Air Yards Report, Week 5: Hop To The Top

October 14, 2021 | Air Yards Report |

Air Yards are the Gordon Ramsey of fantasy receiving stats. They tell us exactly what was right and clearly what was wrong with how a receiver performed in a given week. Often, it’s not easy to hear. But you as a fantasy manager need to pay attention to the under-the-hood numbers from your receivers instead of just blindly trusting the box score results, you donkey.

Each week, this column will dissect air yards for actionable info in the weeks to come. For Week 6, we will do a quick analysis of the list of the 84 wide receivers who finished last week with at least 30 air yards.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Air Yards Report, Week 4: To The Mooney

October 7, 2021 | Air Yards Report | 2 Comments

by: CableBoxScore

Each week, this column will dissect air yards for actionable info in the weeks to come. For Week 4, we will do a quick analysis of the list of the 76 wide receivers who finished the week with at least 30 air yards.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

A Heartbreaking Work of Fantasy Football Genius

July 29, 2021 | Fantasy Football Strategy | 10 Comments

by: everywhereblair

“You wouldn’t have liked me when I was younger.” It’s a phrase I taught myself to say as I made it through my 20s in Midwest America, riding my bike across Ames, IA, where I was a graduate student in History at Iowa State University. I later moved to Japan, meeting Anglophones from around the world as we taught English in stuffy community centers and schools without HVAC systems. I made friends and they came and went as friends do, the transitory social graces of living without living in a specific place. You make friends long enough to sleep on their couch or their floor or hope they don’t steal your stuff while you’re sharing space on the floor of a ferry between Osaka and Takamatsu. I came back to the States and researched and worked at the University of Minnesota, developing the odd bonds that scholars do: that trust of leaving out on a soggy bar table the archival material you spent months searching archives for and tens of thousands of dollars in transportation fees and visas to acquire, hoping your colleague won’t spill a lager over your papers, or heavens forbid, your laptop that you haven’t backed up in a year. But oddly enough, the friends who I trusted the most and talked to the most, were the home league players from my ESPN and Yahoo leagues, tracked down in 2007 in some poorly run message board. We called. We texted. We met up. Some of them helped out in Tout Wars. Some wrote for KFFL. Some stole your money and you didn’t talk to them again. I didn’t care if I got scammed out of $15 at the local restaurant trying some gimmick food that tasted like greased bike wheels, I’d still go back and try the black garlic truffle fries. But if you stole the pot money — no not that kind of pot; I’m talking about the league pot — hoo, there was a special place in Hades for that guy.

But along the way — from Minneapolis to Ames to Takamatsu and back to Minneapolis — I learned the most valuable lesson in playing fantasy sports: thinking differently. And, actually, I didn’t have to learn it. What I had to do, actually, was unlearn what society had taught me. Turns out, fantasy sports was all about mindfulness.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Quarterback Tandem or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Deep Bomb

May 24, 2021 | Fantasy Football Targets | 22 Comments

by: thejoeywright

I met my wife, Mrs. The Joey Wright, in the budding spring of 2004. We got married in the blistering winter of 2014. “Ten years!” you might be saying to yourself, “why would you wait ten years to marry the woman of your dreams?” Your thoughts would be echoing the thoughts of my friends and family during the decade-long proverbial dragging of my feet. I guess you could say I have always subscribed to the “good things come to those who wait” philosophy in life and most definitely when it pertains to drafting quarterbacks for my fantasy teams. I rarely use a pick before round seven on a quarterback, in one quarterback leagues, unless the value is completely justified. It is the one piece of advice I was given early in my days of playing fantasy football and it is the one recommendation I always give to people just starting out. Most of the time, when sticking to my usual method of waiting, I will end up taking two. This is also where the waiting on marriage and waiting on quarterback analogy ends. I am not here championing multiple spouses. Just wanted to make that clear.

Since 2016, nearly half of the top ten quarterbacks have been drafted outside the top ten at the position. The only year at least five of the top ten finishing quarterbacks were not drafted as the QB10 or later was 2020, where only four accomplished the task. In both 2018 and 2019, the quarterbacks finishing first, second, and third were taken as the eleventh quarterback off the board or later. The savvy team managers who loaded up on their running backs, wide receivers, filled their flexes, maybe took a top-tier tight end before addressing quarterback were swimming in gold if they hit on say Mahomes, Ryan, or Roethlisberger in 2018. However, you are just as likely to take a top ten quarterback and have them return top ten value. Although the number one quarterback in ADP has not finished the season as the number one quarterback in fantasy points since 2012. Throwing out Aaron Rodgers’ 2017 injury-plagued season, the QB1 has an average finish of around QB8 the last five years. Numbers like those give me pause and I would rather use my earlier picks giving my teams foundation and depth.

Please, blog, may I have some more?