Player Take Imposter Syndrome and Resisting Projection Inertia

Fantasy Football is a game about outliers. Because football is a game about outliers.

I’m not sure what the opposite of old man yelling at cloud is. Young man yelling at the sun? Whatever it is, that’s probably what this post is going to read like.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, this column will rotate between some spotlight analysis on players, and some more broad, theory-based chat. Today was going to be the former, as I have a dynasty strategy column ear-marked for next week. But some of the reactions in the fantasy community this week have ticked me off and I wanted to write about them.

The first was the Quentin Johnston vs. Josh Palmer discussion. If you listened to Sweatin’ Bullets — my dynasty podcast with Drew Osinchuk — you already know my take here. The hoards of people coming out of the woodwork recommending Palmer truly stunned me. Josh Palmer is a known commodity. He played nearly half of his 2022 season without Keenan Allen, and half of that stretch with neither Allen or Mike Williams. It resulted in 13 points per game (during that stretch), and season-long marks of 1.24 YPRR and .158 TPRR. Effectively, he was the dead zone RB of WRs: providing viable starting production, marginally above the replacement level if you are an average team, based entirely on maximum opportunity, limited competition, and an elite offensive environment.

Outside of the possibility he markedly improves — he’s three games into Year 3 so it’s neither substantially likely nor impossible — there is virtually no room to grow in this profile. The Chargers cannot pass more frequently and can’t play faster. Keenan Allen + Quentin Johnston is assuredly stronger target competition than last year’s blend of Deandre Carter and Mike Williams / Michael Bandy (when Williams was out). So far this year Palmer is sitting at a .140 TPRR and 0.89 YPRR through three games. If he has markedly improved as a player it’s yet to show.

I don’t want to just write a whole column about why Josh Palmer sucks. In fact, he doesn’t suck. He’s a full-time player in the National Football League which is an otherworldly accomplishment I hope brings security to his family for years to come. But he is decidedly not a special player within the context of an NFL offense, and based on the rules of most fantasy leagues, he is not a needle mover in our game either.

Of course everyone knows that already; most of all those who have touted him over Quentin Johnston on the waiver wire. If we didn’t universally accept that Palmer was an unimpressive receiver, nobody would make Johnston’s inability to usurp him the central plank in their case against him through three weeks. Johnston’s actual sample is 38 routes: that’s it. Based solely on that, you cannot make any case whatsoever that he’s good, bad, ugly, or anything between. So if you’re fully off the QJ train; either you must have thought he was a poor prospect, or think him playing behind Palmer through three games is such an indictment he can’t emerge later on. If it’s the latter, I think you’re being too reactive on Johnston. But in any case, you can’t possibly turn around and tell me the player you think is so bad Johnston’s career is ruined for not having passed him is now worthy of your free agent acquisition budget.

Every year we go through a similar pattern as a fantasy industry. All summer people pontificate about the asymmetric upside of young talents, display data about rookies providing disproportionate value in the second-half of their seasons, and develop draft strategies based on the impact of outcome above likelihood. Then we get a few weeks into the year and if you haven’t adopted current utilization rates as the basis for your rest-of-season predictions you are accused of take lock.

There is no sense in adopting one sense of principles, and then evaluating the success of those principles based on a set of criteria you agreed was incomplete or wrong in the first place.

Judging an Incomplete Result

I give you and a friend the following task:

• There are two 4 foot tall buckets on a mat, that you need to have on the mat filled with water. I’ve left a pail beside the bucket and there is a well full of water 1000 feet away. Whoever finishes first gets $100.

  • Your friend decides to pick up the pail and run back and forth to the well filling it up and emptying it out

  • You decide to lift the bucket over to the well, fill it directly, and walk it back to the mat.

Naturally, it will take you far longer to make any progress, since it takes you longer to fill the bucket at the well, and longer to walk there. Whether you can manage to walk the bucket back to the mat without spilling too much water or dropping it all together remains to be seen. But if your strategy works, you’ll be your friend easily by making just one trip instead of several.

Without knowing the exact chance this strategy will work, it’s impossible to say if it’s the best one. But if, after your friend fills his bucket with their pail three times while you’re still at the well, someone declared your strategy incorrect, they’re clearly making this declaration too early.

Naturally, if this was a full-season article in which I *tried* to advocate for why the bucket > pale strategy *was* best, I would say to imagine a scenario in which you were competing against 10 people instead of just one, and you were the only one to think of the bucket strategy. Now, assuming you had an equal chance to everyone else of winning while using the same strategy, you’d need this strategy to have only >10% chance of working for it to be the optimal choice instead of >50%. This is effectively what we’re doing when we are drafting high-variance rookies in drafts, or deciding how to allocate our FAAB during the season: Can we make a high-leverage bet that separates us from the pack?

All or Nothing

Getting back to the Johnston / Palmer example, FAAB — like fantasy generally — does not reward bidders for thinking in a linear fashion. The calculus changes by league format, but in your typical home league there are bound to be players on your waiver wire you *know* would be worth a massive bid contingent on a given injury happening.

In my work league, Elijah Mitchell is currently on waivers. But to pick him up I’d need to cut one of Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Quentin Johnston, Tyjae Spears, Jaylen Warren, or Roschon Johnson. If Christian McCaffrey suffered a substantial injury, I’m almost positive most people in our league would, and should, bid 100% of their FAAB and whomever has the most remaining has the trump card. Because of this, not all FAAB dollars are created equal. I often see people hedging on given players, saying to bid on them but “not go overboard.” To me, if you’re playing in a standard redraft league and don’t believe in a player enough to go in with a massive bid, you’re better off just hoping to get them for $0 (or post-waivers if you are in a priority league) and retaining all your buying power for someone you have stronger conviction about.

On the flip side, this is why I was so in favour of “emptying the clip” on Jerome Ford, and felt similarly about De’Von Achane this week. If you have a player you think has upside to be *the guy* off waivers, go after it and make that bid aggressively. Once you’ve given up your chance of being the top bidder for any future player, your remaining FAAB has substantially diminishing utility. In general, I advocate an all or nothing approach when it comes to FAAB.

Outliers Win Fantasy Leagues

Fantasy football is an extremely unpredictable game in which our projections shift constantly. Just a month ago, Justin Fields was a Round 1 startup pick and Puka Nacua typically went undrafted in three-round rookie drafts. I was in a recent trade negotiation where I was told Nacua cost more.

There are several ways to respond to a game that chaotic.

• You can simply stop playing. Seriously. If the chaos of fantasy football is ever seriously effecting your mood, there are other ways to spend your time or attempt to make money! There is no rule that this is the best one. For a lot of people it’s probably one of the worst.

• Resort to Fantasy Nihilism. Nothing matters, everything is unpredictable so why even bother trying to understand it? This is probably closer to correct than not, which isn’t the world’s greatest sales pitch for a newsletter that tries to beat this silly game, but if you ever reach the point of assuming you can consistently win in every league and format you’re likely just running hot.

• Player Take Imposter Syndrome: finally we’ve arrived at our article title. I think this is the best way I can describe the collective conservatism that takes hold of the fantasy community around this time every year. When you were drafting Rashod Bateman all year because of a small-sample YPRR, a prospect profile, and the theoretical upside of a young WR, and watch Adam Thielen go off for 11-145-1 while Bateman can’t find two catches to squeeze together, it’s easy to feel like a fucking moron. Repeated exposure to the bets we liked making based on theoretical upside failing to reach that upside begins to wear down our resolve until we simply submit to Big Route Participation (registered trademark).

Resisting Player Take Imposter Syndrome