Comfort

Fantasy football season, as you might have read on this blog or elsewhere, starts in earnest in the next couple of weeks, and as I start the hundreds of hours of draft prep (never too early to start intimidating my fellow league mates), something struck me -- the inclination to draft (or should I say, re-draft) players from past years.

Part of this is simple intellectual laziness. I know, or at least I think I know, a lot about these guys already. I've developed some fondness for them. Take, for instance, Hines Ward, the possession guy in Pittsburgh's scheme who has always distinguished himself from the rest of his wideout brethren by being an incredible team player and blocking presence. (He's also distinguished for having mixed ancestry and other football blogs that think that's somehow funny. Sad.)

You know what you're getting from Hines -- 5 catches a game for 70 yards and the touchdown every other game. End of the year, you're looking at 70 catches, 1000 yards, 6 to 8 touchdowns, minimal headache, a reasonable WR3 in any offense. For the most part, you can start him every week with confidence.

Or can you?

Ward's getting older, and spent a lot of last season hurt -- more or less a first for him. He lost a lot of the red zone attention to Heath Miller. The deep balls now all go to Santonio Holmes or some other burner off the bench. The Pittsburgh running game will be (shh) much better this year, despite the loss of Alan Faneca, because Faneca didn't actually play all that well in his walk-off year, and because Rashard Mendenhall is a hell of a lot better than Najeh Davenport. He's probably better than Willie Parker, too, and if he is, Parker can go back to the change-of-pace back that he was when he was really exceptional. Ward could easily play as well as in previous years and have fewer yards and touchdowns, and that's assuming he stays healthy, which is rarely a given for players who are as physical as he is. Fantasy leagues are lost every year on over-reliance on known quantities like Ward.

The point, and trouble, in fantasy football is that the lifespans of players can be over in an instant, and that's independent of even catastrophic knee injuries. There are no sure things at any level, just lesser amounts of risk. Ward's attraction as a player has been his relative lack of risk in a boom or bust position; even in his worst games, he usually gives you a few points, and sometimes he gets touchdowns in bunches.

Owners in fantasy leagues fall somewhere on the callous/sentimental scale in regards to comfort picks. The folks who draft more towards their home team obviously fall towards comfort, whereas the any port in a storm crowd goes to callous. This also leads to the disgust shown by non-players, who can't understand how you'd root for a guy on the hated Other Laundry, especially the Most Hated Laundry. (Me, I tend to shy away from Most Hated Laundry myself, though not entirely -- if you get Role Player / Emerging Star from Most Hated Laundry, you can mitigate the guilt by thinking that he'll only get numbers in the event of injury to Most Hated Star. Call it the No TO, Yes Patrick Crayton rule.)

As in all things, moderation is important. A team full of guys and laundry you hate, or have never owned before, is also not likely to be optimal; you're drafting from a dogma there, rather than for value. Plus, you'll hate your team. I also tend to try to stay away from the One Basket approach, where you have the QB/WR tandem, or the RB and his handcuff. The simple fact is that handcuffs are comfort food as well, a seemingly no-cost insurance policy that prevents you from throwing up your hands in despair if Star Player goes down. But what most people don't realize is that if/when Star Player goes down, you're still screwed even if you have the handcuff... because you've been sitting on the sidelines with that roster spot while others have been taking advantage of the increased flexibility to take more chances on waiver wire finds before the handcuff became useful.

Plus, there's the simple matter of the handcuff itself. Most of the time, they don't perform at Star Player's level; if they did, they would have had the job in the first place. We remember all of the guys that took advantage of the opportunity, while forgetting all of the guys that were roster space killers. It's the insurance policy that insures losing.

So, as you prep for your own league, or (because it's more or less the same thing) think about any bets that you might lay down this season, consider the importance that comfort plays in your decisions, and whether or not you're doing the smart thing, as opposed to the comfortable one. Chances are, the harder path might be the better one.

Oh, and if you can get Ward as a WR3, he's probably still worthwhile. Besides, you'll smile, as always, when he lays some mouthy cornerback out on a sweep.