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It’s Week 13: Beware of Bad Advice (2020 Fantasy Football)

It’s Week 13: Beware of Bad Advice (2020 Fantasy Football)

I need to take you back to 2014 for a moment – to a story about one of the greatest fantasy teams I ever assembled. I learned a lesson that year that I’ve since imparted to hundreds of fantasy managers – a lesson that runs counter to the oft-heard conventional wisdom you’ll read heading into the final week of your fantasy season.

It was Week 15 in the 2014 NFL season, and I was one game away from my league’s fantasy championship. My opponent was formidable – but my team was objectively better. I had space for three wide receivers in my starting lineup. The first two were easy choices: Jordy Nelson and T.Y. Hilton were at the height of their superpowers. The final lineup slot was a bit of a toss-up, between a hampered Calvin Johnson and a rookie wideout in the midst of a breakout season.

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Johnson was my first-round pick in 2014. He began the year in a very “Calvin Johnson” sort of way: he was the WR4 through three weeks. But then he began to get increasingly weighted down by injury. He left early in multiple games and went on to miss a month of football altogether. When he returned he wasn’t quite Megatron, though he was still a top-tier receiver (he had at least one hundred receiving yards and a touchdown in three of five games). But heading into Week 15, there was growing chatter that Calvin was not one hundred percent.

Still, the advice from the fantasy football community was universal and unwavering: start Calvin Johnson. Despite his nagging injuries – despite scoring less than fifteen fantasy points in six of ten games leading up to Week 15 – he was still projected as a can’t-miss weekly play. Don’t lose your fantasy playoff game because you sat Calvin Johnson, the experts chastised. Don’t get cute. 

Now, the player I was contemplating starting over Johnson had been a top-five wide receiver over the past month. But still: he was a rookie. It was a limited sample size. And remember, Megatron was my 2014 first-round pick. The thought of benching him with my fantasy season on the line was unfathomable. My league would never let me hear the end of it if I was wrong. So, I gave in to this self-imposed pressure. I played Calvin Johnson. And, just as I feared … he wasn’t himself. He grabbed just four catches, for 53 yards. No touchdowns. 

The rookie wide receiver I sat? He finished Week 15 with twelve catches and three touchdowns. If I had started him over Johnson, I would have won my fantasy contest. I would have moved on to my league’s championship. But I didn’t. 

Because I sat Odell Beckham Jr. 

There’s a common baseball trope, one that probably started as coach-speak but later devolved into well-intentioned advice, that goes like this: “if you’re going to get beat, get beat with your best pitch.” The conventional school of thought is that, whether you’re on the mound in the ninth inning of the World Series or attempting to close a big deal with a client, you won’t regret losing as much if you simply stick to your perceived strengths. Don’t get cute, they’ll tell you. Stick with what got you this far.

But in many instances, this adage breaks down because it presumes what comes last will encapsulate the totality of what’s happened so far. In reality, this adage sounds a lot smarter than it plays. In reality, this adage is at a dangerous intersection of two, intoxicating cognitive fallacies: default or status quo bias (in which when faced with a decision, we revert to a state of familiarity or sameness) and recency bias (in which we put undue emphasis on what comes last). It’s why we lament over a missed free throw in the closing minutes of a basketball game exponentially more than we do over one that was missed in the middle of the first quarter (even though the missed opportunity is equal). It’s why the NFL League Office takes control of replay in the final two minutes of their football games (because, as an audience, we’re far more likely to remember bad calls at the end of something – and far more likely to complain about them).

Here’s the thing: if it’s the bottom of the sixth inning, and you’re pitching against a batter that historically hits your best pitch very well, you probably wouldn’t throw it to him, right? So, why should the bottom of the ninth be any different? If you didn’t like the way Ezekiel Elliott – or the Cowboys offense – looked in Week 12 against Washington, why should you feel forced to start him in Week 13 against Baltimore? Because it’s the last game of your fantasy regular season? Because he was your first-round pick? Because he’s Ezekiel Elliott? 

We all make a lot of unforced errors in this game. But among the most frequent ones I see are committed by managers who inexplicably become more risk-averse when their season is on the line. Managers who were abundantly confident snagging and starting virtual unknown James Robinson in Week 2 all of a sudden getting a slow trigger-finger when setting their Week 13 lineup. Managers who didn’t think twice about streaming Ryan Tannehill or Derek Carr in under-the-radar favorable midseason matchups all of a sudden reverting to starting whoever has the “highest projection” in their fantasy apps this week. We spend countless hours placing strategic, data-driven bets all year. And then, with the proverbial game on the line, we freeze. We default to the familiar. We play it safe. 

If you’ve made your living playing out an unorthodox draft strategy in 2020, or streaming high-upside flexes, or playing handcuff running backs the first week they assumed the starting job, then there’s absolutely no reason to quit in Week 13, or Week 14, or any given week of greater perceived fantasy consequence. Don’t revert back to the familiar when doing the unfamiliar has taken you this far. 

The consequential weight of your actions may feel heavier this week. But that’s only an illusion of the mind. 

Take it from someone who’s been there before: you won’t regret losing it all any less simply because you chose the default option. 

No. You’ll regret losing it all the moment you change how you make decisions. 

You’ll regret losing it all the moment you begin to doubt yourself.

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Whether you’re new to fantasy football or a seasoned pro, our Fantasy Football 101: Strategy Tips & Advice page is for you. You can get started with How to Manage Early-Season Injury Problems or head to more advanced strategy – like How to Effectively Assess the Quality of Your Team – to learn more.

David Giardino is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from David, check out his archive and follow him @davidgiardino.

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