It’s been a wild few weeks since the FootballGuys Players Championship (FBG) playoffs started. I think there might be a couple of NFL players that haven’t either got COVID or been injured. They’re not on my squads, though. It has been something else trying to set a legal competitive lineup. This season is going to go down as a winning season for me overall, but largely a disappointment and I can’t wait for next season already.
RESULTS
FFPC Redraft Tourneys: I have just five tickets to the big dance, and that is far fewer than I was planning on. After two weeks, none of them are in a position to do anything special. That six-figure payday isn’t happening for me this year unless I win the playoff tourney, which of course I plan to do. In the FBG I will probably win a couple of token entries for next year is all. One of them is Nails of Justice, which I wrote about earlier in the season as being a zombie that might make noise, but then it didn’t and I double tapped it. But then it really did roar back and actually won the league ship and got into the dance. That was pretty exciting and gratifying. These teams are just never as dead as you think they are. Especially in this 2021 climate where the penthouse teams can implode quickly.
I won three league championships and had four 2nd place finishes. One ship was with my first-ever partner who split two teams with me. Our other team finished 8-4 but missed the playoffs. That was despite losing Akers and Etienne with two of our first three picks. It would have won the league ship had it got in. C’est la vie. I had two 9-3 teams that missed the playoffs so that is also super fun. You gotta hustle to win. And sometimes it takes balls:
I had a team that started 0-5 and then went on a major heater and missed getting the 2 seed by just 4 total fantasy points and the 4 seed by 2. That team is currently in 62nd place (out of 8,720) in the Toilet Bowl. I have a couple of other teams in the top 200 of the Toilet Bowl. Sigh. My one Main Event team finished 3-9 but was a high-scoring good build. In my opinion, it just got super unlucky. It currently sits in 10th place overall in the Toilet Bowl (out of 1982).
A quick side note not related to FFPC leagues – I am in the championship round in my longest-running fantasy league, a redraft auction league. It was the first league that I ever played in and the one that I always care the most about winning. I wrote about the draft earlier this offseason. This squad was built with a $69/200 auction bid on McCaffrey, $44 on Ridley, and a gazillion injuries throughout the year. It somehow got a bye. This is the first year that we have an actual real championship belt that is engraved (with my past championships). Half of our league lives in California and half in Oregon. My opponent and I both live in Oregon and last year’s champ lives here as well. So as he said, “Let’s chop this thing, smoke a cigar, and play for the belt. It’s already in the metro area.” My other non-FFPC redraft team came up short in the semis but is playing for a sizeable 3rd place prize.
FFPC Dynasty Teams: My dynasty results are a mixed bag. I have dominated most of the season and managed to live up to my own expectations. But I am vowing never to be so careless with my FAAB in the future. I allowed myself to go to 0 far too early and for too many teams. And I paid dearly for it on teams that were built with some combination of Waller/Hockenson/Gesicki. The latter was on a bye in week 14 and I have taken some 0s out there or been forced to start the likes of John Bates (TE – WFT) and others. I have two championship squads from last year that got bounced in week 14 and did not make the playoffs at all. They both missed the cut by just 1 VP. One had 33 VPs, by far the most I have seen this year for a team that missed. They are also both totally stacked and it is a shame. I wrote about this before but the Thanksgiving injuries to Swift and Waller cut deep for all of my portfolio. I overcame incredible injuries and covid problems this year, but that one was a real knockout uppercut blow. For redraft as well.
All of that said I earned seven byes on FFPC dynasty squads and have five others that made the playoffs. That is 12/24 dynasty teams (that I expected to be competitive) in the playoffs. I expected more. But I am excited that all five teams that didn’t get a bye managed to advance past week 15 to get into the two-week championship race. I have the possibility of up to 12 dynasty ships this next week. There are a couple of them that laid an egg in week 16 and it would take a miracle to pull it off in week 17, but there is still other prize money in the pot to compete for so I am looking forward to as much of that as I can get. I’d be shocked if I won more than four of these, though. I need Kelce and a couple of others to come back and put up points.
WAIVERS WEEK 17
Honestly, if you’re in the championship round I would hope you have all these positions figured out but it is 2021.
QB – Tyler Huntley
RB – Boston Scott, Dare Ogunbowale
WR – Josh Palmer (mostly as a dynasty stash)
TE – Cole Kmet
FF GAMESMANSHIP
Regardless of how many ships I take down this week, I feel like I did a really good job this year, this year being the most difficult I have ever had. To the extent that I have failed to realize my goals, I have to chalk most of it to bad luck, but there are certainly a few bad calls that contributed. I intend to do a fairly thorough autopsy of every squad to assess what happened or didn’t happen. The list of injuries and covid impacts is insane. I also made a lot of good decisions. I think my start-sit decisions were maybe better than they have ever been. And that is the one area that I have always considered my biggest weakness. I won a ton of close matchups this year based on good calls. Of course, I made some bad ones as well.
But more fundamentally, did my process work? I gave myself several opportunities to get lucky and came very close with a lot of squads. We expect this with such a large portfolio. You’re going to experience and see a little bit of everything. Crappy teams that make the playoffs. Strong teams that get bounced. And everything in between. Teams that started weakly and then go on a run or vice versa.
But just as in poker, you don’t want to just throw out everything that you’ve been doing just because the results didn’t go your way. Sometimes you just run bad. It will turn around again. But to know that, and to acknowledge just how close I was (mostly talking about the FBG tournament right now), I feel that my process worked just fine. I was extraordinarily unlucky in some spots but also snuck through in many others. Ultimately I will do just a little better than breaking even, and that really isn’t good enough by my standards but at least I’m effing fishing.
If you constantly find yourself getting really close, then you’re doing something right.
The thing I sometimes tell myself when I get bounced from the poker table just short of a big goal like the money bubble or the final table or a big-money jump at the final table itself is that I couldn’t have got this far unless I was doing something right all along. If I keep doing what I’m doing, I am likely to get to this kind of opportunity again and again, and eventually, the variance will swing in my favor. With the experience of actually having that idea play out for me time and time again, a sort of resolve and poise is built.
The immediate danger is to not go on tilt. But there is a different danger here, which is to be overconfident in one’s skill and to get too comfortable. I may have confidence in my abilities and resolve that says “my process works, I don’t need to abandon ship”, but that can’t come at the expense of challenging one’s assumptions and at trying to improve and stay sharp. You don’t have to abandon ship to tweak and improve your game. Too many people think 2nd place is a failure worthy of tearing it all down. It isn’t. Or at least it might not be.
All of that is to say that we must all examine our own biases and perspectives and approaches to this hobby. The offseason is the perfect time for that. Good luck in week 17 to all playing for a championship out there!
Never give up and let’s keep balling folks!
Thanks for reading! Feel free to reach out to me to chat about fantasy football on Twitter @Ship_Chaser and follow along with me on my journey as I chase six-figure paydays! Look for my new articles soon!
