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.
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