How Is My Fantasy Football Team 5-0?

*FAN SUBMISSION by Todd Weaver of Carmel, CA.*

Courtesy: ESPN

I have never played fantasy football before, I haven’t ever set my schedule around any sporting event besides the Super Bowl, but I am currently sitting as the only team in my league of 12 teams with 5 wins and 0 losses and 630pts. Second place is 4-1 with 493pts, and the rest of the field is 3-2, or worse, all with less than 500pts. Was I hiding a hidden talent? Was it luck? How did this happen?

It all started Thursday, August 21st, 2014, while playing hold’em poker at a friends house, when he said “You have to be in our Fantasy League.” I responded, “I’ve never done it, but I suppose I could.” He immediately added me to the league from his mobile phone, with a smile on his face, which could only mean he was planning on taking my money.

The following day, I texted my sports fanatic brother (where like what I assume is the normal family dynamic, there are experts within your family at certain things, while others excel in other areas). “Hey bro, I got suckered into a fantasy league, a draft is happening Sunday night, can you help me?” He replied “Yep.”

I then setup a Yahoo! account to draft from, and saw a Co-Manager option, so I quickly typed in by brother’s email, hit return to add him, and went on to setup my team, aptly named “Fuster Cluck”, and began to do a mock draft so I could have some familiarity with the interface comeSunday.

Saturday my brother texted me “Got your invite to be Co-Manager, so I’ll just sit on the draft with you and draft the players with you.” I replied “Awesome!” thinking I just scored not having to do much of anything. Which reminded me about The Seven Chinese Brothers story by Margaret Mahy where I can summon my brother’s talents (sport knowledge), to save my life (embarrassment), from the evil emperor (league commissioner).

Sunday evening comes with great excitement knowing my brother will knock it out of the park, uhm… I mean (to use the right sports metaphor) score a touchdown. I head over to my friends house to have the live league draft, on my way I get a text message “I cannot log in” it was from my brother. I arrived and quickly setup my laptop. I couldn’t log in either. We get a posting on the league message board that reads “Important Notice: Drafts are currently experiencing issues for Yahoo Fantasy Football – Yeah, we know this is a problem! The Yahoo Fantasy Football team is on the clock, and we’ll provide support for all affected players in leagues as soon as possible.”

I proceeded to scoff at Yahoo! not understanding throughput, traffic spikes, and high availability, showing my brotherly talent, to which my brother replied “This is sadly typical. It’s 2014 and these fantasy sites are still all buggy as a motherfucker.” and followed with “Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, NFL.com … Doesn’t matter. All shit.” With one more rant to follow “You have to REGISTER for a draft ahead of time, so they should know the flood is coming! Stupid. Always happens though.” So our league decided to postpone the draft until Tuesday night.

Tuesday night was not a problem for any managers in the league, just one Co-Manager, my brother. He texted Monday afternoon “I’ll be at the M’s game. So maybe we should pow-wow ahead of time and talk strategy. It ain’t hard.” I gasped, thinking my brothers talents will not save my life after all. I’m all alone. I write back “Ugh. OK, since I’ve never done it, start there. Should we do a call?” He writes back “No need, I’ll just text you how I do it. Then you follow that.” Was I really going to get my entire advice written via text messaging?

One minute later I received this: “Round 1: RB, 2: RB, 3: WR, 4: WR, 5: Bye Week RB, 6: TE, 7: QB, 8: WR, 9: WR, 10: Bye week QB, 11: Bye week TE, 12: RB, 13: RB, 14: DEF, 15: K.” What followed was “Since there is only 32 teams, the RBs statistically get gobbled up, so grab them first, then WRs, Round 7 get a QB, grab your DEF and K last, picking a high scoring K is pure luck.” I replied, “Good order, and advice, but which players exactly, or how do I know how they rank?” My brother, probably laughing at my ignorance at the message, replied “Yahoo! ranks ’em. just get the best available when it’s your pick.” Yes, I did just receive all my advice via text messaging, and I felt good about it.

Courtesy: LA Times

Fuster Cluck was selected to draft 10th in a 12 team league. I followed my brothers advice to the letter, Round 1: Marshawn Lynch (Sea – RB), 2: DeMarco Murray (Dal – RB), 3: Antonio Brown (Pit – WR), 4: Victor Cruz (NYG – WR), 5: Bishop Sankey (Ten – RB), 6: Jordan Cameron (Cle – TE), 7: Russell Wilson (Sea – QB), 8: Mike Wallace (Mia – WR), 9: Rueben Randle (NYG – WR), 10: Ben Roethlisberger (Pit – QB), 11: Charles Clay (Mia – TE), 12: Christine Michael (Sea – RB), 13: Mark Ingram (NO – RB), 14: Kansas City (KC – DEF), 15: Dan Carpenter (Buf – K). Yahoo! graded my draft as a B, and for relativity the highest grade awarded in our league as a B+.

Next up comes Week 1, I played my top talent by projected points, and end up winning 119.04 to 91.76 (week 5’s 2nd place team). Week 2, I played top talent, 115.58 to 68.64 (week 5’s 4th place). Week 3: 138.52 to 98.44 (week 5’s 3rd place). Week 4, I had to play my bye week players: 141.24 to 54.58 (week 5’s 8th place). Week 5, 116.90 to 66.93 (week 5’s 7th place). In all fairness, there was one strategy my brother did mention a little trick “Once we know the weak teams on offense, we will pick the DEF that goes against them from the waiver wire when available.” Which is the only active strategy (besides adjusting for bye weeks) that I have implemented.

After an undefeated week 5, I texted my brother “Undefeated! Why? I have no idea…” He replied “A statistically good draft selection practice… Coupled with a shitload of luck.” I laughed, he added a second message “By the way, I’m sure you know this, but we’re gonna lose at some point. Too much luck and randomness involved. But it’ll be fun to see how long we can go before we get beat.”

Which reminded me of two statistic related lines from two of my favorite sports movies. First, Bull Durham: “Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It’s 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points, okay? There’s 6 months in a season, that’s about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week – just one – a gorp… you get a ground ball, you get a ground ball with eyes… you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week… and you’re in Yankee Stadium.” — Crash Davis. Second, Diggstown: “He’s doable. Unless, of course, he gets lucky. You can always get lucky, you know.” — ‘Honey’ Roy Palmer.

Fantasy Football has turned out to be a lot more fun than I anticipated, smack talking, religiously checking scores, watching players, and of course winning. “I like winning, it’s like better than losing!” — Ebby Calvin ‘Nuke’ LaLoosh (from Bull Durham). Here’s hoping my luck will continue even with my statistically better drafted team.