Living in a Fantasy World: A Fantasy Football Primer
Patrick Daly
Tuesday January 11, 2005
For those like me, it’s about the feeling of ownership. Very few of us will ever be in a position to own a real live professional sports team, so this is our chance to call the shots and feel like an owner.
For others, it’s the competition and earning bragging rights after shellacking your best friend’s team. It’s a chance to prove your knowledge and show off a little.
Although fantasy football is still somewhat new in the Arena Football League, there’s no question that it’s growing. At ArenaFan, leagues have been available for many years with two methods of play. The Arena Football League itself finally jumped on the bandwagon last season with Sandbox providing the services.
Like any other game, when it comes to fantasy football there are a few keys to success. However, before we go into that it’s important to keep in mind that there’s an element of luck that can cancel out the efforts of even the most prepared owner. That’s true even for owners and general managers in real life where injuries and the highs and lows of player performance aren’t easily predicted. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be prepared.
Luck Favors the Prepared Owner
Preparation starts with understanding the league’s rules. Specifically, that includes understanding the scoring, rosters and schedule. Each is important since you’ll need to be conscious of all three aspects to effectively manage your team from the beginning of the season through to the final game.
Even if you’ve played fantasy football before, pay close attention to the scoring system as this directly impacts how you’ll want to place emphasis on certain positions. For instance, in one league last season, it was pretty obvious that, based on the scoring system where six points were awarded for each touchdown pass, quarterbacks would be the most valuable position given the higher rate of touchdown passes to other scores. Once you got past the top echelon of passers, then you had to look at who would have the greatest opportunity to score, which was most often the offensive specialist spot since they’re generally in on all offensive series, while the wide receiver/defensive back spot requires substitutions throughout the game with the players playing both sides of the ball.
Also, it’s good to keep in mind that it’s not the most popular or well-known players that’ll be your key to success. While some players may be more athletically gifted, it doesn’t always translate to points on the field. Athleticism only represents potential and it’s results that count in fantasy football. You also have to look at how a player fits into his team’s system and how often he’ll have an opportunity to perform. With that in mind you have a shot at finding a difference maker that might normally fly under the radar.
Roster Management 101
Once you know how each position’s relative value stands, it’s also important to understand the rosters, which includes starting lineups. Particularly, you should know how many players must you start at each position each week. That will determine how many players you need to have at each position since you’ll need backups at each spot to start during your regular starter’s bye week.
You’ll also need to plan at some level for injuries, which are as much a part of football as bone-jarring hits and spectacular leaping catches. What does that mean? Well, in short, it means making sure you have good depth at the critical positions, where you can’t afford to be without points in a week. In Arena Football, it means you won’t need to keep too many players at the kicker and fullback spot since they’re easier to pick up for a week or two as you need it, but if you have to go out and find a solid starting quarterback midway through the season you’ll likely be left home for the playoffs.
After the draft, keep an eye out for players that weren’t selected but turn out to have an impact for their AFL team. Many AFL fantasy leagues don’t draft players until after a week or two into the regular season, which reduces the chance of finding that gem, but it still happens. This is especially important since you’ll inevitably find a player or two on your own roster that doesn’t pan out. You’ll also want to make these finds if only to keep that player off of an opponent’s roster.
Another aspect of the roster game involves keeping an eye on the injury report and transactions. This is required for two reasons. The first is that you don’t want to start someone who won’t even suit up on game day that week. There’s nothing more frustrating and embarrassing than fielding a lineup with someone who isn’t playing and it’s better to start a backup. The second reason is that you’ll have a chance at grabbing an impact player that may be returning to his team after an injury or time on an NFL roster.
Stay on Schedule
The final key to a shot at a successful season is knowing the schedule, which includes knowing the date of any transaction deadlines, understanding how the fantasy schedule matches up with the league schedule and knowing when each team has a bye week.
If you don’t know when the transaction deadline is scheduled, you’ll probably miss a chance to make your final moves in preparation for the stretch run and the playoffs.
Additionally, it’s important to understand how the fantasy league schedule matches up with the league schedule. For example, if your playoffs include the final week of the season, you may fall victim to a situation where one of your primary starters sees limited time if his team already has a playoff spot wrapped up. With the current playoff setup, where only eight teams make the playoffs, it’s less likely that you’ll encounter this, but it’s still something to bear in mind.
I don’t know if there’s anything more embarrassing than starting a player during his bye week, which means you better know when your players are off. This allows you to know when you’ll need to start a backup or make a move to add depth during the bye week. You can also take advantage of how bye weeks work out in order to take a chance on a player by adding him to your roster and then either use him on the bye week if he pans out or use his roster spot to make room for another player.
In short, knowing the rules will go a long way to helping you reach the pinnacle of fantasy success by using your knowledge to out manage your fellow owners. If you think that you can simply draft a team and let it ride, you might get lucky, but chances are you’ll find yourself at the bottom of the heap, bearing the shame of a losing fantasy season.
In the coming weeks I’ll have a fantasy draft preview that’ll provide further fantasy coverage and provide a look at sleepers, busts and fantasy must-haves. During the season, we’ll follow at least one of my fantasy teams and provide weekly coverage that’ll help you keep abreast of what you need to keep in mind each week.
Playoffs. Are you kidding me?
Former NFL head coach Jim Mora will be hard pressed to live down his now famous post-game quote, but I thought I’d use that to segue into a quick analysis of what the NFL playoffs would look like if they followed the AFL playoff format, which does include Mora’s former team, the Indianapolis Colts.
Since the AFL allows only eight teams, I did the same here. The percentage of AFL playoff teams is 47.1% (eight out of 17), which is actually higher when compared to the NFL’s normal 37.5% (12 out of 32) when you compare each league, but I stuck to the eight-team format, which avoids byes and limits the playoffs to three weeks.
Furthermore, the AFL ignores division and conference alignments, and also gives no credence to winning the division. As such, I did the same thing here, which creates some interesting matchups and does cancel out division winners from the weaker divisions. So, without further adieu, here are the eight NFL teams that would have gone on to the postseason if we followed the current AFL format:
1. Pittsburgh Steelers (15-1)
2. New England Patriots (14-2)
3. Philadelphia Eagles (13-3)
4. Indianapolis Colts (12-4)
5. San Diego Chargers (12-4)
6. Atlanta Falcons (11-5)
7. New York Jets (10-6)
8. Green Bay Packers (10-6)
The first three teams, Pittsburgh, New England and Philadelphia, slotted themselves nicely, with no tiebreakers needed. Indianapolis and San Diego easily resolved their tiebreaker with the Colts’ Week 16 win over the Chargers. Atlanta held sole possession of the sixth spot, while the New York Jets, Green Bay and Denver had to break their three-way tie at 10-6 based on strength of schedule, which left the Broncos out in the cold.
It’s interesting to note here that one division winner, the Seattle Seahawks, were left out and five of the eight teams come from the AFC. This format also means that we could easily see an all AFC Super Bowl.
While it’s not likely we’ll see this format in the NFL any time soon, it never hurts to look at things from a different perspective.
Patrick Daly has been an Arena Football League enthusiast since he first stumbled across the late-night ESPN broadcasts and has followed the Arizona Rattlers since their inaugural season in 1992. He graduated from Arizona State University with an engineering degree and is currently a member of a web development team for Direct Alliance in Tempe. Patrick currently resides in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, Arizona with his beautiful wife, son and a very large football helmet collection.
