Evolution and fantasy football

A thinkpiece about everything

Humans fear change.

I’ve been reflecting a bit over this holiday period, in part because of a really great conversation with JJ Zachariason last week on his Late Round Perspectives podcast. A lot of that was stuff we talk about here, or I talk about with Shawn Siegele over at Stealing Bananas or Pat and Pete over at Ship Chasing, but sometimes getting the opportunity to discuss with someone new, in a setting and getting a new perspective from someone like JJ, will really get the wheels turning.

And just the process of the questions he asked, and the prep work, and then talking through it with him definitely has done that. And one of the things he asked about was why I find it important to look beyond player-level analysis and how the league is evolving. And maybe it’s because I felt like I didn’t answer it perfectly well on the pod — I’d recorded a couple hours with Shawn immediately prior, and I was some combination of highly caffeinated and at least slightly mentally fatigued (as I always am immediately after talking with Shawn, who is nothing if not challenging) for the big discussion with JJ — so I’ve sort of been replaying ways to articulate this point that I found to be so interesting.

And this morning, I started thinking about the Principal Skinner meme — you know, the Simpson’s character who ponders, “Am I so out of touch?” before immediately deciding, “No, it’s the children who are wrong.” The hilarity of that meme is right there in our natural understanding that humans fear change. It’s currently en vogue for younger generations to laugh at “boomers” for this type of thing, but the concept applies across ages, generations, and personalities.

I grew up in a baseball family, but I was immediately drawn to football analysis at a young age for the same reasons it is such a wildly successful sport commercially — it’s complex, and challenging, and there is just so much we can argue about, and ample opportunity to do it during the conveniently-timed intervals before gamedays each weekend. I often talk about how the NFL does a horrible job legislating its sport, and as a long-time obsessive I firmly believe that. But it doesn’t matter. Football is king because football, as a sport, is king.

Again, I have a love for baseball, and I don’t mean to disregard basketball’s nuances or some of the other sports I’ve only gotten more familiar with in adulthood like soccer and hockey. Every sport is unique and challenging and I genuinely love them all. But I think even as a clearly biased observer, the evidence is pretty clear. Football is king in grabbing our attention, and it’s the sport itself. I’ve used this non-word “multi-variability” before to try to describe it. Scheme, evolution. All sports evolve, but football changes sometimes on a week to week basis. I know people will argue with this, and I’m not an expert on every sport, but I do think most who disagree are just bigger fans of another sport — and they likely have good points about that sport that I don’t understand — but I’d argue they probably just don’t understand the nuances of football, in turn.

I’ve written a lot about player safety recently, with the hip drops and other things. And the responses I get — the angry responses — emphasize so many things. One thing that’s probably true about a lot of things is that people think the reasons they like it are the reasons everyone does. I hear that people want to watch the sport for its physicality, and then from others that they don’t care about that one bit. There are just so many angles that people come at this from, because it really is complex.

But I think about that player safety stuff when I write “people fear change,” and I think about how humans in general just do not love the concept of evolution. Nostalgia is a tremendous drug, and we’re constantly pining for something lost. It’s extremely true in football, but I want to ask to people who are in my mentions about this sport becoming a game for wussies where they were when they learned about Junior Seau. Or Dave Duerson. Do they even remember that name? A two-time Super Bowl champion that played on the ‘85 Bears. Seau, a six-time first-team All Pro. Their accolades don’t matter, but it seems easier to compartmentalize Jovan Belcher, simply because he wasn’t as famous.

But then again, Antonio Brown took one of the most vicious hits we’ve ever seen, has behaved extremely erratically since — including during the waning years of his career — and openly tweets about having CTE, and people just joke about it. I probably have. I don’t know how else we can cope. I’m in a reflective mood right now, but that doesn’t mean that every moment of every day I can give these extremely serious topics the respect and consideration they deserve. I wish I could.

But the hip drops are different, obviously. The brain injury stuff — most people take that serious. My point is merely to ask whether — when people pine for some tough-guy era of the NFL, and talk about making the game into a wimpy sport — they recognize what they are talking about? Because that era brings in all the worst of the game. I’m not going for shock value here — the facts and details of the stories I just barely mentioned are shocking enough. Just typing those names gives me chills.

But that’s what evolution is. Things have improved, by necessity, and they don’t go back. But when Principal Skinner gets close to recognizing this point, and that the next era and a younger generation is viewing things differently — and there’s no changing it — he has to backtrack. Humans fear change. It’s the children who are at fault, right? But again, this isn’t about age. It’s about any forward-looking viewpoint that threatens my nostalgia.

This reflection isn’t purely about the league. It’s about fantasy football, too. I know so many analysts — many very young, not the “boomers” who are mostly very good at understanding these concepts to have spent any length of time in this industry — who sometimes seem to self-reflect and consider their mistakes and have that curiosity to get better merely because they are seeking knowledge. But then a week later, they are back to promoting themselves as soothsayers, which so many fantasy analysts do. They are speaking in absolutes, sure of things they have no business being sure of. Twitter’s version of Principal Skinner, constantly debating how their misses might be evidence that they need to consider different information, then waking up the next day and saying everyone else is wrong.

This is why more fantasy analysts don’t do the macro analysts, as JJ asked me about. They fear change. They don’t have confidence in their ability to analyze a moving target; the multi-variability of the job — and trying to communicate that to hobbyists — is terrifying. It terrifies me. I put my foot in my mouth sometimes with nuanced points — often in Tweets, in little blurbs — and despite having a good point, I’ll get hit with the replies that basically say “you don’t know ball.” And it irritates me to no end because I’m very confident in the hard work I’ve put in to understand this sport, and it’s really just a misunderstanding. But that’s a personal failure there, where I just need to be able to ignore it.

But that fear is real, and it’s clear that I’m not the only one who feels it. People don’t like talking about the league advancing and evolving because they don’t understand it, and they don’t want to be found it. It’s a lot safer to stay in our lane, focused on the past data, and claiming trends exist where they obviously do not. This is the way fantasy analysis used to be done, and while we have fancier stats now, we’re going to keep doing it the same way.

But much like society evolves, and every generation can relate to the Principal Skinner meme about older generations who refuse to accept the world has changed in ways that won’t be undone, the NFL does, too. The sport itself is played different, because of the schematic changes that have gotten us here. Shawn and I talked recently about Tom Brady’s comments that there is mediocre play these days, and while we agree there are some issues with QB talent and those things, it’s hard to accept any of that at face value.

Many of the things Brady’s Patriots did successfully 15 years ago would not fly in today’s NFL. Brady himself saw significant statistical decline when the Cover-2 shells came into effect, which was probably just related to age, but it’s fascinating to think about whether he was actually equipped to take that stuff on. Those are things we’ll never know, but I’m confident that while there is nuance to Brady’s point and he knows plenty more than I do — and there’s some degree of tacit knowledge there, where he’s getting at something real — there’s also a hefty dose of Principal Skinner in his comments.

What Patrick Mahomes is facing is different, because defenses have evolved to understand they need to take away explosives first and then work back toward the line of scrimmage. For the rest of the NFL’s history, it was about controlling the line and then strengthening your defense back from there. Mahomes changed that, and defenses have Mahomes-proofed this game the way golf courses Tiger-proofed by lengthening teeboxes after he broke that sport. There’s no other way to put it.

But me taking on Tom Brady sounds ridiculous, right? I can feel it as I type that. I’m afraid there’s stuff I don’t know. But, honestly, fuck that. I’ve been pretty right on these trends for like three years running. I’m kind of tired of waiting on people who fear change to think outside the box. These conversations JJ asked me about — they need to happen more, not less. And fundamentally, that starts with an understanding that things do change, and then they don’t ever change back, and that’s what evolution is. You need to be thinking about what the future looks like, not the past.

That’s all I have for today. Just woke up thankful after a great holiday, and wanting to write. You guys are a tremendous audience, and there’s nothing I could ever do to communicate how lucky I feel that I have your time and energy when you read these things. It’s incredibly humbling, after growing up reading writers I loved explain topics that mattered to me, that I now do that, and there are people out there who choose to commit their time and energy to reading what I write.

Thank you all, and I hope you had a tremendous holiday. We’ll chat again Monday for Stealing Signals. Until next time!