Don't overreact to the preseason, or Week 1

Let's prepare ourselves for the first games a little better this year

A little while ago, Greg Brainos from Coachspeak Index posted this:

It’s very well stated and is something I’ve alluded to several different ways this year.

After seeing it, I was going back through some stuff I wrote around this time last year to try to make sure I’m not missing any content in my plan between now and Week 1, and I came across a one-off piece I wrote after Week 1 last year, after writing the full Stealing Signals, where I just begged everyone to stop being so insane. It was a little bit a reaction to stuff I was seeing on social media, but also some of what I saw after the opening games while I was in Vegas with sharp, high-stakes people.

And it put me on pre-tilt. I can’t wait for the season to get here, but I certainly can wait for this stuff. It reminded me of Greg’s tweet, and everything that’s happening right now in the preseason. People are declaring victories and losses on all the offseason player discussions, even though none of it matters. And it’s putting everyone on pre-tilt, getting everyone geared up before Week 1, so when every team suits up in 10-14 days and gets their first reps in, you can be damn sure the taeks are going to be flying.

Here’s how I opened that piece last year:

This time of year is always filled with so much excitement and optimism, and everyone is more engaged than they will be at any other point in the calendar. It also basically doesn’t matter, and the way we react is probably part of why people disengage by about Week 5, because they were wrong in their preseason assumptions, and then they got confident they knew the answers, and then they were wrong again.

Everyone is so primed and geared up right now to say what the truth was, despite the fact that what we learned is that things don’t go as expected and will change again. Please let that comment sink in. It never ceases to amaze me how people rush to declare that unexpected things are the new True and Obvious things that can’t change, when the whole point is to probably be a little cautious with our declarations.

A little while later, I added this:

Don’t read what I’m not saying: I do not know what happens next. I’m not the one person who is smarter than all others. But I promise no one is, not someone who claims that because they have 30% Isaiah Likely as a handcuff play that they know everything, nor the person who won a bunch of bets.

That Likely thing is funny, because he had the monster Week 1 with a 12-9-111-1 line, then went on to catch 33 more balls all season long, for 366 yards and 5 more TDs. He had more than 50 yards in a game one more time all season. People were going nuts about what his Week 1 meant, and that was the example I chose to make the point, and it very well could have been wrong, but it turns out it was a good example.

Now, it did signal that Mark Andrews wasn’t going to be the only TE show in town, and he went on to catch just 55 balls last season. There are obviously important takeaways from this stuff. And there’s stuff I urged caution on that never came around last year, like Kimani Vidal and Blake Corum (who I wasn’t even drafting much last year, but I referenced that he was the most-dropped player after Week 1, because he didn’t play much, which was always the deal with him as a play, that he was a handcuff).

And that’s kind of the whole thing. People don’t even think about the decisions they are making. And then there’s a ton of certainty about every data point, and it starts here in the preseason with the usage trends that are small samples, and where we don’t know anything about the coach’s or organization’s approach. Say you’re a coach, and you have a guy you want to rely on, and you decide to play him but rotate and limit him a bit in the preseason, to get him some work but not overwork him — you can be damn sure the fantasy community is going to read into that the exact opposite way of the intent, even though that’s a perfectly understandable position.

And then there’s the stuff I was alluding to after Week 1 last year. I’m glad I got the reminder of what’s to come, because it’s insane. That quote from above is it, every year. I’ve written Stealing Signals every year since 2017, and this became a thing I noticed early on, that I had different takes than most, and then it became a thing where I started to recognize how wrong the other takes were.

Everyone is so primed and geared up right now to say what the truth was, despite the fact that what we learned is that things don’t go as expected and will change again.

Fantasy football is about uncertainty. People keep messaging me that they can just stash Rashee Rice and all this stuff, because they have no concept of how many picks they make that are going to not work out. You don’t draft a perfect team. That’s not how any of this works. You just hope to get a few things right but expect misses.

You also don’t want to freak out about usage in Week 1, particularly when it comes to guys you’re drafting as longer-term plays. We want to see some early-season usage, to get early information. Absolutely. But there are a ton of situations where we’re not really expecting it going in. So don’t double count.

Just wanted to write this as a short post, mostly for myself. After Week 1, I’ll work through all the games and all the stuff I think is “Signal,” and all that I think is “Noise.” And because I read that post, I’ll try not to get so worked up that other people are learning the wrong lessons. Hopefully by sharing those quotes, you’ll be spared, as well.