Are you tired of FF? (2 Viewers)

[ShamrockPride]

I burned myself on doing three or four teams a season about a decade ago. The time sink of working all of them and the conflicts of interest made certain weeks unfun. Then I took off about 2 years. Came back to just one team in a startup 8 years ago. These past 8 years have been the most exciting and fun I’ve had doing this fantasy thing.

 

[matuski]

Ill stay in my 25 year old league for the #### of it, but NFL FF is now~0% skill.  Your grandma can wake up on sunday morning and find all the info she needs.

NCAAF fantasy has renewed my love of FF.

 

[Mongidig]

Not as interested in the NFL/CFB as I used to be. I have some issues with the sport itself and the culture around the sport. I'm more of a basketball and soccer fan these days. I mainly follow football for the sake of FF.

As far as FF goes, I still enjoy it, but I get tired of the constant injuries. It seems like every year I am losing guys left and right. It gets frustrating to put so much effort into building teams, only to see 25-50% of your players miss time throughout the season.

Why is it they always get hurt in the first quarter and not the fourth quarter?

 

[Mongidig]

Ill stay in my 25 year old league for the #### of it, but NFL FF is now~0% skill.  Your grandma can wake up on sunday morning and find all the info she needs.

NCAAF fantasy has renewed my love of FF.

There is still a good amount of skill involved. I heard the same thing about Poker. There is no substitute for experience. Every year I learn new ways to get better at fantasy football. People can look at rankings and projections but are they astute enough and bold enough to start a player the experts have ranked much lower? Or sit a player everyone thinks is gonna do well? Do they know how to construct a roster during the draft? There is no question over the course of time a more skilled owner will do better than a less skilled owner. I seem to do well nearly every year in a very competitive league despite myself. I make a ton of mistakes during the season but I feel like I get a great head start by how well I draft. I think most people do ok the first few rounds but things start to fall apart as the draft progresses where the more astute owner will still be making quality picks. People make tons of mistakes throughout the season. Dropping players too soon, not recognizing talented players soon enough,  overbidding/underbidding, not looking ahead at the schedule etc. The real skill is making less mistakes than your opponents. 

 

[matuski]

There is still a good amount of skill involved. I heard the same thing about Poker. There is no substitute for experience. Every year I learn new ways to get better at fantasy football. People can look at rankings and projections but are they astute enough and bold enough to start a player the experts have ranked much lower? Or sit a player everyone thinks is gonna do well? Do they know how to construct a roster during the draft? There is no question over the course of time a more skilled owner will do better than a less skilled owner. I seem to do well nearly every year in a very competitive league despite myself. I make a ton of mistakes during the season but I feel like I get a great head start by how well I draft. I think most people do ok the first few rounds but things start to fall apart as the draft progresses where the more astute owner will still be making quality picks. People make tons of mistakes throughout the season. Dropping players too soon, not recognizing talented players soon enough,  overbidding/underbidding, not looking ahead at the schedule etc. The real skill is making less mistakes than your opponents. 

Who isn't experienced at NFL FF these days?

The "best" are still wrong more often than not.

The only advantage anyone ever had was info.  Now everyone has all the info spoon fed.

 

[Mongidig]

Who isn't experienced at NFL FF these days?

The "best" are wrong more often than not.

The only advantage anyone ever had was info.  Now everyone has all the info spoon fed.

Does everybody use that information the same way? Does everybody know how to extract the quality information and throw out the junk? Do people know the difference? 

Just because somebody is experienced doesn't mean he has learned from his mistakes along the way.

 

[matuski]

Does everybody use that information the same way? Does everybody know how to extract the quality information and throw out the junk? Do people know the difference? 

Just because somebody is experienced doesn't mean he has learned from his mistakes along the way.

No, everyone has their own crystal ball.

And we know from decades of data now that the "best" don't seem to know the difference.

More info used to be the advantage, with more info your crystal ball could hit more often than others.  Given the same data available to anyone at the expense of a few seconds, your crystal ball is as good as mine.

 

[matuski]

This shouldn't be news.

Look at the rankings from the "experts" here.  Preseason, week to week, rest of season.

We all do the same thing they do, we gather info and make our best guess.  Just like the experienced, just like the experts... and now just like any grandma with a twitter account.

 

[matuski]

FF is a great way to stay in touch with old friends/family pushed apart geographically by life.

 

[drunken slob]

FF is a great way to stay in touch with old friends/family pushed apart geographically by life.

Exactly. One of the dynasty leagues I run is a no trade, hardly any response to offers group. That's a shame. For two seasons now, I've thought about just shutting it down. However, every February though May, I talk to all the guys on the phone multiple times. 

I want to close shop, but I just feel like I'd be letting those guys down.   

 

[Truebluey]

Which makes the casual work leagues fun, because there's a mix of unintelligent, and sharks.  It feels like the older days when you were in a competitive league but everyone didn't have access to the same data.  I'm in a casual, short bench work league, where the commish loves parody, we have shallow lineups, 8 teams make the playoffs.  I routinely make the playoffs but once I get there it's all luck on who can win 3 games with a shallow, stud filled lineup in a 12 team league.  That is the most annoying but, at least points for champion gets a good chunk.

I'm intrigued. Does he really love parody?  The Onion maybe?

Or is he more of a parity guy?

 

[ghostguy123]

Only in 2 leagues right now.  Going to get a 1st round bye in both, yet still VERY tired of it.

Reading up monday and tuesday for wednesday waivers, lineups on thursday with a crappy game,  more waivers on friday, checking in early sunday for lineups for london game, figuring out lineup availability due to 1 o'clock, 4 oclock, and 8 oclock games, plus a monday game.  

It's not passive fun anymore.  It's like a 7 day a week chore/job.   Been this way for several years now.

 

[CanaBuc]

I am not so much tired of it as I am realizing that I am over-invested.

As others have said, when we first started out they were very few websites that had any good analysis were LED you to figure out who might be a good sleeper or Gamble to pick up for your lineup. However now there are 8 million sites and YouTube channels and podcasts that literally drown you in so much information that you feel you need to read to remain competitive. meanwhile everybody else in your league has access to the same information.

while a lot of people say that yes there is some luck in fantasy football but it is mostly skill, the reality is that say you picked number one overall this year and chose someone other than McCaffrey odds are that one choice may be the difference between you doing well this year and not.

if you decided to go zero RB and invested highly in some of the receivers out there like Juju and O'Dell then you also got screwed this year.

then of course there was all kinds of strange luck that happen this year too such as Andrew luck retiring. And then you have Antonio Brown going off the rails..Roethlisberger going down after the first game. And many other quarterbacks also either getting hurt or benched affecting the fantasy outcome of the teams.

Looking back at my own team who is currently 6 and 6 and fighting for a playoff spot I can go back and look at 1 roster lineup decision I could have chosen differently each week and would be sitting here at 11 at 1. I don't think of myself as a bad fantasy player has I have almost never miss the playoffs and have won multiple championships. However the combination of luck in terms of what is happening two players and the added knowledge that everybody has has made host teams very even in terms of wins and losses.. in fact here we are in the last week of the regular season in myleague and only one team has clinched and only two teams have knock themselves out meaning nine teams are still competing for five playoff spots.

The other thing that has made the game more luck-based is the fact that going forward from a number of years ago as thing switch to a pass-heavy league there are multiple receivers on the same team that have become productive and the luck part might be the variance week-to-week as to which one of them is the true wide receiver one that week.

gone are the days of the true Alpha wide receiver on most teams and the three down work horseback as well.

most teams have committee backs and feature two receivers that are very close in talent. that is why if you drafted a player like McCaffrey or Michael Thomas or Dalvin cook do you have a significant advantage over others as there are not that many teams out there that have access to a guy who has such a high percentage of their team's workload.

the last thing I will comment about is my mood. I find as someone else has stated that when my fantasy football team does poorly my mood for the next few days tends to be rather down or depressed as I feel as if it was a personal insult to me that they lost given all the effort I put in. Conversely when they win I have a brief period of feeling good or satisfied at my team's performance and then it's back to the Grind again.

Ironically as much as we say  skill beats luck I go into the final game of the regular season with Julio Jones out and having to start Sterling Shepard over him.I also go in worrying if Chris Carson will fumble his way out of his role this game or re-establish himself as the lead back on his team.

I think if I was a fan of a team in the NFL that was competitive every year I probably would no longer play Fantasy football and would just enjoy following my own team but as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer fan who has been let down every year I think I got into Fantasy football,so that I would have something to enjoy and follow once my team was no longer competing for a playoff spot which unfortunately is usually in early November.

 

[brinew]

I'm currently in 5 leagues, my plan is to quit them when I win the championships. Last year I was at six teams and won one and dropped out. I have a plan in place to get out, problem is it could be in 2 yrs, 20 yrs, or never.

H2H has killed FF, the luck of the schedule decides too many leagues, especially when everyone has access to the same data. A casual player can benefit too much. My league mates have been stubborn and will not move to different standings criteria, H2H is all they want.

 

[Mongidig]

I'm currently in 5 leagues, my plan is to quit them when I win the championships. Last year I was at six teams and won one and dropped out. I have a plan in place to get out, problem is it could be in 2 yrs, 20 yrs, or never.

H2H has killed FF, the luck of the schedule decides too many leagues, especially when everyone has access to the same data. A casual player can benefit too much. My league mates have been stubborn and will not move to different standings criteria, H2H is all they want.

I'm 10-2 in a league where my main competitor for the title is 9-3. He's won 8 games in a row by a total of 40 points. He has the lowest points total in the league. He won a game earlier in the year 79 to 78. He has two RB's on his team and 4 defenses and 3 TE's. He is one of the two teams to beat me. 

 

[Max55]

People make tons of mistakes throughout the season. Dropping players too soon, not recognizing talented players soon enough,  overbidding/underbidding, not looking ahead at the schedule etc. The real skill is making less mistakes than your opponents. 

Good thoughts.  

I think the most valuable FF skill is how you manage your roster throughout the season.  Deciding whether to handcuff, being able to look ahead a couple of weeks, knowing how your league bids, how many RBs do I carry, etc.

Draft strategy is 2nd in my book.

3rd - Picking the best lineup can be maddening if you let it and I have somewhat given up that you can’t predict the weekly variation in a game.

4th - trades.  At least in the leagues I play mostly a waste of time. But I’ve found better results bartering the deal via text than the site of choice.