My Winning Fantasy

Since it's mid-June, and fantasy sports leagues start earlier every year (it's getting as bad as retailers with Christmas and other holidays -- watch your circulars for back to school, which will probably happen right after the Fourth of July), league sign-ups are starting now. I'm no different, and this year, I'm starting my own league.

Which leads me to following strong annoyance point... if we're going to the trouble of drafting defenses, why don't we care whether they win or lose the game?

In the Yahoo pre-sets, which is the dominant format, you can adjust for points for blocked kicks. Safetys. Get points for a botched running play by the QB where he's tackled, or runs out of bounds, for a one yard loss that's called a sack. But whether or not the defense manages the game to do what football teams are constructed to do -- win? Nope. Not at all.

(A similar grievance happens with quarterbacks who rack up 300 yards and 2 touchdowns in garbage time against scrubs, after their own backbreaking turnovers caused the game to be long out of reach. I call this the Aaron Brooks Effect, after the worst real-life and best geek-life QB in roto sports history. Brooks was on the champion roster in my total redraft league for three or four years straight, because the man was born to deliver points that meant nothing in reality, but everything to us. You could, if you had the balls, spend nothing at QB and load up on the other positions, and routinely fight the guy with Peyton Manning to a draw on touchdown passes to Joe Horn that changed the final score from 28-10 to 28-17. In his honor, I will now back this column up for ten yards under no real pressure, and throw my point backwards like a special needs child that's not getting milk before nap time. There's a good long pointless parenthetical digression. Brooksie would be proud.)

Anyhow, my fellow nerdlings, how many times has this happened to you? You select a defense on a good team. They contain the opposition and build up a lead -- maybe even with sacks and a turnover or two. Their offense then puts the game out of reach. And then, whether through an obvious letdown, a fluke play, or the game management mode that kicks in for every team once the magic "well, we can't get a shutout" play happens... and by the final gun, you are looking at 14 to 21 meaningless points against prevent, including ones where the offense has totally screwed you with a red zone turnover, or auto points from point after touchdowns on defense or special teams. It's the worst way to lose.

Meanwhile, the guy over in the corner who picked up the freaking Bengals has outpointed you, because while they are a terrible, terrible defense, they score more because they gamble constantly. So they've given up more points and lost, but had a pick and lateral play that got them in the end zone. In the immortal words of Derrick Coleman, whoop de damn do.

Now, if we're able to give the defense some points -- not a ton, mind you, just say, five to cover for the letdown touchdowns that happen in the 14 to 20 points range -- well, I don't see what that hurts. Maybe it makes the defenses a little more important in drafting, or adds an amount of extra (but fairly cool) complexity in the waiver wire strategy of adding and dropping defenses by match-up. Maybe, and this is the best thing of all, it makes all of us nerdlings not stick out like sci-fi conventioneers in Wookie costumes at the sports bar, since we'll be cheering and groaning over the outcome of the game. That'd be nice.

So have a heart, Yahoo Honks. Give us defensive wins as a point option, and do it in time for this year's leagues, so that I don't have to keep it by hand. You'll strike a small blow for making fantasy football more closely resemble what it really is -- gambling on the outcome of NFL games. (Shhh....)