MoFo Fantasy Football 2022 - The Season

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I know it’s not about the fantasy league, but it relates to my ultimate football fantasy. What a way to start the year, I could not be more excited. Which means that, inevitably, something bad will happen. Buffalo isn’t allowed to have nice things.
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It's kinda impressive actually just how far off the Yahoo "projections" can be. I didn't draft Allen Robinson II to win the league or anything but I did kinda think that being a #2 wideout on the Super bowl winning team could at least mean a couple of catches. Even 2 would possibly work. I wish Yahoo had more articles out there to deal with this kind of thing. I drafted him by simply going off of Yahoo's rankings and it wasn't until right before game time that Yahoo's own "reporters" start talking sh*t about what a terrible year he had last year and you should be afraid if you have to start him. Start him? You guys have him rated so highly that in most of the mocks I did he wasn't even available for my third and fourth picks. How could I not start him? So yeah, hopefully someone else picks up the slack but as usual, it's the first game and I already feel like my team is fighting a huge uphill battle. Maybe I'l get this right one of these years. Not a great or even good start tho so far.
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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...



The projections are so-so at best, by year's end at which point it's got the entire season of performance to draw from, and without that they're literally just "here's the rankings watered down a little and given a decimal number because we assume everything regresses to the mean." But yeah they're not a good guide at all and I mostly ignore them.

The above has always been true but they're even worse now because of the degree to which leagues are won or lost on home run plays (and games), which really renders the cautious nature (they literally never project a huge game for anyone even though they happen every week) even less useful than it was before.



A system of cells interlinked
Well, my TE sucks.

Onward!
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“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell



The trick is not minding
Anyone complaining about low production from a player, I direct your attention to Cam Akers and his 0 point production

(Sorry Yoda)


(Not really)



Wish I had a feeling one way or the other about the LA Rams but like most of LA, I barely acknowledge their existence. I did like seeing Buffalo roll last night. Growing up, Pittsburgh was my AFC team to root for but after going to Buffalo for a game, a long tie ago, them folks are good people too and deserve a champion. As long as it isn't against my guys, of course. Of all the cities that haven't won Buffalo is tops followed by Cleveland. Minnesota is the only team I hope never wins anything so they will probably win it all this year.



I imagine anyone who started Akers (trying hard not to look in Yoda’s direction) is wondering what happened. Was supposed to have been the lead back and barely played.

I wasn’t able to watch the game, but Is he still having issues with his injury?
Regardless, Henderson is now looking like a nice pick up by Spaulding.
I said in the other thread after the draft that I thought Henderson Jr. would be more involved than people expect, but I was thinking along the lines of a 60-40 timeshare in favor of Akers. To see Henderson draw the start and dominate touches was a shock to everyone. I grabbed him late in my other league as well, so I'm delighted by this development. Henderson played well as a starter last year before getting injured, whereas Akers was horribly inefficient after his miraculously quick return from the torn Achilles. A lot of players are never the same after that injury. The coach put Akers on blast a bit as well, criticizing his lack of urgency and accountability after the game. I'm sure Akers will have a lot more than 3 touches a game going forward, but for my sake hopefully Henderson Jr. remains the starter. It's just one game, but he already looks like one of the steals of the draft.
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Obviously I'm disappointed by the Akers game, but I'm still holding long term. It's a long season and it's easy to imagine he just starts slow coming back from an injury like that. I've just seen people cut bait on guys like that two weeks in only to regret it later, time and time again.

Definitely a bad start, though: Akers looked like a steal to me in the couple of weeks leading up to that first game. Particularly since I don't need him to be great, just to get a decent chunk of chances in what should be a good offense. At the spot I took him I had basically the same expectations as Spaulding: slight edge in a time share, which is fine for me for an RB2, particularly having gotten top-tier guys at WR/TE/QB.

We'll see how it shakes out. It does seem to me that coaches are being asked about--and are therefore more cognizant of--the kinds of things fantasy owners complain about, which is kind of amusing. I think the days of really talented players just inexplicably going unused are kind of coming to an end. Whether or not that ends up describing Akers this year is another story, but I'm increasingly a believer in coaches (especially the younger/savvier ones) being influenced by those kinds of social pressures, as weird as that sounds.

That was all a really long-winded way of saying to bet on talent and worry less about formal role than we used to. I think it's harder every year for coaches and teams to do the "yeah whatever Melvin Gorden is a Proven Veteran so we're going with him over this new kid who runs a negative-5.00 40," IE: the kind of thing that used to happen all the time.



The trick is not minding
Not a good game from me, down by 51. Going to need a miracle to pull this off.
But hey, it’s only week one. Plenty of time for my roster to shape up, as there is plenty to like still.



A system of cells interlinked
Well shit. Even with Mahomes going totally insane, I am still not going to make it, due to a few other guys doing poorly, and my opponent's team going off.

We're on to week 2...



The draft philosophy (not going in, but with the way it turned out) was "I'm gonna get a top QB, and the #1 WR and #1 TE, and then I just need decent totals from the RBs now and then," and it's kind of funny how that season-long strategy had a perfect microcosm in week 1: Jackson, Kupp, and Kelce all go for 20+ and the rest just add up here and there.

Not exactly how I wanted it to go (I would've preferred one of the top backs fall to #4), but I was kinda thinking that the guys who are in a clear tier by themselves might have a little extra value, which caused me to switch things up in the moment when I saw how the draft was unfolding.

Time will tell if it works out.