Last Place Wisdom: A Look at Last Season

It takes a special kind of something to put in as much Fantasy research as I do each week, and still end up with a last place finish. The ability to combine chronic underachieving and general Fantasy Football knowledge is a rare gift, and gave me the inspiration for the title of my weekly blog posts (along with Arrested Development). By listening to what I have to say each week, you too can achieve great things this year.

Yarmulkes not provided

So, before looking ahead to this season, I thought I would do a recap of last year to see what I learned.



First, despite finishing in last place, I was extremely happy with my team. I had four RB in the top 13, including the #2 (Martin) and #9 (Richardson). I also had 3 WR in the top 14, including #2 (Marshall).  It took a few trades to end up this way, and those were mixed. Trading Morris for Martin worked out for me, where trading D. Thomas for Richardson was not quite as good, as I should've traded White or Wayne instead.

I never had a consistent QB, and muddled through with just about a new guy each week; Newton, Roethlisberger, Romo, Freeman, Ponder, Dalton and Palmer. 3 games this killed me, but the rest of the time my match-ups worked alright. It's a stressful way to try and win, and I don't want to find myself in that situation again. In hindsight, I traded Newton too fast, but was frustrated by his early season inconsistency. My TE was perfectly average, where Denver was a great D/ST pickup for the end of the season.

Overall, I had a number of solid players that should have been a playoff contender. So what went wrong? Plain and simple, it was inconsistency and lineup choices. Most weeks I had 4 RB and WR I could consider starting, and very rarely did I pick the ones who had the best games. I lost games by 1 point and 4 point, while winning another week by 90 (at least I have the greatest single fantasy week TFLOEG has ever seen to bring me some joy after last season).

So what do I take away from this? For one, my high reward players paid off, but my consistency was lacking. That's something I hope to improve on this year. The other is that despite all the research and thinking that goes into it, you cannot control for luck. That is what makes Fantasy Football so fun, and so frustrating at the same time.

So this post isn't just about my team, here are some other thoughts I had from last year. John put together a great team, thanks primarily to his great drafting. Brees, Graham, Jones and Decker were the core of his team all year, while Manning, Spiller and V. Jackson were backups he traded for AP. His depth helped him when McCoy and F. Jackson ran into issues.

Dawson had my favourite team by the end of the year (It helps that I traded half of it to him). Megatron and Rice are the most consistent guys you can get, and his upside players paid off. Curtis deserves plenty of credit for making the finals, as he never had the most talented team but found a way to tin.

My final thought, showing the trouble with making predictions, is that many of the keepers we took last year disappointed. Of the 16 keepers we had, maybe 6 or 7 had years their owners could really be happy with. The rest were all sorts of disappointing, so in that sense maybe it's a good thing we're not having keepers this year.



On the next Last Place Wisdom:

• Thoughts on the upcoming season 
• Keith sings the praises of Pittsburgh Steelers
•  Sleeper kickers and when you should draft them