Everyone has been burned playing fantasy football, but there are different levels of scarring and some wounds never quite heal.  The GMs that drafted Christian McCaffrey this past summer are feeling a lot worse than the ones who simply messed up by grabbing Dak Prescott.  Bad GMs hold grudges and don’t learn from their mistakes.  Good GMs are able to forgive and forget and know that correlation isn’t always causation.  Great GMs adapt and survive as the fantasy world is everchanging and only the special GMs can stay ahead of the curve.   As fun as it is to have do not draft lists and hold grudges against people who don’t know we exist, it’s really not that advantageous.  Many things in life and fantasy are random, but sometimes there are patterns and it is the recognition of certain negative patterns that I aim to seek out and avoid.  So I present my list of negative patterns for fantasy which I will dodge, duck, dive and dodge again.

Beware the old WR, they are available for a reason

This is tough because one of the keys to winning at fantasy is drafting the boring veteran that no one wants anymore who still has plenty of gas in the tank.  Players like Keenan Allen, Tyler Lockett and even Mike Evans have been chronically under drafted the last couple of seasons, but once it goes, it goes fast and never comes back.   This past season we saw Tyreek Hill, Davante Adams, Mike Evans, Stefon Diggs, Cooper Kupp, Amari Cooper and Keenan Allen all at 30+ years old and not surprisingly, Evans was the only one to finish as top-10 WR in total fantasy points.  Adams was the WR12, so that’s a win as well, but the falloff for everyone else was precipitous and likely final.  Fantasy football is a young man’s game and deciphering the difference between an off year and physical decline will be the difference between a winning and losing season.

It’s not just the stats that take a dive, it’s the overall health.  Even if a player is still 85% of what he was, his ability to stay on the field becomes compromised.  Diggs, Kupp, Evans and Hill all battled injuries all season and the only thing worse than having them out for the season like Diggs is starting them every week while they produce next to nothing.

The Onsie positions are officially Nonsie positions

The hot button issue last summer was whether to invest in QB or TE and shotgun the other.  For instance, if you drafted Josh Allen in the third round, you don’t also take Trey McBride in the fourth.  While that hypothetical would have worked out nicely, it was the exception, not the rule.  The QBs that finished QB4 (Baker Mayfield), QB5 (Jayden Daniels), QB6 (Jared Goff), (Bo Nix) QB7 and (Sam Darnold) QB9 were all essentially free and could have been grabbed with your 9/10/11 round pick.  If you want to grab Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen early, I don’t blame you as the floor of your team will have a solid foundation.  If you want to shoot the moon, just wait and stock up on RBs and WRs.

As questionable as it was to grab an early QB, it was even more disastrous at TE.  I wrote last summer about the return of the TE and now I have to eat my words.  Again, if you want to go get McBride or Brock Bowers, I can’t fault you as they are essentially foolproof, but after that it’s a coinflip.  I loved Dalton Kincaid and Sam LaPorta last summer and bought in on the TE revolution, but it wasn’t meant to be.  Travis Kelce fell off a cliff and it was retreads like Zach Ertz and Jonnu Smith that ended up being difference makers.  It’s all about draft capital and you don’t any want potential production risk with your mid-round targets.  It’s exponentially more valuable to take a shot on a rookie WR or RB at that point rather than hope a TE has a breakout season.

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