As the late hours of Wednesday night slowly transformed into the early hours of Thanksgiving morning I realized a situation I had envisaged many times before was now unfolding in front of me. It was as exciting and exhilarating as I imagined it would be and there was a large degree of fear and trepidation, again, just how I imagined. It had slowly crept up on me and I had no idea anything was happening as I went through the normal procedures of a Wednesday night. But then after dinner as I lounged on the couch I knew something was up. I had tried to ignore it and concentrate on something else but I was hopelessly failing. So I decided to stop kidding myself and embrace the situation wholeheartedly with ‘clear eyes and a full heart.’
The situation was my DFS team soaring up the ranks in a large field GPP. A 26,161 team GPP to be exact. I couldn’t quite use the complete Friday Night Lights mantra because, and this goes against the ethos of any good school sports day, technically I did lose. I came in second. It was still by far my highest DFS pay day and a thrilling experience. I love watching sports and playing normal fantasy football but let’s not mess around, this is the reason we all play DFS. There is nothing exciting about cashing in a $5 50/50. We play week in week out to take down a large field GPP. Well I’m here to tell you that it also feels good to come second. Another reason why Coach Taylor wouldn’t appreciate me using Dillon High School’s slogan is that this was a basketball GPP.
This blog is ostensibly about football and specifically fantasy football so I won’t go into any more detail except to say that the extra bump to my bankroll has of course been graciously received but it has also added a degree of pressure. I spend hours every week reading, researching and writing about daily fantasy FOOTBALL, not basketball. I love football and although I wouldn’t consider myself an expert I also feel as if I could hold my own in a conversation about football with most people. I do not feel like that about basketball. I am very much learning about basketball and it’s fantasy version. I need to validate this blog by winning big on a footballGPP. But before we do that, let’s look at why it won’t be happening this week under four distinct categories.
DeAndre Hopkins And The Question Of Personal Bias
Ah DeAndre. You might have heard a bit about DeAndre yesterday. He had a career day going 9-238 with two touchdowns. You might also remember me writing about him last week, even bestowing him with a place in the headline. If you didn’t read it and can’t be bothered to take a trip down memory lane, I subbed Anquan Boldin out of my main cash game line-up last week for DeAndre Hopkins. It cost me a lot of money and my sanity for most of Sunday afternoon. Fast forward to this week when I didn’t even consider rostering Hopkins. I just couldn’t. Just like last week, this was a mistake.
We’re just about done with week 13 as I write this on Monday morning. That’s a lot of line-ups built, tournaments entered, roster spots antagonized over and players that have let you down. It’s hard, almost impossible, to avoid picking a team without letting personal bias influence you. For one, it makes sense. If you started the year playing the likes of RG3, Doug Martin and Cordarelle Patterson but then quickly realized the error in your ways and vowed not to play them again, that was the correct choice. Your personal bias against these players has served you well.
Secondly, and more importantly, you only have eight spots (excluding defense) to fill every week, you need a reason to move on from a player. And I don’t mean just ignoring a player who has a juicy matchup. I mean players who cannot in your mind be separated in terms of opportunity to score points. The guy who has burned you repeatedly is not making that team. Knowing what I know now, I still don’t think I would have played Hopkins yesterday. Foster was back, Tennessee run D is awful, Fitzmagic, all those things were red flags outside of my history with him. But I can’t say I didn’t consider him. He was around that sneaky 5k range, the range where you can easily fit a player in and more crucially, the range that you’re usually left looking at when filling that crucial flex spot. Hopkins wasn’t an obvious miss, but God he was a pretty painful one. Next week I vow not to do the same with Charles Johnson who burned me this week, speaking of Johnson….
Charles Johnson And The Question Of Player Infatuation
I don’t know when exactly it happened but at some stage during last week I became infatuated with Charles Johnson, his matchup and his price this week. I ended up building 15 different line-ups, based around a core group of players I was targeting and specific tournament and cash game players. I used a lot of the same players but no one was more present than Johnson. He was on 9 of those 15 teams. I wasn’t alone, he was 11.9% owned in the millionaire maker, making him the 6th most popular WR of the week.
I guess it made sense given the amount of targets he had been getting, his raw size and speed and the fact that he was only 4k. But it’s the opposite of the Hopkins situation. You become so set on one player, especially when they are cheap, and insert them into almost every line up. The painful part of this for me was that my pivot away from Johnson was generally Kenny Stills, unfortunately he only managed to crack a handful of my line-ups. It’s a question we wrestle with every week, if you really believe in a player do you a) stick to your guns and ignore the huge level of variance we know exists in player performance (and the possibility of injury) or do you b) leave out a player who you’re really high on in an effort to diversify your line-ups. Failing to diversify with Johnson hurt me this week, on the other hand, sticking to my guns with Tre Mason worked out quite nicely. Speaking of Mason….
Tre Mason And The Question Of A Complete Line-Up
I’m pretty sure at about 1.24pm yesterday every one of the few thousand people who had an entry into the millionaire maker thought they were going to win it. I certainly allowed myself to dream for a moment or two. Tre Mason was running all over The Raiders (side note, is there anything better than watching an RB you own gallop about ninety yards for a TD, every time I see that I imagine the points pilling up like numbers on a slot machine) and touchdowns were coming in from all angles. I quickly realized it wouldn’t be me because although I had a lot of the players putting up big points, I didn’t quite find room for them on the one roster.
Glaringly obvious statement coming up here but, my god it’s hard to pick the perfect team. The majority of my Sundays are spent obsessing over the players I’ve missed rather than the ones I’ve selected, when you look at the list of available players this is almost inevitable, but yesterday it felt like I had a lot of high performing players. The problem (brilliance?) withDFS sports is that you need all of them. The only dead wood you can hold on a winning roster is one player who maybe scores in the 6-10 point range, depending on their price. You need an 8 man Red Zone highlight reel. I had a team with Fitzpatrick, Mason, Allen and Anderson that will probably end up has my highest scoring team and yup you guessed it, it’s a cash game team. I say probably as it still has the Dolphins D and Jarvis Landry yet to go, speaking of the Dolphins….
Ryan Tannehill And The Question Of Who To Root For
From early in the week I had been targeting Tannehill and the Dolphins D as my main QB and defense plays of the week. I loved Tannehill’s matchup against the suspect Jets secondary, the whiff of tanking from the Jets in general, Tannehill’s form coming into the game and the turnstile of Smith/Vick at QB. In the end I basically split between Luck and Tannehill as my main QB’s for both cash and GPP’s. Obviously the Luck play worked out but throughout Sunday I had an eye on Monday night thinking I could maybe add 30-40 points to some of my line-ups. It’s not all riding on Tannehill and the defense either, I have a bit of Wallace here, a bit of Landry there, even a cheeky smattering of Dion Sims. All in on the Dolphins tonight then, right?
Wrong. Although my highest scoring team is that cash game line-up mentioned above, my most profitable team (so far) was a team I stuck in an afternoon $2 tournament featuring the likes of Matt Ryan, Julio Jones, Harry Douglas and C.J Anderson. I’m currently fourth out of 5750 teams and in line for a tidy little payday. The only problem here is that there are precisely zero Dolphins players on this team. There’s also no Jets, what do you think I am, some sort of masochist? Barring an apocalyptic intervention I’m dropping down the standings as there are a bunch of teams with players going tonight behind me. Most of them probably have the Dolphins D and Tannehill. Much and all as I need them to score for the teams I have them rostered on, it will almost certainly end up costing me more money in the long run. That is of course unless Tannehill goes all Fiztpatrick on us and the Dolphins turn into the 2014 Rams. Then I might switch my allegiance again. I won’t know whether to laugh or cry, as both teams fail to score or actually score. It’s confusing, unsettling, worrying and also quite exciting. Just the way we like it then.
Thanks for reading, good luck to any of you sweating on some big bucks tonight and go Dolphins!……or not.
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