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FanDuel advice: Don’t let bad results shake you
You’re going to lose in this game. A lot, most likely. But as long as you’re being smart, it’ll work out.
Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports
A key to any fantasy football -- to anything, really -- is to avoid getting discouraged. It’s one thing to genuinely realize when something isn’t for you, but it’s quite another to hit a hangup and just quit.
A week ago, I decided to test three different roster-selection methods for my primary FanDuel entries for the week. I splurged on Tom Brady, went middle-of-the-road with Eli Manning and shopped for bargains with Marcus Mariota. I paired each guy with one of his primary targets, filled out rosters I thought were good around them, entered them all into the same tournament ... and won zero dollars.
(Most weeks I use this space to discuss key salary changes among FanDuel options. I’ll get back to that next week, but this week I wanted to make this point.)
In my primary season-long fantasy league, I started 0-4. Three of the four losses were by a combined six points (with one blowout), and along the way I lost the following to injury for at least one game: Tony Romo, Arian Foster, Karlos Williams, Chris Ivory, Lance Dunbar, Dez Bryant, Alshon Jeffery, Eric Decker, Davante Adams, Delanie Walker. I won in Week 5, but realistically speaking, my season is over. Best-case scenario, I need to go 5-3 the rest of the way to get to 6-7, have a bunch of other teams struggle, and sneak into the playoffs as a six-seed on tiebreaker. Practically, it’s 6-2 or bust, and considering I’m well, 1-4, it’s hard to imagine.
But my matchup in Week 5? Fingernails, y’all. Marquess Wilson’s touchdown had me celebrating, Green Bay’s defense kept me alive. Sunday night, I needed a few points from Rashad Jennings, and I got just enough to win, despite still being without a big chunk of the guys I listed in the above paragraph.
That’s just what we do in season-long fantasy. You’ve invested in a full season, so even if you go through a bad patch, screw it, you still have to do your best.
There’s more of an urge, in daily fantasy, to just cash out. A losing streak -- I haven’t cashed in two weeks after doing really well the first three weeks -- can leave a bad taste in your mouth, and you just want to say the heck with it.
I mentioned a week ago that my biggest-ever FanDuel win came on the backs of Andre Ellington and Demaryius Thomas last year. I didn’t mention (because honestly, I didn’t really remember it until I was fishing through my old results the other day) that that win came on the heels of two straight weeks of losses, and when I say two weeks, I mean double-digit entries in different tournaments of different structures and different values, and every single one came up empty.
You know if you’re just guessing and picking players with no real reason. If you’re doing that, and you’re losing, well, I can’t help you. But you know if you have a process behind your picks, if there’s reason for your picks that would stand up to scrutiny. And if you’re doing that, but losing, well, crap happens. Sometimes Romo, Foster, Bryant, Jeffery, so on and so forth get hurt. Doesn’t mean you made bad picks, just means crap happens.
If you’re in the “crap happens” family, keep playing. In the long run, the right process will yield the right results. Smart is smart, and smart wins.
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