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Mar 12, 2023Liked by Ben Gretch

I find myself coming back to this quote from Morgan Housel whenever I am flying too close to the sun or vehemently disagreeing with someone whose opinions I value:

"People who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you won't like."

I can see how blindly following a model or dataset can be hazardous since it probably leads you to admiring *all* of the information even if say half of it contains hidden flaws. I do fall under this trap of absorbing seemingly new information that was probably recycled but it just felt fresh at the time.

The first thing that comes to mind on both sides of this is AJB vs Gabe Davis. I was all-in on AJB when it felt like a majority of the insider audience would point to the Eagles being too run heavy for him to hit but I just played the what-if of them throwing more now that they paid heavily for a unique talent (a known unknown). But then I did the same with Gabe where I probably ignored too much of his bad metrics from the models relative to his cost and felt too confident he would have a spike year (but even then he was hurt a good amount AND Josh Allen got hurt that obviously affected the overall play of this offense).

I don't know if this even matches up with the theme of what you wrote but I guess I am here to say I get where you're going with this and love how you got me thinking about this stuff.

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I'm still not sure what to think of Gabe Davis. He was obviously inefficient, but Josh Allen missed him down field a lot. Then, the Buffalo offense never really looked all that dynamic until the end of the year, so taking away the deep routes and forcing Josh to dink and dunk is how a lot of defenses played them.

I guess if the price is similar, I'm probably still in on Gabe. He's passed the eye test too many times to ignore.

Another guy I still can't decide on last year was Jerry Jeudy. I felt like I waited all year for him and Gabe to a) get healthy and b) the offenses to pick up. Jeudy was similarly inefficient and electric with the ball. Frankly, Russ was awful and Jeudy was still good whenever he played a full compliment of snaps.

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Gabe is going in the 7th round on Underdog so that's much more palatable and I'm still in on Jeudy since they have an infinitely better coach and Russ looked better after Hackett got fired.

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Data and advanced metrics used to be additive to fantasy football analysis and provide a framework for a repeatable process with positive correlation to outperformance. Now, it is too often used in a way that’s reductive or in a way that completely ignores the possibility of the null hypothesis being true. Great stuff as always Ben. The game isn’t passing you by but maybe the ebbs and flows of in vogue fantasy analysis is 😉 and that’s ok bc you have this great Substack community that you can noodle on these topics and lay it all out there. And that old man experience becomes an asset as you say, lol.

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Mar 13, 2023Liked by Ben Gretch

I used to participate occasionally on Football Outsiders' message boards, but the reliance among the community on FO's proprietary stats became so overbearing and suffocating that I had to see myself out. You pretty much articulated my own frustrations viz. overconfidence and retrofitting of data. Would love to read a post by you on FA moves, particularly the Bears-Panthers trade, if you can make time. (As a Bears fan, I am pleased.) I made the mistake of reading FO's comment thread about the trade and a sizable contingent thought the Bears should have just kept the #1 pick and drafted a QB because of "Fields' low DVOA." No context or thought given to the situation or why picking Bryce Young would yield a different result in the exact same situation. Silly.

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