Ok so I’m asked a lot about my advice for the NFL season, and while I don’t claim to have any inside knowledge, it seemed like a good time to share some of my tips and tricks for the real life and fantasy pro football season.
Tip 1) Don’t overpay for Chris Johnson. One of my fantasy football drafts was an auction draft, and I got Chris Johnson for about $10 under what he was worth. This is good fantasy math, but terrible regular math. But be wary, guys who just held out for big contract extensions rarely live up to their new dollar value right away.
Tip 2) Pick a good RB corps: it’s a run-heavy league, make sure you’re not left in the dust! Or worse, other clichés! Manage your team’s running backs like the Baltimore Ravens manage theirs: a solid rotation of three good backs, and a standing rule never to make eye contact with Ray Lewis.
Tip 3) Draft RB’s who catch. Most leagues are PPR (points per reception), so you can do well with a running back who might be mediocre at carrying the ball, but gets targeted for a lot of passes. It’s especially helpful if the team’s QB doesn’t have a very strong arm, and as a result is forced to throw a lot of short slant routes, which are primarily the territory of Tight Ends and Running Backs. The weaker the QB, the better for your receiving RB. This is why Jeff George was so popular among fantasy owners.
Tip 4) Be named Peyton. Statistics have shown that, historically, people named Peyton who play in the NFL do very well for themselves. Some examples are: SuperBowl champion QB Peyton Manning, top-10 running back Peyton Hillis, and Peyton Humphries, the first accountant to successfully embezzle 1.2 million dollars from the Dallas Cowboys.
Tip 5) Watch out for shaky defensive matchups — if the defense you’re starting is playing the Patriots, it might be a good time to pick up a different one off waiver wires. Like, for instance, whoever the Chiefs are playing that week.
Tip 6) Keep rapes to an absolute minimum. Just like concussions and Asians, sexual assault is really frowned upon by the National Football League. Even professional rapist Ben Roethlisberger has really had to tone down his rapings because of the four-game suspension he received for sexually assaulting an NFL-best three women in the span of a couple years.
Tip 7) Look for tall quarterbacks. The math is simple on this one: if the average offensive linemen is 6’4″, having a QB who’s 5’10” isn’t gonna work in the long run. Also, a tall quarterback gives you a better chance of getting a sweet nickname like “Stilts” or “Stretch” or “Top Shelf.”
Tip 8) Get to a weak conference. Nobody wants to play the Patriots, Jets, and Dolphins twice a year (AFC East), you wanna play in the NFC West, where the most intense competition between the Rams/Seahawks/Cards/49ers is whose team can mail it in harder.
Tip 9) Score the most points. In almost every football game, the winner is the team that scored the most points at the end of the game. If you extrapolate this theory, the team that wins the most games are almost always the ones who end up in the playoffs (with the exception of the Seattle Seahawks). Drew Brees is a very successful, SuperBowl-winning quarterback, and experts generally attribute his wins to his ability to score the most points. Conversely, almost all of his losses came in games where he scored fewer points than his opponents. It’s a fascinating statistic.
Tip 10) Retire early, retire often. Regarded as one of the best quarterbacks in football history, Brett Favre was able to extend his career in a slightly unorthodox way: by ending it. Famous for throwing lots of touchdowns, lots of picks (and lots of dickpics), Favre’s tenacity for retiring in clutch situations really revolutionized how and when players retire. In Favre’s ninth retirement speech press conference, held from the Traditions Senior Living Center in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, he was able to give a convincing enough message that even younger quarterbacks like Carson Palmer and David Garrard are making retirement a big part of their game. A few years later, in Favre’s eleventh retirement speech press conference/text-message, he showed us part of himself we thought we’d never see (besides his penis), and it’s safe to say that in the NFL, retirement is here to stay.
Tip 11) Don’t be Tarvaris Jackson.
So there you have it, your tips from me for the 2011 NFL season…and like most tips from me, you’ll only be getting 10%.
Cheers,
Dustin
mind bullets 