Reflections on 2023 (Part 1)

The Misses: Bad Takes with Bad Process and Bad Takes with Good(ish?) Process

Hey folks,

I hope you’ve been enjoying the fantasy off-season a.k.a. the NFL post-season a.k.a. the Big Board is already drafting a.k.a. there is no off-season anymore.

As you know from some recent podcast appearances / twitter or just can infer from the low volume of articles over the past while, I’ve been taking a much needed content / fantasy break over the last month or so.

When I first started doing fantasy content I was still in school, which took a lot of focus and time but also granted me a lot of agency as to how to manage my time around few immovable obligations. (Let’s be honest: I also crammed a lot)

Last September was my first time doing content while also working full-time in law, a combination that will (hopefully) persist for as long as this substack exists. The reality of that is my free time is much more limited, less consistently reliable, and contained mostly to weekends and late evenings. I’ve always had two rules for doing content as a “side hustle”: (1) never write anything you don’t want to, and (2) never write anything you’re not proud of. I would always rather risk losing subscribers for lack of volume than for a poor product, and I know if I force myself to write more frequently than the content remains enjoyable, it’s only a matter of time before I no longer want to keep this up.

All this to say, at the end of the season I was burnt out: probably more so than even is typical for me, and hence the long break between articles (with exception of the piece on momentum and 4th down aggression - which wasn’t really fantasy related but just something I enjoy talking about).

Anyhow, I’ve given the battery some time to charge, and so am excited to get back in the lab for 2024 with prospect takes and some strategy pieces as we work our way through the rest of February and into March and April. However, before doing that I owe you a look back at the 2023 season’s big swings, big hits, and big misses, and a reflection on how, or if, I would try to adjust my process in response to that in 2024.

A hits and misses article is far from unique across the industry, but I’ve always tried to approach mine a little differently. Whenever we’re talking about hits and misses in fantasy football we have to first acknowledge the randomness of the sport. You can have the best process imaginable and take on big misses, you can have the worst possible process and mix in some big hits. This makes reflection difficult and potentially dangerous.

If you uncritically look back on your year, sort out your best and worst takes, and then try to approach the next year by mimicking your good takes and reversing your bad takes, you’re unlikely to build a process of sustainable success.

This is how the Dunning-Kruger effect occurs. You glean a limited amount of information into how something works, presume that to be the only or most valuable information, think you’ve solved everything, and typically learn shortly after that you’re merely chasing your own shadow.

One of my favourite examples of this every year is people trying to say someone is “this year’s _____.” A common example last year was people trying to find 2023’s Josh Jacobs.

I wrote about this last summer in my piece on fragile backfields (below)

My take on Jacobs’ 2022 last summer was that the real “lesson” was that at a certain point when all the negatives of a player are priced in, it’s worth taking some stabs at a profile we don’t typically want to prioritize because the cost is just inefficient. But that Jacobs’ actual result in 2022 isn’t overly reflective of that lesson. As we know Jacobs’ 2022 would have been a complete smash at any price, but at a price 1-2 rounds higher than he was drafted, I maintain that he wouldn’t actually have been a strong process pick. For that reason, people trying to make a case for Najee Harris or Cam Akers as “2023’s Josh Jacobs” based on pattern matching attributes (high pedigree, history of inefficiency, possibility of bell cow volume and goal line monopoly) were likely to be disappointed.

Rather, 2023’s Josh Jacobs was more akin to someone like Rachaad White: a back who I didn’t believe in from a talent perspective nor an environment perspective, but whose negatives were firmly priced in at a round 8 cost to a point where you really shouldn’t have a strong aversion to them at cost even if you don’t like the profile. Again, this is not to say White was destined to pay off or that we should start pattern matching all future backs to these characteristics.

Miles Sanders had a vaguely similar profile as a potential de facto three-down back on an uninspiring team (albeit - as I discussed often - a far worse pass catching profile). Sanders was the back I was lowest on vs. ADP of all backs in 2023 (score one for the kid), but had his ADP been more in line with my ranking, I would have taken shots at him, and it would have been an equally wasted pick. He’d have failed at any cost.

Another perilous example of this pattern-matching concept was Amon-Ra St. Brown going into his second season. The fantasy world was just coming off Brandon Aiyuk’s “doghouse” season, and had taken the lesson that he failed because we over-estimated his talent based on a period in his rookie season when he consolidated targets with the rest of his team injured. Therefore, we should tread carefully with St. Brown, who had a similar late season explosion after T.J. Hockenson and D’Andre Swift suffered injuries.

Of course St. Brown went on to be one of the biggest smashes of the season, Swift’s role was diminished and T.J. Hockenson wound up traded. Ironically, Brandon Aiyuk blossomed over the last two years showing that we were largely correct to react to his rookie season so positively, and his year 2 now appears to be the outlier in his career. Not only was that lesson mis-applied, but it seems to have been without foundation all along.

The point is, when we take lessons away from a lot of a year’s big hits, the goal should not be to find attributes a certain massive hit had, and then project those onto a future player and expect the same result. Often, as was the case wth Jacobs, White or St. Brown, it’s a more universal lesson: every player has positive and negative aspects to their profile, when a player’s price reflects more of one side than the other, it’s worth taking shots. This is not because we expect every player to be a league winner, but because we play a super random game, and opening up more room for error with every pick gives us a greater chance at a big hit.

So all this long introduction is to say that there is limited value in a column like this. Don’t expect a eureka moment, or an impenetrable truth to emerge from any theme or story as to why a player’s season went the way it did. Nonetheless, we should be continually reflecting on our process, our mistakes, our successes, and questioning how to improve when warranted.

To help illustrate that balance, I’ve broken this column up into four categories:

1. Bad Takes - Bad Process: takes in which I missed, and looking back I over or under weighted something in a way that I would want to change moving forward

2. Bad Takes - Good Process: takes in which I missed, but would make the same choice again all things considered if presented with another similar scenario

3. Good Takes - Bad Process: takes in which I was directionally accurate, but failed to describe the true reason for the breakout, or lucked into a massive hit I wouldn’t have projected at a higher price

4. Good Takes - Good Process: takes in which I was correct on the outcome, and accurately projected the reason for that outcome occurring

We’re gonna hit on the first two today (the misses) and the later two (the hits) next column.

I’ll also quickly note that I’m essentially leaving injuries out of this. For instance you won’t see Garrett Wilson (Aaron Rodgers’ injury) or J.K. Dobbins show up here in the bad takes list. I also won’t get to everyone good or bad but I wanted to focus on a few that I felt would be most meaningful to discuss.