Don't Get Cute

...because you're ugly.

Listen, we’ve had a lot of slogans here to keep us focused during the fantasy season.  Wait on QB.  Do your job.  Stop worrying about the vermin and chuck your own wood.

Fantasy football has come a long way from its origins of drunken postmen and drunken CPAs and precooked chicken from Costco that is either cheap, easy protein or a solvent for your intestines.  The game has evolved.  It’s no longer starting 4 RBs and scoring exclusively in factors of six and praying to Wayne Fontes to just one goddamn time give Barry a fullback or even a tight end.  Now you get tenths of a point for each yard gained, bonuses for plays over fifty yards, you start two quarterbacks, and a screen pass that loses you five yards is just as good as a run that gains you five yards.  We have yards per reception, yards per target, yards per route run, yard after contact, yards before contact, yards after contact per attempt, yards after contact per attempt adjusted for expectation, yards expected after expected contact adjusted for wind velocity and relationship status, yards per

It can be overwhelming, I know, and while your brain is very big, it can only handle so much.  So this year, the mantra is Don’t Get Cute.  It’s time to get back to basics.  When everyone zigs, you must zag.  When everyone else thinks, you must lag.  Let go your conscious self, and just get faded and listen to best ball podcasts.  And open an Underdogs account.  And make up a good reason that two-hundred dollars is missing from checking.  Don’t take notes, don’t make a plan, and just go with the flow, let the value come to you, and trust the ADP.  After all, in the end, the market dictates the market, and there is no fighting that, because the market is a sentient entity that singularly chooses to bless you or destroy you, depending on how many best ball podcasts you’ve listened to and your feelings about God.

Now, this isn’t to say be a dum-dum.  No, you must still be smart, you must still be shhhhhhhhhhhARP!  Understand how many millions of other fantasy players will read this column and heed my advice.  Understand that your brother-in-law, who is more of a hockey guy but made some money in crypto and has that annoying, well-balanced confidence of trusting himself after doing the research but also knowing what he doesn’t know and pretty much always beats you is reading this now and has been reading it for his entire life, so you must take the Costanzian approach.  You are George Costanza, and you must confront your reflection in the pool if you are to overcome yourself.

To not be a dum-dum is to be sharp, which is to understand your limitations and embrace them, which is to know what you don’t know, which is most things, especially about fantasy football.  So just take Mahomes.

Don’t Get Cute.