Are You Ready For Some [Fantasy] Football? Umm Yea, I Guess

Ahhh, August…the month each year where every fantasy football player is filled with hope and optimism. You do your research, draft your team, and look at your roster with the utmost amount of confidence. Only this year, my confidence is tempered. In 2010, my team pretty much steamrolled its way to winning the league championship. Did cockiness seep into my psyche? Probably…did my team success hinge on picking Matt Forte in the 5th round and Arian Foster in the 9th? Definitely…looking back, if I had to make a pie chart between “smart” and “lucky” for those picks, how would it look? Maybe 30% smartness, and 70% pure luck…but that’s the way fantasy football goes.

Most teams look pretty even the day after your draft…it’s who gets hurt, who drafts Arian Foster in the 9th round or Jimmy Graham in the 7th, or who picks Cam Newton off of waivers that usually decides a league…the bad side of that lesson I learned all too well last year, as I outsmarted myself into taking Michael Vick 1st overall. I maintain that part of my logic was sound: that if Vick stayed healthy, it was like getting 2 starting players in 1 (a top 10 quarterback and a top 20 running back). However, I kind of ignored the other most logical stat about Vick, which was that he had only played a full 16 games in 1 of his previous 8 seasons leading into last year.

Boh...

So, after having our draft last night I guess you could say I’m cautiously optimistic about this year’s team. Doing a keeper league for the 1st time was odd for me, especially considering my best options from last year’s injury-riddled team were contract holdout Mike Wallace and possible one-hit-wonder DeMarco Murray. I decided on Murray based mostly on the consistency of running backs over that of wide receivers in general, and the rest of my draft kind of followed that approach. My 2 sexiest picks (Matthew Stafford and Brandon Marshall) aren’t even that sexy, and the rest of my main backs and receivers (Jeremy Maclin, Jonathan Stewart, Shonn Greene, and Anquan Boldin) are all more workmanlike than superstar-ish. Antonio Gates’ health seems to decline every year, but he should still be a productive tight end. (I have to admit part of me made this pick because I’ve wanted Gates on my team for years, but could never seem to land him.) Big Ben seemed like a safe insurance pick as a backup quarterback, and I thought a couple fliers on Evan Royster (always like to have at least 1 Redskin, and he seems to be the only truly healthy runner in an always murky Mike Shanahan backfield), Danny Amendola (looked like he could be Sam Bradford’s “Wes Welker Lite” before getting injured last year), and Owen Daniels (steady if not spectacular in the past) were well worth it.

C'mon, Stafford...don't let me down.

Justifiably so, it’s hard for me to get too up or down on my team right now. If at the very least everyone stays healthy and plays around what their average performance has been throughout their careers, I should have a decent team. Obviously, if Stafford, Marshall, and, let’s say, Murray have monster years, I could be very good…but there are potential landmines too. There are guys on my roster who have a history of missing games (Stafford, Murray, Gates), guys who haven’t always played up to their potential (Marshall and Greene), and guys who might not have much left in the tank (Boldin). And that’s not even including the unknowns that fantasy football always seems to have in store for you as well…as always, hang on to your seats, kids; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.