Playing Fantasy Football over the years has gifted me many things in life. Playing the game over the years has led me to a network of friends that feel like family, a greater understanding of football, and made Sundays so much more meaningful as a whole. Playing fantasy sports makes even the worst matchups feel like life or death, adrenaline-fueled games. All that being considered, this year’s fantasy season is causing me to question if I even understand the sport anymore.
I play in four different leagues and also dabble in daily fantasy from time to time. In three of the four leagues, there was a twenty-dollar buy-in fee with the cash pots being around $240 and up. It’s not an extreme amount of money as some other leagues, but considering that the average age of the players in my leagues is barely old enough to drink the prize money pools are fairly substantial stakes. The start of every season feels a bit like an annual holiday of trash talk, memes, and players consuming as much football as possible in order to evaluate their players. After the week one overreactions most players have we progress through the next few weeks trying to be the best online General Managers as possible. Trades get proposed, waiver wire players get picked up after unexpected performances, and other regular moves throughout the season. As it stands right now through six weeks of football the only emotion I expect on Sunday is pain.
In one of my leagues, I drafted Julio Jones and Odell back to back in the first two rounds of the draft. They are two of the best wide receivers in the world with offenses that were projected to be insane for this upcoming season. The Cleveland Browns and Atlanta Falcons are both in the bottom half of their conferences at this point in the season. This does not necessarily mean that Odell and Julio are expected to fail as there are plenty of good stats, bad team players in the NFL that fantasy players love to get like Kyler Murray. However, both these players are not seeing their usual amount of product and it is driving me insane. In week five the drafted duo combined a total of 7.20 fantasy points in standard league scoring formats. The worst part of it all is that I have Will Fuller on my bench which he made me pay by going supernova on the Falcons horrendous defense. Through the first 4 weeks, Fuller had a combined 17 fantasy points so my reason for not placing him in the line up feels well justified. Then the Fullering took place. I placed my phone in my pocket and just closed my eyes to hold back the disappointment. Fuller’s career day was an amazing performance and should be celebrated, however for me I feel like he slapped me in the face and everybody wondering if I was going to return the favor. The same evening I called my long time friend David to see how their fantasy days went. David, who also has Odell in one of his leagues spoke on his star Wide Out’s performance with,” I may lose my religion after this week. Fantasy shouldn’t be taking such a toll on me, fool”. He mentions just how much Sundays are not fun anymore and I tend to agree.
Photo Credits: Wesley Hitt/Getty Images
Ethan Orphe is the Sports Director at The Wolf Internet Radio. Catch his podcast, Anistalgia, at thewolfuwg.com/anistalgia/ .
