Who the hell am I?
TL: DR Lonely nerd-boy uses silly game about a game to give life meaning
You might have clicked on my website and thought to yourself, “who the hell is this guy, and what gives him the right to talk to me about fantasy football?” And I will gladly surrender that those are valid questions. Hell, I asked myself those questions most days. I wake up most moringa, look in the mirror and ask “who the hell am I and how did I get here?”
Let me tell you.
I grew up in a small town in mid-Missouri and I spent most of my childhood building things or just screwing around outside. Sports weren’t really my thing and I definitely spent more time on strategy games or just reading. I went to college in a small town and earned a BS and MS in engineering. I started my career in consulting and quickly transitioned into R&D and product development.
I never played football growing up.
To be honest, I didn’t watch football before getting into fantasy until a couple of years ago. In 2017, I actually learned what a tight end (TE) was and what value this position added to the game. I was a blank slate and very, very raw. But this allowed me to approach fantasy like I approach all my hobbies, with manic levels of attention, research, and a complete disregard for personal relationships. You know, like a well-adjusted adult. In the summer of 2017, my long-term girlfriend (now wife) and I had to transition to a long-distance relationship. The separation was very hard on me. It just so happened that my old college roommate asked me to join his fantasy league with some mutual friends, and I used it as a time-sink to help me cope with my new living situation. Fantasy football was my escape during a lonely and challenging part of my life, a time when I had to become self-sufficient and figure out how to be alone. I started my research by binging YouTube Videos on the basics of Football and Fantasy.
My background in research gave me the foundation for my new obsession. This quickly morphed into cramming 8-12 hours of fantasy football podcasts into my day on 1.5 to 2x speed. I binged podcasts like: Harris Football, The Fantasy Footballers, The Late Round Podcast, Fantasy Football Today, The Most Accurate Podcast, and many more. Being conversational and understanding the basics of the game was very important to me. I aggressively consumed content on Reddit and r/fanatsyfootball.
A big pet peeve of mine is people who push opinions as facts, and this issue runs rampant in this community. Most statements regarding fantasy football are educated guesses masquerading as absolute truths, when in fact, they are shades of gray with a wide-ranging possibility of being correct. So, it is essential to aggregate as many opinions into one analysis and average them to get the most likely results for this silly game. This moment is where my journey into fantasy football data analysis begins. My focus was on analyzing fantasy expert output and not specifically on actual player data. I started by looking specifically at trade value charts and applying a more logical and systematic approach. This is basically all I do; I study how player values change and morph over time. This approach is my specialty and my niche. But I am writing this guide to help people with the basics of what I learned and maybe present some thought exercises to help people analyze their game in a new light.
From there my focus shifted to building tools to help people win their leagues. I see 3 major pain points for most managers: drafting, trading, and flexing. My goal is to help as many people as I can with all three.
Join me and let’s have some fun.
Or don’t. That’s cool too.