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Fantasy Football 52: Pop Quiz Hotshot

by Nate McGrath

Story Created: Sep 30, 2010 at 9:40 AM CDT

Story Updated: Oct 26, 2010 at 3:43 PM CDT

You have Joe Flacco, Ray Rice, Shonn Greene, Larry Fitzgerald, Greg Jennings, and Brent Celek on your fantasy team this year averaging about eight points per game respectively. What do you do? Sorry Keanu, shooting the hostage isn’t an option here. No, sadly you’ve drafted what seemed to be a stellar team on draft day, only to be going into week four waiting for one of these guys to show even a little bit of the talent that earned them a starting spot on your team. So what DO you do? You’re only options are to tough it out and stick with the guys you drafted, put all of your underperformers on your league’s trading block, or just dump these clowns on their faces and assemble a patch-work team of waiver wire all-stars. You have to figure something out because you dipped into your kid’s “Braces fund” to pay your league’s entry fee.

Well a good way to completely screw your league up is to just drop those players. You’re basically handing over potential fantasy superstars for someone else to plug in their lineup and getting nothing in return. Then when all of your old guys start producing for someone else you feel like an idiot. On top of that, your whole league hates you for making one guy’s team unfairly stacked because he had the number one waiver pick. In my main league, one owner dropped Drew Brees in ’07 after throwing nine interceptions and only one touchdown in the first five weeks. Needless to say, the guy lucky enough to land Drew Brees as a free agent has won two league titles in a row since then. The rest of the league hates them both.

Because you live here in America, God gives you the right to trade these guys away. It is better than just dropping them. This way you may be able to at least get a few decent guys for them. But then you’re still trading off guys that you expected to be your studs for players who could be just decent. Is that really what you want? After the few slow weeks these guys have had, nobody in your league will be willing to give you fair value for any of them. You’ll find yourself on the wrong end of a “Buy low sell high” situation. After three weeks, you’d have a hard time trading Ray Rice to someone straight up for Darren McFadden. Even though Rice was in literally everyone’s top five preseason running back rankings, and McFadden could typically be found around the thirty-five range. Way down there by Willis McGahee and Chester Taylor. Unfortunately, trading off your draft-day disappointments usually isn’t the route to take either.

People who have been playing fantasy football for a long time know that great players are great players. And every year a handful of really talented guys get off to a slow start for one reason or another. Some of them never snap out of it, but most of them do. So your best bet is to just hang in there and wait for things to pan out. If you made some good calls, and perhaps got a little lucky when drafting your team, you may have some serviceable players on your bench to give you a better shot at winning until your starters get their act together. There’s a good chance you’ll drop a few games in the meantime, but if your team gets hot late and sneaks into the playoffs, that’s all that really matters isn’t it? Good luck in week 4!

Contact me at thecommish52@live.com

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