Fantasy Football can be a fickle and frustrating game. We walk into the season brimming with confidence over a roster that just can’t miss, forgetting that every other owner in the league is feeling the exact same way about their team. We can’t all be right, and as a matter of fact, most of us are dead wrong about how good our teams are. Only one manager can hoist the trophy at the end. There are many fantasy football lessons learned along the way.
For the rest of us, injuries and ineffectiveness leave a merciless trail of destruction along the road to the championship. We know this going into the season, yet we all still make the choice to play this maddening game. Furthermore, an overwhelming majority of us will eagerly sign up to do it all over again in 2025. Why? Because it’s so damn exhilarating to beat the odds and win our league!
Learning Valuable Lessons
Any puzzle too easily solved doesn’t bring the same level of joy as solving a fiendishly difficult challenge like navigating all the way to a league title. In fact, the task is SO difficult that it’s easy to look at the wreckage of a season and pin it all on luck. But luck is the residue of design, in fantasy football as much as anywhere else in life. Maybe you put a lot of effort into winning each year, or maybe you’re just looking for the shortcuts that will boost your odds without taking up valuable time spent with family, friends, or other enjoyable pursuits.
Regardless of where you fall on the scale, here’s some of my lessons learned from the 2024 season that I’ll be applying to 2025 and beyond.
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Tag-Teaming Is Fun
Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of teams that I run without a co-manager, but co-managing adds to my overall satisfaction with playing the game. I can be in more leagues by sharing teams, which increases the odds that I’ll be hoisting at least one trophy at the end. Whether you play one league, 10 leagues, or dozens upon dozens of leagues, sharing teams adds to the enjoyment.
Your co-manager will undoubtedly have some different strategies, or player takes you never considered before that will make YOU a better manager on any other teams you run, and vice versa. It’s also nice to have someone to talk through difficult decisions along the way, again possibly helping you run your solo teams better as well. This year I shared teams with several different co-managers, including our own Theo Gremminger, and every one of those partnerships was a success.
Elite QB Play Matters
There are many paths to winning, but the easiest path runs through a top-scoring QB. In the early weeks of 2024, poor QB scoring was rampant, but if you were rostering the likes of Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, or Joe Burrow you slept like a baby while your fellow managers were probably falling behind you in the standings and likely frantically scrambling to find a reliable QB, burning roster slots and FAAB along the way.
So, what do those four names have in common? They all have a track record of fantasy greatness and they all probably went pretty early in your draft. It’s okay to pay for excellence and certainty, even if the cool kids want to brag about their late-round sharpshooting skills at QB. They smugly scooped up their Zay Flowers, Amari Cooper, and Rachaad White shares instead of just locking in an elite-level QB. Sure, Patrick Mahomes drafters are grumbling, but the hit rate in the elite tier of QBs is much, much better than the hit rate of the RBs, WRs, and TEs going in the same area of the draft.
Stop Trying to Make Zamir White Happen
White closed the final four weeks of the 2023 season as the RB12, RB17, RB16, and RB21. Anthony Pierce, the interim head coach during that span, was retained as head coach in 2024. He was determined to build his team around great defense and a great running game. The only RB of consequence the Raiders added in the offseason was Alexander Mattison, a proven plodder. On the surface, drafting White as the RB23 by ADP seemed like a good deal.
What I failed to process was the fact that I was drafting him as if he’d already established himself as a quality player off of a very small sample size of competence. “Who else besides Player X is going to earn touches” is a dangerous mindset, especially at RB. If the talent isn’t there, someone else will emerge, even if I can’t see who that might be. Additionally, it was already obvious that the Raiders lacked talent at the all-important QB position and that Vegas had set their season win total at 6.5 games (6th worst in the league), both big red flags for a RB. Next year, I’ll pay more attention to taking mid-round shots at RBs who offer a better blend of talent and situation.
Draft Teams That Can Start Fast
Of course, we still must draft in an antifragile manner which potentially benefits from the unfettered chaos that is an NFL season, but we also need to be sure our team can win early and often. Extreme ZeroRB builds are fine in theory. However, if your team starts out 1-4 and you’re STILL waiting for those backup RBs to pop, you’re likely doomed.
If you can’t find a clear path to winning in Week 1, what’s going to change by Week 2? Everyone else will be gunning for those same few players on the waiver wire who unexpectedly balled out. Even if you add one to your team, there’s about a 50% chance that he was a one-week wonder anyway. The season is guaranteed to fold, spindle, and mutilate our teams throughout the season. We don’t need to make the game more difficult by drafting our way into a team with built-in problems that must be solved nearly immediately in order to win consistently.
Bad Picks Are Bad Picks, Period
We don’t hate players. We hate their ADP. Fantasy gamers have said these words for years. I’m taking this a step farther in 2025. If a player is a bad bet, then why would I want to make the same bad bet 1-2 rounds later? I guarantee I can find bets I’m excited to make in every round, every year, without resorting to catching a falling knife. I didn’t like Michael Pittman in the fourth round last year, so drafting him just because he dropped to the fifth round wouldn’t make him a value. It would just make him a cheaper trap. Beer goggles are bad news in the dating scene; likewise, ADP goggles are bad news in the drafting scene.
Skate To Where the Puck Is Going
This is a favorite saying of my good friend Scott Pianowski of Yahoo Sports, and it’s a mantra I intend to repeat to myself even more often in 2025. To put it another way, one of the best high-stakes players I know, Nelson Sousa, often says that if you have to see it happen before you act on it, you’ll always be chasing and rarely winning.
Devon Achane showed us all we needed to see last year to know what his potential was. Chase Brown was a player that always seemed destined to pop this year while Zack Moss was the meat shield that helped obscure the truth. Gabe Davis was never going to stand in the way of Brian Thomas Jr. if BTJ was actually good. Talent is a magnet for targets and touches. Believe it.
See you all in the draft rooms in 2025, and good luck!
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