I un-retired from fantasy football

I wrote last year about how I had, in a sense, “retired” from fantasy football. I reflected on how stepping away from the hectic number-crunching nature of the hobby had allowed me to appreciate NFL games, especially the Packers, with a slightly different lens and how I was not really sure if I would really want to go back to searching through depth charts trying to find a wide receiver to fill in for Tyreek Hill on a bye week or whatever.

Well, apparently I just wanted to throw all those observations away, because I’m back in the fantasy saddle this season. Taking a page straight out of the Brett Favre playbook, I apparently decided that retirement just wasn’t for me. Granted, there was a bit of a push from Neal to join (he basically signed a team up for me), but our conversations about his various keeper leagues had already reignited a spark of interest.

The league we are playing in is using what they call a “vampire” format where one team, the vampire, does not draft any players initially and must only take the leftovers after everyone else has picked their full teams. However, they then get first pick over any players not on a team throughout the rest of the season and, if they beat another team, they can choose any player from the losing team’s roster and add it to theirs. Add on the fact that there are also no trades allowed and the odds certainly turn to favor the vampire team as the season goes on. It’s an interesting concept and part of the reason why I decided to join.

Four weeks in and I have been constantly reminded why I retired in the first place.

You see, I have a terrible, incurable condition that can make fantasy football incredibly frustrating. It is a condition that can very easily undo any amount of skill or knowledge one may possess (of which I already have very little), and can render the hours spent scrolling through the potential production of various team’s third-string running backs utterly pointless. I have lived with this condition for years. Many great fantasy teams have fallen to its grasp.

I have…bad luck. Out of all the characteristics a fantasy manager can possess, good luck is among the most important. It can carry a team of mediocre players to a championship, or at least to a point where the owner can at least get their money back.

On the other hand, bad luck is nearly impossible to combat. You spend as much time as you want scouring for the perfect match up each week, but when it comes down to it, you are at the mercy of the fate determined by the football gods. While your own football acumen can combat this to a point, you are also at the mercy of something almost completely out of your own control; your opponent’s team.

After four weeks of football, my team has the second most points in the league, trailing the top spot by only three points.

I am 1-3. How is that possible? Well, move one column on the stat sheet over and one will notice that I have had the most points scored against me, and it isn’t even close. When playing my team, my opponents have scored 652 points. The next closest team? 602. The team with the least? 490. If I had even average luck, I would likely have a winning record. Good luck, and I could be undefeated.

All that being said, I did happen into a little bit of good luck this past weekend. You see, I had the fortune of facing off against Neal this round. Now, granted, he is controlling the vampire team, which is nowhere near its final form four weeks into the season, but I’ll still take my blessings where they come. After losing three straight games, I was more than happy to claim my first win of the season (and keep all my players in the process). Sorry, buddy, I needed the W.

Hopefully, my team can build on this big win and string together a couple victories. Unfortunately for me, fantasy teams don’t exactly function on morale, so it’s much more likely I’ll just find myself back in the loss column. Ah well. It was nice while it lasted.

A C ertain Point of V iew