Luck be a lady

How much does luck play a role? Well, Andrew Luck plays a huge role on the Colts, who will easily win the AFC South season and look to do some serious damage in the AFC playoffs. But I’m talking about luck in fantasy football, and now that I lost in devastating fashion in my “this is the league I care about” league by ending the season on a 5-game losing streak and missing the playoffs by 1 game, I felt it time to (whine) write about how much luck plays a role in fantasy football. (Hint: It’s a lot)

1.)    Injuries- the amount of season-ending injuries in JUST the fantasy football landscape this year were too numerous to count.  Arian Foster, Reggie Wayne, Jake Locker, Sam Bradford, Julio Jones, Randall Cobb, David Wilson, are just some of the fantasy studs that landed on IR this season. Realize that the fantasy football players we care about cover only about 25% of the league, and we realize how much of an epidemic injuries are.  There’s an argument that one can predict injuries based on injury history, but that doesn’t explain Arian Foster, who’s been healthy every season he’s played, or Ryan Mathews, who’s stayed healthy this season despite being hurt all the time. There’s a lot of “freak” in these injuries. And football is pretty unique in that an injury to one player can devastate the value of another, i.e., Jordy Nelson when Aaron Rodgers went down (and was replaced by Scott Tolzien), or all Indy receivers a few years ago when Peyton Manning went down. Injuries are magnified in fantasy football.

2.)    Touchdowns – the fact that a TD can be worth as much as 60 yards is pretty absurd. You can have PPR-leagues, yardage leagues, return yardage leagues, etc., but no matter what format, TD’s are the great equalizer. And they’re random; how many times do you say Calvin Johnson get tackled at the 1 and then Kris Durham get the 1-yard TD pass? Or the fullback scores? Or a defensive TD? Touchdowns are the hardest things to predict for an individual player’s performance, but they’re worth the most points in fantasy football.

3.)    Less games – NFL has 16 games of stats to go off of (really 15 because fantasy football leagues don’t usually use Week 17), compared to 162 games for the MLB, 82 for the NBA. That means large swings of information based on one game. The “less games” also makes a manager less able to adjust, whereas in baseball one can adjust daily lineups, in football one cannot change lineups during a game and once the game’s over the whole week is over. No adjustments = less skill involved, more luck involved.

4.)    Less positions to fill- my “I care about it a lot league” has ample positions including 2QBs and 2 flex positions, but many leagues I play in only have 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 DEF, sometimes even less than that. That’s 9 positions you need to account for, as opposed to 21 in standard baseball leagues, 12 or so in fantasy basketball leagues. The impact of one player having a monster game gets magnified. Anytime there’s less sample size, luck plays a bigger role.

Really, most fantasy football people realize this, which is why fantasy football has the least dealings with “advanced metrics” like baseball or other scientific stat points, it’s pretty much recognized in the fantasy world as more of a crapshoot than anything else, so people just go with it knowing that it’s more of a luck fest. But it’s very very fun, and a great way to compete with other enthusiasts, even casual ones, which maybe why it’s the most popular.

I have a theory about this. (You thought the article was over, didn’t you?) I think Americans like the fact that there’s a lot of luck involved. That’s why people play the lottery, play table games at casinos. You know there’s really no skill involved in “hitting” on a 16 against a 21, but you do it anyway because you want to “test your luck,” and sometimes it works. Even when science is screaming at you that the 45% chance that it turns out well doesn’t make sense against the 55% chance it won’t, your body feels good when that 45% chance pans out, and you have fun. That’s lady luck for you, and she comes in many forms, especially in fantasy football. 

How do you say "lucky" in Japanese? They say "rakki," or basically just "lucky." A lot of Japanese words are taken from English words. So you already  know more Japanese than you think. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan