is the mentality and I love the idea of team construction in this manner. Want Drew Brees against the seemingly-packing-it-in Falcons defense this week? Not a problem, enjoy, but it will cost you a big chunk of the budget. While I did not play many (if any) of those fantasy contests decades ago printed in magazines and newspapers, I loved the concept. Now, it is back in my life and giving me a new energy towards the hobby.

After crunching all the numbers from player salaries, matchups, projections, and the like, I was ready to submit some Week 11 teams. I am not one to walk into a casino with hundreds of dollars in cash as a newbie, so I was dipping my toe into the daily waters in just a few contests with entry fees ranging from $2 to $10. Spread the risk, see what happens, and enjoy the ride.

When assessing the landscape of the Week 11 salaries, two players stuck out as great values and became the centerpieces of all of my teams: Antonio Brown and Vincent Jackson. When I first saw the player value lists, these two seemed like misprints.  Ironically, those are two players that I cannot recall ever owning in a keeper or dynasty league. That was the beauty of this rinse-and-repeat format. I did not have to commit to a player for years upon years, or even until Thanksgiving. I was committing to them for that game and that game only. I loved Jackson as a top-five receiver against Atlanta. Mike Glennon has eyes for him and really, who else is there in the Tampa Bay passing game. Antonio Brown was playing an equally-challenged secondary in Detroit. As the games played out, it felt surreal when all but one of my weekly teams cashed out and both Brown and Jackson were top plays for the week. Of course every gut feeling does not pan out so cleanly, as predicting individual games and player outcomes is an extensive challenge. Just ask anyone who does weekly projections. The ebb-and-flow of the NFL on a weekly basis can be swift and powerful. That is also what made it so enjoyable. I will always remember my first triumph in the daily space, thanks to two players that I did not covet in longer-term formats.

After that Sunday, I can wipe my hands of Brown and Jackson and clear the palette if I so choose. I do not have to concern myself with the likely upheaval in Tampa Bay after this season or the development of Markus Wheaton and the erosion of Ben Roethlisberger in Pittsburgh. Those are longer term issues. The simplicity of the daily is that they were a great deal in Week 11. It is that cut-and-dry. Great matchups, the targets were expected to be there, and both performed well given those two parameters. What did the next week hold in terms of value? I could not wait until the salaries were released for Week 12. I was like a kid at Christmas after getting my first real exposure to the daily games. With profits in hand, I was ready for another round. Why did I not take the leap of faith prior to the second half of 2013? I felt excited, but also like I had been stubbornly missing out of another way to enjoy this great game.

The perks are obvious. The impact of injuries is reduced to a loss of production for the rest of the game only. A game-time injury scratch does not limit an owner to the waiver wire fodder as a desperation play, left wondering what will happen the following week or the rest of the season; the entire spectrum of the position is open and the roster construction for the entire team can be molded to accommodate a higher-priced option if needed. A run of bad matchups or a shift in NFL team philosophy, a backup quarterback sapping all the value from a stud receiver? Not a problem, just shift your weekly capital to greener pastures. Daily rosters are a piece of clay at the beginning of the week. Each owner gets a piece the same size, how they mold it is up to them.

Another log added to the daily fantasy football fire last week was the timely On The Couch podcast subject matter. The great David Dodds and up-and-comer Davis Mattek were on discussing this very subject. I was listening while walking a dog and 30 minutes had never gone by so fast as a knowledge-thirsty freshman to the daily world. In addition to David Dodds’ blog chronicling his $50,000 voyage into the daily world this season, Footballguys of course has the subject well-covered on a weekly basis with its own Daily Games section in the premium content. Over the course of seven days, it was the perfect storm to start off my own, with a far smaller bankroll at the outset, journey into this world of daily fantasy football games.

Next week, it will be back to the assessing the long-term player value in the dynasty format, my first love in fantasy football. The surging energy and excitement of the weekly game siphoned all of my post-dynasty league trade deadline attention, a well-timed adventure I cannot wait to explore further as another avenue to enjoy this great game.