When it comes to fantasy football–especially daily fantasy football–there will be bumps along the road. You cannot win every weekend, and you certainly can’t predict player outcomes with 100% accuracy. In the 17th week of the NFL season, this becomes even more the case, making predicting how players will perform extremely difficult. Now that this week is beyond us, it is easy to look back and see all of the mistakes that fantasy players made, but this is an easy way to prep for next year so that you won’t be caught in a similar situation.
Week 17 is not always the icing on the cake that fantasy experts think it will be. A lot of unexpected things happen this week, but they don’t necessarily need to be unexpected. For example, some people selected Tom Brady as their starting QB. This was a foolish move. The Patriots had easily qualified for the playoffs and there was no point in playing him the whole game. There was nothing to be gained by keeping him in past the first half, so the management pulled him. Brady has a reputation for wanting to play all the time, but this was the right move by decision makers. Fantasy players should have known this and avoided him in order to make sure that they weren’t stuck with a player that wouldn’t produce points.
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This is common among teams that have qualified and don’t want to risk injury on star players. That’s a good lesson for going forward for fantasy players. Don’t put an emphasis on your team’s success by drafting players that do not have incentive to contribute to your score. In Brady’s case, the coaches didn’t have any incentive either, so they pulled him. But oftentimes, players are left in a game–and they have no motive to play hard. You cannot pull an entire team.
When you draft your team, be aware of the teams that will not be putting forth an honest effort. These teams have no incentive to win, and the players that usually contribute to fantasy stats will likely not produce the numbers that they have all throughout the season. There will likely be better choices to draft at much cheaper prices. Look for these players, while using your extra salary cap cash on the stars that are on the playoff bubble. These players will have shown results throughout the rest of the year, but will have extra incentive to play harder.
The Playoffs are a new beginning. If a team loses, they’re out. Everyone will be playing at their best, and everyone will be playing against good teams. Your job, then, is to pick the players that will perform the best against the best. Looking at Week 17 is not the best way to evaluate this ability for players that had secure entry to the postseason. But those that had to work hard to get to the playoffs will likely be able to reproduce that effort because this is how they can perform when the season is on the line. Week 17 is a good indicator of this kind of desperate talent.
However, if you prepped for Week 17, but the players you chose didn’t do what they were supposed to, this isn’t really a huge cause for concern. You probably did your preparation correctly, you just didn’t account for the fact that the regular season was coming to an end and some players were in situations that other were not. You know this now and can account for it next year, but now it’s time to get ready for the postseason. Don’t beat yourself up, just look forward with a fresh eye.
Now that the playoffs are about to start, you will find that your methods might need to change a bit in order for you to be successful. For example, playing in multipliers and 50/50s will be a lot riskier than usual because of the high variance that you will experience. Still to GPP competitions, and you will find that your consistent talent rewards you much better than taking a gamble in a flat payout game. The games will have a limited number of players to choose from, and this will create exaggerated outcomes. One wrong pick can skew the results dramatically, and that opens up the door for a bad set of draft picks to come in and win everything. Instead, focus on what you’ve found works for you all season, and the results will follow if you pick the right format for your drafting strengths. For most, this is GPPs, even if you focused on multipliers and 50/50s the rest of the season. Restricted player choices will even the field and slant results, and this is something that can be almost impossible to predict ahead of time.
