What common mistakes are fantasy managers making?
Scott Pianowski and RotoUnderworld's Matt Kelley examine some of the most pervasive mistakes fantasy managers are making and how to avoid repeating them this season.
Video Transcript
[CROWD CHEERING]
[BASEBALLS HITTING BATS]
SCOTT PIANOWSKI: Matt, I think we're really playing fantasy wrong if we don't learn from our mistakes. And I was curious to get your take on-- when you look around, whether it be mistakes that analysts make, mistakes the fantasy managers make. Let's just try to help some people out. Give me an example of a mistake that you think we're commonly making in the fantasy football space when we try to build our rosters.
MATT KELLEY: What's the most popular league configuration on Yahoo? Is it 12-team leagues?
SCOTT PIANOWSKI: I believe so.
MATT KELLEY: 12-team leagues, right? So 12 teams. That that's less than a 10% chance. If all the managers are created equally, you have less than 10% chance of winning you league. So why would you ever bet against yourself, and why would you not tend to go all in? A lot of poker players, their cardinal weakness is a lack of aggressiveness in key situations where they just decide, OK, I'm gonna hedge, or I'm going to fold here where they should have bet more, right, to get more people out of the pot. And you see this with fantasy gamers. And most mistakes stem from this place, this place of caution.
And I'm not saying don't factor risk in. Of course there's certain players in particular that are too risky. There's certain strategies that are too risky. And it hurts us. It hurts us as fantasy gamers when we do this. So it's the handcuffing. It's if you draft Dalvin Cook, you're betting on Dalvin Cook. So there's no-- the last running back you should be considering in a draft after you draft Dalvin Cook is Alexander Mattison.
You're all in on Cook. If Cook flames out and he gets injured, then it's OK. You're probably not going to win. All right. If your first round running back goes down, like if you had McCaffrey last year, even if you got Mike Davis, you probably didn't win. Right? Because you didn't have McCaffrey. It's over. Come on, man. You were better off trying to get a breakout somewhere else. Right.
Justin Jefferson would have been-- you would have been better off with that. So too many fantasy gamers are hedging. So just stop handcuffing. Stop it. I love Ezekiel Elliott this year. I love this Cowboys offense if Dak is healthy, which that's concerning. I mean, Dak is now going to a baseball specialist. I hate this. I hate this so much. I hate what's happening right now in Dallas and in Cincinnati, that Burrow doesn't have any time to throw.
They could have the worst offensive line in the sport. That's terrible. Another mistake that fantasy gamers make is they don't factor in offensive line enough. I love Tee Higgins, but I just want to be careful about pushing up these Bengals receivers too much just based on, we know they're going to get big volume there because the defense isn't good and in neutral game script situations, they were throwing a lot.
So you know there's a tendency for Zac Taylor and Cincinnati to throw. You could just push your chips all in on the Bengals. I can't do that because they have one of if not the worst offensive lines in the sport, and nothing works when your offensive line is crumbling. You saw that with Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl. When you lose your tackles, you can't do anything even if you're Patrick Mahomes. Like the whole world collapses around you.
That's the worry with Burrow. Why the Bengals didn't draft Penei Sewell-- just take the layup. Why they tried to do a fadeaway three and go wide receiver over a tackle, I have no idea. And now the Dolphins are looking for tackle help. They're trying to trade for a tackle. It's like, you had a tackle. He was right there. What were you doing? I have no idea what these teams-- I'm supposed to be the fantasy-- we're fantasy gamers.
We're the guys who are supposed to go like, you should go with a receiver there. You should be drafting guys that are going to give us points. And I'm sitting here going, uh, hey, football guys, do you want to get a tackle. That's kind of a no brainer right move here. So the appreciation of the offensive line is just not where it should be. There should be more pieces written on all platforms about offensive lines and how they affect production because it's huge.
It's a huge impact factor. And when you talk about chasing upside-- So sure, that would be the area where I wouldn't want to push my chips in too aggressively on a team with the worst offensive line. There risk really matters.