Good afternoon and salutations to you, delicious devourers of pigskin prognostications! I have been providing what some describe as a public service, and others may describe as a self-flagellating farcical fete. I read a lot of blurbs for fantasy sports, whether it’s Rotowire, Rotoworld (NBC Sports Edge, to noobs), FantasyPros. They all have the daunting task of sourcing and re-reporting beat writer Tweets, playing time updates, and whether or not a player is “in game shape.” As a male adult who writes words, my current game shape is polygonal, especially when sitting down to write. This polygonal writer will weekly look for examples of biased or factually/rhetorically incorrect to help you avoid getting blurbstomped. You shouldn’t read a blurb and immediately pick up a bro because a fantasy site told you to.
Now, I’m not asking readers to ignore these fantasy grist mills. Keep reading them! One has to stay on top of the NFL Information Deluge to best optimize one’s lineup and weekly matchups. I think it’s worth analyzing these sites to find patterns in how they blurb injury updates, recap player performances, and try to quietly shape your opinion on certain players based on an editorial slant that is somehow both nuanced and brash. Blurb writers are living in both the yin and yang. Indeed, one can extend this cosmic Chinese metaphor.
Besides the middle schoolers who only know of the yin and yang as the second symbol they practiced drawing in their notebooks after the peace symbol, most know it as a philosophy of dualism. The universe is made up of raw energy (chi) that is balanced between darkness and light. In fantasy sports, the chi is the statistical production of actual human beings, and the yin and yang take place in our consumption/understanding/analysis of the chi. I’d say Razzball reflects both the yin and yeng, as the irony and sarcasm lying within the analysis is balanced by humble confidence expressed through self-deprecating humor. Blurb sites don’t have the editorial luxury provided by Grey, as they have corporate overlords who demand constant content and clicks, and thus are cowed to produce content with less yin, and more yang. They are the reverse New York City mayoral race.
My duty is to help you sort the metaphorical yin and yang that is blurb writing to avoid getting stomped on by other people’s opinions. Few things in fantasy sports are worse than realizing you faded a guy during your draft because you read a Rotoworld blurb about this particular player not looking like he was in game shape. All fantasy blurb sites are second-hand sourcing in a Twitter game of telephone. The beat reporter tweets, the fantasy site re-reports the beat reporter within the frame of their biases, and then you read and consume the re-reported tweet with your own internal biases. If this was an actual game of telephone, the opening phrase is, “No one likes flutes,” and by the time it gets to you it is, “Bone man hikes poops.”
We’ve all gotten our share of bad advice from fantasy websites, but due to the overwhelming glut of information the NFL generates, blurbs are in the process of a strange evolution. In my honest opinion (you should trust me, even though you don’t know me, plus my nom de plume is almost my actual name, and my grandma used to say I had a handsome smile, so there’s that), blurbs need to the following:
PLAYER NAME WITH DESCRIPTION OF ACHIEVEMENT
Analysis of performance, including contextual statistics, related health issues, and any roster/eligibility issues that could impact the player on the short or long term.
Blurbs are not novels. They’re not even novellas! That being said, they’re not tweets, so a Hemingway-esque approach to the actual prose is appreciated. No, I am not insinuating that the blurbists need to love big game hunting, demolishing scotch from the barrel, and emasculating their children. I merely prefer that there is consistency in tone and diction. If I were running a blurb site, I probably wouldn’t prioritize what I wrote above, but I would ask that we self-edit and categorize adjectives to avoid the common practice of Serial Hyperbole. Here’s an example straight from the place where horse’s make noises out of their face:
Classic Flip-Flops, No Crocs Fullstop
Joe Burrows has struggled badly with interceptions and inconsistency in training camp.
The Athletic’s Jay Morrison and Paul Dehner Jr. report that the Bengals offense is turning the ball over multiple times in every practice. Burrow’s struggles have been particularly noteworthy. “Throws that felt like layups last year are dropping harmlessly away from receivers or easily broken up by multiple defenders.” The Bengals offensive line has also been a concern. One of Burrow’s better throws to Ja’Marr Chase was only possible because Trey Hendrickson slowed down on his way to the franchise quarterback. It’s the first week of August, and Burrow is less than nine months removed from a major knee injury. There’s no need to over react to early training camp reports. Still, the Bengals ability to protect Burrow has been concern throughout the entire offseason. It will be all the more critical to provide a clean pocket if Burrow is at less than peak form to begin the season.
Source: nbcsportsedge.com (Rotoworld)
- This reads like one-quarter of a column about Bengals training camp, which, fine, but there’s a way to do this without employing 150 words.
- There’s a whole section in there about the offensive line, which is helpful contextually but comes off as an entirely new blurb. You could write something like “The offensive continues to be a concern, as does his recovery from a major knee injury 9 months ago.” Brevity is a skill, one that I myself struggle with constantly. I’d love to believe that I’m legit with Strunk/White, besides White’s whole thing about killing spiders in his books (SPOILER) and claiming it’s a tragedy worthy of our childhood tears. Every time a spider dies, an angel gets his wings. You heard it from me, friends! What was I saying about brevity?
- The header tells me that the purpose of the blurb regards Burrows being a large question mark based on training camp. However, we get to the end of the blurb, and the blurbist drops this rotten peach onto our bowl of fruit: “There’s no need to overreact to early training camp reports.”
This last bit really accentuates what you have to navigate as a reader of fantasy blurbs. They have to generate a certain amount of content, and you the reader have to parse out what is helpful and what is a distraction. This little anecdote about Burrows is enough to move someone’s needle (gross). On draft day, one might remember there were concerns about Burrows based on something they read, and the value of this player is dropped, based upon a 150-word blurb that immediately negates its entire premise. The rhetorical paradox we have here is akin to creating an IRL blurb like this:
Husband says that the family needs to buy more paper towels.
Recently signed to a social contract, Husband is already making waves by insisting he needs to go out and get paper towels. The family will be having a child soon, and they already own two cats. “I know we have a few rolls left, but there are some spills that I was able to pick up easier last year. I don’t know if they changed paper suppliers or what.” On a related note, the family has a 12-pack of Jumbo Paper Towel Rolls in the back of their SUV. Husband will be going to the store to buy two secret donuts instead.
Ultimately, I want you the reader to feel emancipated from blurb-reading. In a perfect world, you would read blurbs to get that sweet release one can only get from seeing your wide receiver’s fantastic performance being blurb-validated without buying the analysis as fact. You should have your own opinion, one that isn’t constantly littered with contradicting takes based on whatever the last auto-playing FANTASY ADVICE video explained at you.
Here are some categories I will be using to frame what I choose to call “analysis.”
- Flowery Diction – how sites juice up descriptions of player performance
- Q and Q – How a site’s Quantitative/Qualitative creates bias
- Hex Enduction Power – When a blurb curses a player’s health by “hoping for the best”
- Classic Flip/Flop No Crocs Full Stop – When a blurb contradicts itself, or the blurb contradicts the previous blurb.
- Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award – Given to the player blurb that promises the most and delivers the least.
The hope is that by season’s end, we’ll all feel more confident about our player evaluations when it comes to the waiver wire. We will read blurbs and not be swayed by excessive superlatives, faulty injury reporting, and micro-hype. I will know that I have done my job when Donkeyteeth posts, and there isn’t a single question about tight ends that he did not address in his post. Onward to Roto Wokeness!
