LogFAQs > #933105547

WickIebee posted...

See, I didn't say requires I'm saying you that Fantasy is the easiest way to look at Level 7. People look too easily at "I lost this week, time to pick the same people that have done this all year in an effort to get this correct."

That's actually the strategy that led to me being unsuccessful. Granted, I was in a different position because of how early I got there, but if I had just stuck to the same guys each week, I would have advanced out of Level 7 and with plenty of weeks to advance out of Level 8 to boot.

WickIebee posted...

And then got stuck on Level 7. Like waiting on McCaffrey to suddenly burst when if you looked at Carolina's offense... they had none under Kyle Allen. His drought wasn't out of nowhere, it was teams seeing that he was literally the one player to stop on the line, and as Panthers OL got hurt, McCaffrey could do nothing. He faced no teams that were weak against the run at that time.When you pick the names everyone knows, you don't tend to pay attention to what happened. You just look at the TDs at the end and complain about being unlucky. You shouldn't rely on luck, and people who failed a lot on Level 7 this year really were doing just that.

This didn't ring true to me, and after looking it up, this is just factually and demonstrably incorrect.

McCaffrey averaged under 4 yards a carry with 0 TDs against one of the worst rush defenses in the league when facing the Redskins.

He lit up the Titans who were one of the top 12 rushing defenses at the end of the season (granted, I don't remember where they were in Week 9) for 160+ yards and 2 TDs

Week 10, he finally managed to score a TD in the 4th quarter once against one of the league's worst rush defenses at the time in the Green Bay Packers, so congrats if you picked him that week and didn't get screwed on your WR pick (pretty sure no one advanced that week, but I could be wrong).

He followed that up with 0 TDs against the Falcons who I'm guessing were one of the worser rush Ds at the time, but I don't have the stats to prove it. They finished just inside the top half of the league in rush defense. In the rematch against the Falcons, he averaged almost 5 yards per carry. Actually, in the first game he averaged exactly 5 yards per carry. Falcons didn't shut him down at all, yet he had 0 TDS.

The New Orleans Saints then played him Week 12, and they had a top 4 rush defense at the end of the season. They must have shut him down, right? Right. They did. He averaged under 3 yards a carry that game. But guess what? He also scored a rushing TD. Same thing happened Week 17 against the Saints where he had 9 carries for 26 yards, but again scored a TD in a 42-10 beatdown by the Saints over the Panthers. Carolina scored one time and it happened to be on one of his 9 carries. (Edit: I initially said it was the Saints' back-ups, but I think they actually played their starters in this game, so nvm, but my point still stands)

Almost all these stats are bearing out exactly what I said about how luck-based TDs are. There are absolutely factors you can point to that will increase your odds, but they are absolutely way more luck-based than knowledge-based especially in 2019's NFL.

Really, looking back at it, McCaffrey was consistenly a solid pick no matter who his opponent was and whether or not has was shut down until Week 11 where he failed to score 3 out of 4 weeks. The 3 weeks he failed to score were all against opponents you wouldn't have thought he'd struggle against (Falcons, Redskins, and Faclons again; and very arguably he didn't struggle against the Falcons), and the one week you would have thought he wouldn't score (against the Saints), he did.

That just futher illustrates that picking the same guys regardless of opponents is actually a better strategy and not following it was my undoing. That said, it's ridiculous that following the optimal strategy means you just have to sacrifice weeks picking the same guys until the right week hits.