TTR - Final

I know I’ve dropped the ball on the TTRs, which is partially explained below. What I’ve included here are some of the different TTRs I started that didn’t develop into full TTRs. I took out the stuff about playoff bubbles, cause that shit doesn’t matter now. Most of this is stream of conscious and unedited.

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Roster Construction: a Primer

It all starts with roster construction, how you draft, how you prioritize waiver pickups, even how you trade. Roster construction is the foundation of how you make decisions and I think this comes down to a couple of factors: 1) positional value and 2) level of SIFI (set-it-and-forget-it).

I’ll start with #2: a SIFI player is one that is always ranked in the top 2 tiers of his position regardless of opponent, location, weather, or otherwise. If their active, you are staring him. If you have a SIFI then you don’t have to worry as much about depth outside of injury (which is unpredictable) and bye-week fills The more of these you have on your team the better. Find them and hold on to them.

Now positional value is a whole different beast. Whereas most SIFI players are undisputed even between different ranking sites and systems. Positional value offers much more in the area of personal preference. In ManChild we’ve seen managers that prefer a wide variety of rosters, such as:

RB focused

Zero-RB

Best available, i.e. starting line up focused

And the always popular, I-didn’t-do-any-research-so-I’ll just-roster-players-I-know-strategy

Now rather than go through all of these, which I’ve covered at sometime or another in past TTRs, I’ll explain how I think. My positional value rankings are as follows: #1 RB, #2 TE*, #3 WR, #4 QB, #5 D/ST, and #100 K.

Starting from the back, the difference between the #1 kicker and the #12 kicker is negligible, usually less than 5 points. Therefore, don’t spend much time worrying about this. D/STs are dependent on a number of factors, most of which aren’t fleshed out until the season starts, therefore drafting a D/ST is less important than noting trends in-season. Now let’s get to the interesting positions.

TE: if you can get one of the 1-3 TEs that make up the top tier than go get one of them. Otherwise you’re stuck finding the hot hand or streaming advantageous matchups.

Now we have WR and RB, and this is where there is probably some debate, but it comes down to this…finding the unicorns. Here is my definition of the FF unicorn:

High touch-pertunities - just as Greg Weinstein says in Boiler Room, “this is a contact sport meaning the more people you contact the better you'll do…” Similarly, the more a player touches the ball or is targeted the more that player is likely to score points.

3 Downs - the more the player is on the field for all three downs, again the more touch-pertunities.

Red Zone Touch-pertunities - this one is easy, touches or targets close to the goalline are worth more than other touches…cause TDs.

2-Minute Offense - If a player is on the field for the 2-minute offense, they score more points.

Therefore, a player that has high touch-pertunities, plays all 3-downs, gets red zone touches, and plays the 2-min offense is a unicorn. Get these guys at all cost.

My roster construction philosophy comes down to this…RBs are more likely to be unicorns than any other position, therefore they are the most valuable position. I seek to fill my roster with valuable RBs, and unicorns if possible.

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Fuck Epilepsy or How I Almost Had Jefferson and Etienne

On the evening of 10/21, Travan and I had agreed to a trade. No not the trade that eventually became Jefferson for Etienne, but rather we had agreed to trade Chris Olave for Etienne. The problem was that Olave had played on Thursday and this was Friday night. The plan was for me to send a message on LINE to explain that we had agreed to the trade and would do a two part trade that proposed me to get Etienne for DJ Moore and then to trade Moore for Olave when rosters opened on Tuesday. I was supposed to send this to the league as a courtesy, so that all of the moves were above board. Here is where it got interesting…

I was leaving at 2a on 10/22 for LAX to take my family for a long anticipated trip to NYC. My plan was to send the explainer when we got to the hotel, which with the time difference should’ve given more than enough time to execute the trade. However, the proverbial shit hit the fan.

Long story short, on the ride from the airport to our hotel my oldest son had a significant seizure (he had a dormant form of epilepsy which reared it’s ugly head) which took my focus away from all things fantasy football related. I didn’t sent the message on the LINE app and didn’t think it was right to do a two-part trade without explaining the deal. Etienne went off that weekend and the price went up.

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Fuck Eplipsy Part 2

After my son’s initial seizure in NYC, we thought we were in the clear. Fast forward to the Sunday after Thanksgiving…approx. 5a. My youngest son, came running into my room saying, “Carter is having a seizure.” My wife and ran into our boys’ room to find Carter in the midst of yet another major seizure. I won’t bore y’all with the details, but between my wife and I we haven’t taken our eyes off of our son for 4 days, while making countless calls to doctors trying to get answers…I wish I had more to offer, fantasy football just doesn’t seem that important right now…

However, there is this little anecdote… we got the bill from Carter’s ambulance ride and few hours in the hospital in NYC, it was well over $20K. I am so thankful for good health insurance thar reduced our part of that expense to a fraction of the cost. As I lay on Carter’s floor thinking about insurance, I remembered that after I traded for Rashaad Penny, I thought I should throw out an offer to Travan for Kenneth Walker as an insurance policy. Ultimately, I didn’t do that as I thought that they might drop him to waivers…turns out…insurance is important.

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In defense of Etienne for Jefferson

At the time of the trade, after Week 8, Etienne was trending way up. He was getting 25+ touches a game and simply jumped off of the screen as a ball carrier. He got the redzone looks and stayed on the field for almost every snap. He looked like a true unicorn.

Jefferson on the other hand, hadn’t scored a TD since Week 1 and, despite getting a good number of targets, wasn’t getting quality throws from Cousins.

Little did anyone know that Etienne would get hobbled, that defenses would be so adept at taking him away, and that Lawrence would step up and demonstrate the command and control that made him the #1 overall, reducing the Jags dependency on Etienne

Also, at almost the same time, Cousin’s perfected the “fuck it Justin down there somewhere” strategy and started turning Jefferson’s 10 target, 6 for 100 lines into 14 target, 10 for 140 and 1 lines.

I think the process was good, the results not so much…

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Holy Shit My Team is Bad…But Why.

Oh how my team sucks, let me count the ways:

The Saints offense is like a millstone around my neck…so shitty…I mean Kamara has scored in exactly one game. And the Red Rifle is absolutely wasting Olave’s obvious talent.

The Ravens, not much better, except they did me the disfavor of 2 40 point games from Lamar and a small handful of good games from Andrews, other than that…SHIIIIIT!

Injuries is always a factor, but not one that is predicable.

With the number of close games I’ve been in…my bad run of streaming D/ST and K picks is actually taking a toll…WT actual F!!!

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Good luck to Trevan and Angel this weekend.

All Hail ManChild!

0.5 Commish, OUT!