Apparently, Failure IS An Option

I’m going to tell you a story about a league that is more intense than yours, and the maddening consequences of playing in that league.

The EGGGUGGHH League (so named after a phrase[?] sound[?] that one of the league members makes) is a 10-team dynasty league with oodles of bench spots. The waiver wire is picked clean, and your team lives and dies by the obscure rookies you pick up for the following year. It’s like the real NFL (except with sillier names, fewer teams, and a better commissioner).

This particular story is a fantastically horrible one. Just like in the real NFL, your team does not do well unless you select the right quarterback. Now, each team in this league is deep, so they carry multiple quarterbacks. As you can imagine, this makes it difficult to choose between them based on matchup and quarterback quality. This is especially true when a team carries four mediocre quarterbacks. But even a broken clock is right twice a day, right? There’s no way you’d pick the wrong quarterback every week.

Wrong. This is the story of Neil.

Neil carries four quarterbacks on his team – Matthew Stafford, Nick Foles, Derek Carr, and Joe Flacco. He has carried all four of these quarterbacks across the entire year, and has had to choose between them every week. Now, if Neil was any good at fantasy football he would naturally pick the top quarterback (or the second best, perhaps?) each week and lead his team to fantasy success. And you know, Neil may be good at fantasy football… but he just has the worst luck. Here’s how his decisions have played out so far.

Neil’s choices for each week are in bold, and the quarterbacks are listed by the amount of points they scored that week.

           

               As you can see, Neil has literally never chosen the right quarterback. Even when his choices have been limited (injury, bye week – or both in the case of Week 11) he manages to be utterly wrong. In fact, 7 out of 11 weeks, Neil has chosen the WORST option 64% of the time. It has cost him 183.52 points in fantasy potential, averaging 16.68 points PER GAME. That’s an actual game changer.

                Neil, here’s our 2 cents:

                1) WHY ARE YOU ROSTERING 4 QUARTERBACKS. Trade at LEAST one away. I understand that your league is deep. But you’re holding onto Derek Carr and Joe Flacco. And quite frankly, Foles may be done in Philly... so you know he’s never returning to the heyday he had in 2013.

                2) Play the matchups, but also consider who each QB has to throw to. Flacco has the Smiths, Stafford has Megatron and Golden Tate, Nick Foles is out, and Derek Carr has… whoever is catching passes in Oakland these days. 

Thanks to J. Myers for telling me about this.