Trusting The Average

One of my favorite lines from a movie is also a line I think of often during football season: As the disabled title character in the 1980 movie "Airplane!" begins it's landing someone suggests that the searchlights at the Airport be turned on. In a parody of his catch phrase from his role on the "Untouchables", Robert Stack replies, "No...That's just what they'll be expecting us to do!"

The patron saint of such absurd thinking as far as pro football is concerned is Mike Martz in Super Bowl XXXVI. In that game, the Patriots defense was far more susceptible to the run than to the pass. The Rams had Marshall Faulk who was the best running back at the time. So of course, Marshall Faulk got 17 carries total.

It might have been that Martz was simply aware of Patriots head coach Bill Belichick's strategy of always neutralizing the best player on the his opponent's offense. But it seemed that he didn't even test the matter. His offense was like nothing ever seen before. The way it moved down the field was compared by many to a fastbreak in basketball. And it wasn't even a case that Faulk was being shut down. He was averaging 4.5 yards a carry. Everyone with whom I was watching, fully expected the Rams to come out in the second half and pound the ball at the middle of the Pats defense and wear it out, but no "that's just what they'd be expecting them to do."

Brad Childress of the Minnesota Vikings seems to have adopted such a strategy against the Cowboys two weeks ago. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I'm a Cowboys fan. But Adrian Peterson was severely underused in that game. Certainly sixty yards and a TD is productive but he was capable of a great deal more. To be fair the Cowboys D was doing a better job of containing Peterson in the second half. But not good enough to abandon him altogether.

All this being said, I do have some sympathy for these coaches. I have often made the mistake of filling out my roster with longshots on weeks when I had a close matchup. It's a case of over thinking it.

I probably should have written this a couple of weeks ago but the strategy still has validity: Trust the Average.

At this point in the season players have settled into their roles so you can trust that the average on their stat sheet in your league is an accurate median score. You've spent the season building this team now trust their productivity.

I had forgotten about this but back in my first season I used to add up the average weekly points of my team and the average of my opponent. My goal was to have my team's average be twenty points higher than theirs. As I mentioned before, this was the season I went 16-1. I've never even come close to that since. A major reason for that is members of the league are more active now (I must admit there was more than one week that year that I was up against a team riddled with injured players or players on bye weeks). Plus, the participants are much better educated now so it is almost impossible to have that great an advantage beforehand.

The other thing this strategy did was temper my maverick tendency of going with a less productive player just because I had a hunch. One incident I remember in particularly from that season was Thanksgiving when I really wanted to play Dexter Coakley even though he wasn't my highest scoring defensive player. I love having a player to watch in both games on Thanksgiving. I had Emmitt Smith. But I wanted someone on both sides of the ball. Silly, I know, but it's my own idiosyncracy. I finally reconciled it by adjusting my roster to make sure I still had my twenty point margin by benching another hunch guy in favor of a more productive one. Believe it or not, the player I activated was Randy Moss. Another idiosyncracy would be how much I hate starting players, even great ones, against my Cowboys. My feelings are always twisted in a knot. If they perform well, I feel guilty. If they perform poorly, such as Sammy Morris a couple of weeks ago, I feel like a jerk and that I got what I deserve. My attitude towards this has been refined in later years. If I have a comparable player not going against my 'Boys I play him. Otherwise, I live with the guilt.

I certainly lived with the guilt that day. I think Moss had three T.D.'s and a ridiculous amount of yardage as the Vikes walloped the 'Pokes. It did help that Emmitt had Two T.D.'s and a similar amount of yardage. And I think Dexter even had six tackles. I ended up winning the week on Thursday. My opponent didn't even match those three players plus my Lions MLB.

The point is trust the team you've built. Think a great deal about any chances you take. Even if your team averages slightly less than your opponent's. If you've been active on the waiver wire and if your opponents haven't committed any collusion everybody should be pretty evenly matched.

McClellan/Showalter Syndrome

One of the things I love most about fantasy football is how much I learn about myself through the decisions I make during a season. Most Chess players would probably tell you the same thing about why they love chess. In fact self-awareness and self-improvement whether as a conscious pursuit or as an unsought by-product is probably a driving force in why we each are driven to do the things we are each uniquely driven to do.

I am an actor by profession and passion and a fantasy football player by leisure and passion and I have found that both push me to face what shortcomings I have and both push me to overcome them. And one of my greatest shortcomings is my constant struggle with a problem I have named McClellan/Showalter Syndrome.

The name choice in itself is probably an indication of the condition: I can't decide between the two names because they both come to my head simultaneously as an illustration of the problem.

Quick history lesson before I continue: George McClellan was a young Union General who had shown some ability in limited action with a small force at the early part of the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln soon chose him to become the supreme commander of the Eastern forces. McClellan's attention to detail and intense discipline turned the largest army in the western hemisphere up to that time into a fine-tuned disciplined war machine within a year. Having done so, he then found it difficult to put this machine into the battlefield. It became little more than a grand show-piece. In fact, it was McClellan who gave it the name "Grand Army of the Potomac".

After two chances Lincoln finally gave up on McClellan and after turning the command over a few times finally found Ulysses Grant who, though not as detailed or well-educated as McClellan as able to drive that well trained army toward it's purpose--victory.

Quick recent baseball history lesson: Buck Showalter was the manager of the Yankees when I first moved to New York and fans were pretty happy with him. He got the team to the playoffs in 1995 for the first time in a long time and it had looked like he would have done it in '94 if the strike hadn't happened. The only problem was that with the talent he had, he still couldn't get into the World Series. Showalter was fired in '96 and Joe Torre took them to five out of six World Series and won four of them.

Buck went on to be the first manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks where he was fired in '01 and Bob Brenley took them to the Series where he beat those selfsame Yankees in that fifth appearance. He then went on to the Rangers and was fired in '06. Lightning didn't strike three times but that's because it was the Rangers who don't suffer under a curse but rather suffer from supernatural indifference.

The book on Showalter was that he was a great details guy, who could put a great team together but then got bogged down in side issues and allowed himself to think himself out of winning.

(Interesting fact. I attended game 4 of the 2001 World Series and found myself only about 10 yards from Showalter who was standing on a platform watching the game as it went into extra innings. He was an analyst for ESPN at the time and had not made any appearance on the platform until that moment. The fans around greeted him warmly and I observed a soft smile on his face as he watched these two teams he had built locked in a tie fighting for the championship. To this day I wish I could ask him what he was thinking that night.)

I wrote all this because I started LenDale White in week 5. Not a stupid decision but an overly cautious one that cost me an easy victory against a particularly annoying individual who enjoys bullying the worst player in our league. Mr. Annoying is 42 years old. I had hoped to teach him a lesson. Instead, I taught myself one by recognizing my affliction.

I had Joseph Addai and his backup, Kenton Keith. Keith had come into the game the week before and showed that he was quite capable of being more than productive in the Colts offense. Addai had left that game with a minor shoulder injury. The early reports were that he would have returned but the Colts had the game well in hand. By the middle of the week, reports were that Addai might not play because he had a bye week coming up in week 6 and sitting out would give him an extra week to heal. Those were reliable reports but not official. The official report was that Addai was a game-time decision.

I knew that Addai probably would not play and I had Keith in my line-up right up until Saturday night when I over thought it. My logic was that White had been reliably producing seven or eight points a week and since I would be out before the late game started I would not have time to plug Addai in if Coach Dungy decided to put him in. But Dungy is not Bill Belichick he does not play games with injury reports.

All three choices bore some risk. But, like McCLellan being fooled into believing he was outnumbered on the peninsula by the same Confederate battalion being marched through a clearing over and over. I was fooled by the lack of a definite answer.

When I first started playing fantasy football, I had to rely on matchups because I was still learning how to draft. As the years have gone by, I have gotten much better at putting together a team of clear starters(Joseph Addai) along with above average handcuffs(Kenton Keith), reliable backups (Maurice Jones-Drew), and the best of what's left(LenDale White). The whole reason I had Kenton Keith on my roster was just for this situation...and then I played it safe.

LenDale White had his worst week. He fumbled and was pulled off the field early in the game and only scored one and a half points. Kenton Keith scored thirty points. Jones-Drew scored twenty. Had I started either Keith or Jones-Drew I would have won. I haven't even gone into why I didn't start Jones-Drew because I'm not sure. He hadn't been producing as well as he should but he was still averaging as much as White and he definitely had more upside. Besides I like the guy's attitude and work ethic far more than White. Somehow I had rationalized that since White was playing at home, he was the smarter pick. It was almost as if I was punishing Drew for not playing up to his potential.

As I said at the beginning I love playing fantasy sports because it can illustrate my strengths and limitations through the choices that I make. Not only can I be aware of them and deal with them in the game, I can recognize and be aware of the same patterns in my work and private life.

You Down Wid' IDP? (Yeah, you know me!)

I want to say I hate team Defense leagues but that can't be true because I play in a few team defense leagues out of necessity. I guess I tolerate them. I just don't think there is any skill or art in drafting or choosing team defenses.

There's usually about three or four defenses at draft time worth starting every week. This year it was Chicago, Baltimore, New England and maybe Pittsburgh. Chicago suddenly became iffy when Mike Brown, strong safety, went down. Then they completely fell apart when six starters went down to injury. Plus Rex Grossman didn't throw an interception unless the lucky recipient had a clear lane to the endzone. All those turnovers for TD's counted against this vaunted D. Suddenly the above list shortens to two worthwhile teams, the Patriots and the Steelers because they have reliable offenses.

So now you're spending too much time on the waiver wire finding the strongest Defense that is going up against the weakest offense. Not much thought goes into it.

One final thing that is incredibly annoying about team Defense leagues. Every year the NFL makes rules which support more scoring by the offense yet the penalties for being scored against stay the same or even increase.

I love IDP leagues. No wait...I LOVE IDP leagues. They show respect for defensive players and if the league is designed correctly, who you have on your team can offset those one or two Running Backs who scored over twenty TD's in a season or transcendant Wide Receivers that ended up on one team.

First of all, there's so much more to research in preparation for the draft. For instance, knowing the base defense of the team can help you decide who to take at each position--in a "Cover 2" cornerbacks and weakside linebackers can be as valuable as strong safeties and middle linebackers in a "4-3". In a "3-4" tackles can be a valuable as ends. You can break it down even further by finding out what the philosophy of the defensive coordinator is. Some are more about covering areas while others have a go to the ball philosophy. All of this and much more can be taken into consideration be fore you make your picks. Plus if you do the work you are more apt to make value picks in later rounds while others are reaching for recognizable names. Back in the Nineties someone would always take Deion Sanders even though he was rarely thrown at nor punted too. The value in the 4-3 is the second cornerback.

A friend of mine who played fantasy baseball made the cynical observation that all you had to do was take the guys from the bad teams since they are the ones who will likely be on the field the most. It's certainly a consideration but as I've played more and more I've learned players who are on the field a lot are likely to get hurt. Plus bad teams can be scored on so quickly that nobody gets many points. Ray Lewis was the best linebacker in both the lean years and the Super Bowl and playoff years. Urlacher had one of his best years last year en route to the super bowl. Sacks occur more often when an offense is rendered one dimensional because they need to come back from a large deficit.

And even with all this there is the element of dumb luck: I was considering benching Osi Umenyiora in week 4 due to his nagging injuries and almost started Robert Geathers. Then, while listening to the Sirius Fantasy Show, Adam Caplan made a throw away comment while talking about Donovan McNabb that the Eagles were starting a rookie at tackle. He said that would make a great matchup for Osi. Osi in Geathers out. Osi got six sacks and scored 36 overall points and I regained the top spot in my division from the guy who had the first pick in our league.

My point is that being good at IDP is like being a bassist in a rock band. It doesn't take much talent to be competent at it. But there is a lot of potetial to study and be great at it. Team Defense is like being the tamborine player.

I'd like to start a movement right here with the three readers I have spreading out the message: Make requests to all your Fantasy Football services to make IDP leagues an option in their public default leagues...I'm looking at you, ESPN. My two favorite leagues have seven players on D but a default could easily be Linebacker, Defensive Lineman, Defensive Back, Defensive Flex. Whatever. Just make the request and give IDP a try and you'll be down wid' it.