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FanDuel roster advice: Separating the head and the heart
Oh, you won’t roster anyone on your least favorite team? Congratulations on handcuffing yourself for no reason.
Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports
If you get famous enough as an analyst (NOTE: I am not discussing myself, as I am in no way famous), you get blowback. People will accuse you of malfeasance based on no evidence at all.
I follow both Buster Olney and Keith Law on Twitter. And every day, they (often humorously) mock people who accuse them of bias. There are compilations where you can see that they've been accused (totally confidently) of bias literally against every team in baseball, against other sports, against politicians, everything. (I'll get to fantasy football eventually, just bear with me.)
First off, that’s stupid. Unless you have evidence beyond “guy said my team did a dumb thing,” then literally accusing someone of intentionally doing their job wrong is just dumb. But second, screw it, why can’t they be fans?
I have a journalism degree, and worked for newspapers for a while. One of the “rules” that was always (always, always, always) stupid to me was the one with organizations that do pick ‘em games. You see it on ESPN every week. Kirk Herbstreit won’t pick a winner for the game he’s broadcasting that day. The reason, as far as I can tell, is that it introduces some form of “bias” if an announcer has picked a winner. Well, first of all, he’s an analyst, and supposed to determine the good and the bad, and that extends to determining who might win a game. He’s not choosing the team he’s rooting for. Second, who the heck cares if Herbstreit, Olney, or Law root for a team? If they are worth anything at all (and they are), they are able to separate rooting interests from analysis.
Case in point: My FanDuel daily fantasy team for Week 2 of the NFL season. (See, told you I'd get here.) If I picked only players I rooted for, my roster every week would have Alshon Jeffery, Peyton Manning and a handful of Colts. I'd probably find a way to put Kyle Orton on a few of them. Maybe get extra creative and incorporate Eric Hosmer from baseball. I'd never have a Baltimore Raven and never have a New England Patriot other than good ol' Gronk. I'd also lose a lot.
No, any analyst (and any fantasy player) worth his or her salt can very easily separate their rooting interests from reality. It's why I picked the Texas Rangers to finish under .500 this year, why I thought the Colts would lose in the AFC title game last year, and why Terrance Williams is on my FanDuel team this week.
I don't particularly like Terrance Williams as a player. He's never impressed me, and I've thought the Cowboys (another team I don't care for) would have been better off finding any competent receiver to serve as Dez Bryant's running mate. That said, with Bryant sidelined, the Cowboys almost have to give Williams more attention. His FanDuel price rose accordingly, from $5,300 last week to $6,300 now, but I think he's worth even more than that, and a bargain's a bargain.
My team this week continued in that vein. I've never much cared for Carson Palmer, Sammy Watkins or Jordan Reed. But in all three cases, the value worked, and all you're looking for in these situations is value. Getting value in those positions let me spring for Odell Beckham Jr. (did you see what Jordan Matthews did against the Falcons last week?), Matt Forte (did you see how he was used last week?) and Chris Ivory (did you ... yeah, you get it). Saving money to pay more elsewhere is a good move.
In the end, here is the roster I ended up with:
(Yes, I will go back and edit these pending injuries, but the two guys with injury alerts are guys I expect to be 100 percent come the weekend.)
I'm going to enter another roster before the games this weekend, one with Jason Witten as my tight end and some other guys in other spots. I'm not positive Williams sees a huge boost with Bryant out. But this lineup will go as well, and this lineup has players in it I just don't love.
Being a fan is fun. Sometimes, like with my Rangers these days, it's really fun. And playing fantasy is fun. So is analyzing it. But I'd be bad at all those things if I couldn't separate one from another. Monday, my Colts play the Jets. You saw up there that Chris Ivory is in this week's lineup. I have money on Chris Ivory. When they play, I expect Ivory will do well. That's what I think will happen. But I will also watch that game hoping like crazy that he doesn't.
It’s funny. I can do both.
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