ASK THE EXPERTS appears weekly from training camp to Super Bowl with answers to a new question being posted Thursday morning. How the guest experts responded when we asked them: What was your luckiest fantasy win or unluckiest fantasy loss?
KEITH HERNANDEZ
I've had many close wins and tough losses throughout the years. Some of them are escaping me now. However, this past week provided a pretty unfortunate set of circumstances that led to a tight loss. I led by 11 points heading into the Monday night matchup between the Denver Broncos and Oakland Raiders. I was going up against Darren McFadden. Things were looking good in the first half, with Denver's defense shutting DMC down on the ground. However, in the second half, McFadden threw for a touchdown and ran one in late in garbage time. McFadden put up 11.70 points to be exact (on just 12 carries for nine yards), and I lost 145.35-144.75. So essentially, I lost because a running back threw for a touchdown, which is extremely rare. Tough one to swallow.
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MIKE CLAY
My craziest story is more of a combination unlucky/lucky streak I experienced last season. In a 16-team Family and Friends league, I started off 0-6 despite easily leading the league in total points. Regression kicked in just in time, however, as I won my next seven regular season games to steal a wild card berth. From there, I swept through the playoffs and won the league title. A mid-season trade for Doug Martin seemingly pushed my team over the top. I participate in a lot of leagues (too many, actually), but that's one title run I won't soon forget.
Clay is the Managing Editor and Director at Pro Football Focus Fantasy. It's there that he created a batch of advanced statistics, most notably average depth of target (aDOT). Mike also works as an NFL writer at Rotoworld.com and has contributed at PhiladelphiaEagles.com and for Athlon Sports.
SAM HENDRICKS
Thanks for asking-now I can relive the misery of November 26, 2007 all over again. MIA at PIT on Monday Night Football in week 12 for the championship game of the World Championship of Fantasy Football (WCOFF). I need Heath Miller to score something like 1.8 fantasy points. We are talking about one catch and 8 yards-60 minutes to catch ONE PASS! Heinz Field had new sod and a daylong rainstorm all formed the perfect storm (excuse the pun) to prevent me from being the champ as PIT won 3-0 on a FG with 17 seconds left. I watched $5000 slip away as Heath was not even targeted. Never again in his career has he played and not caught a pass.
Hendricks is the author of Fantasy Football Guidebook, Fantasy Football Tips and Fantasy Football Basics, all available at ExtraPointPress.com, at all major bookstores, and at Amazon and BN.com. He is a 20-plus year fantasy football veteran who regularly participates in the National Fantasy Football Championship (NFFC) and finished 7th and 16th overall (out of 228 competitors) in the 2008 and 2009 Fantasy Football Players Championship (FFPC). Follow him at his web site, www.ffguidebook.com.
IAN ALLAN
I will offer a game a reader told me about, because it’s better. December, 1988. The reader’s team seemingly has the championship game in the bag. He has a comfortable lead going into the Monday night game. The opponent only has wide receiver Reggie Langhorne left. Langhorne was a pretty good player that year (a top-20 receiver) but the reader had Bernie Kosar at quarterback to serve as a blocker. With Kosar at quarterback, there was essentially no way for a comeback. Fourth quarter of the game: Kosar gets hurt. Backup Don Strock comes in, throws 2 TD passes to Langhorne, and the championship game slips through this poor guy’s grasp.
Allan is the senior writer for Fantasy Football Index. He's been in that role since 1987, generating most of the player rankings and analysis for that publication. His work can be seen in Fantasy Football Index magazine, and also at www.fantasyindex.com.
MIKE NAZAREK
I believe I lost one game when QB Steve Young kneeled down at the end of a Monday night game and lost three rushing yards on the kneels. I lost by .1 point.
Nazarek is the CEO of Fantasy Football Mastermind Inc. His company offers a preseason draft guide, customizable cheat sheets, a multi-use fantasy drafting program including auction values, weekly in-season fantasy newsletters, injury reports and free NFL news (updated daily) at its web site. He has been playing fantasy football since 1988 and is a four-peat champion of the SI.com Experts Fantasy League, a nationally published writer in several fantasy magazines and a former columnist for SI.com. For more info go to www.ffmastermind.com. Nazarek can be reached via email at miken@ffmastermind.com.
DAVID DOREY
Through the years there were many. The best I had in a contest was winning The Draft by Head2Head Sports here in Dallas in 2006 when I moved into first place on Monday night football on the final play of the game when Jerricho Cotchery caught a 30-yard pass and I won $10,000 by less than a point. The other was in 2008 when I was in a championship game against a buddy of mine who I had known since fifth grade. He was on vacation in New York but went back to his hotel room just to watch the games. He called me to gloat about his win as he was ahead 96 to 89 and I only had one player left in the final minute of the Denver-San Diego game. The Chargers were already ahead 52-21 so the final drive of Denver meant nothing. But with 1:10 left (I looked this up it was so fun), the Broncos got the ball on their own 33-yard line. And Cutler hit my player Eddie Royal for 9 yards. Then again for 7 yards. Then again for 10 yards. Then again for 8 yards and time expired. That left me with seven points from the four meaningless plays and it would have allowed him to still win 97-96 except in that league Royal caught his tenth pass and gave me a ten point bonus to win 106-97. It was like God himself commanded Cutler to pepper Royal with those four straight meaningless passes so that I could win . In fact that is exactly what I told my friend. The moral of the story – don’t stop your family vacation to call long distance so you can smack talk your opponent until after the final play is over.
Dorey is the co-founder and lead NFL analyst for The Huddle and author of Fantasy Football: The Next Level. He has projected and predicted every NFL game and player performance since 1997 and has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, radio and television.
BOB HENRY
There are two losses of the unlucky variety that stick out the most. One comes from my first year playing fantasy football when we made the dubious decision to make interceptions -6 points to "balance" quarterback scoring - how little we knew. On Monday Night Football, I had a lead with Warren Moon going against the Buffalo Bills and my opponent was done. Moon proceeded to throw a few picks, the Oilers fell behind early and Moon was pulled. I lost something like 15 points and the game. The other unlucky loss came when my opponent rode Chris Bonoil's foot to something like 25 points on Monday Night Football to beat me by decimal points. The only thing worse is losing on Wednesday after the NFL stats changes are announced when you've already 'secured' the W.
Henry is a senior writer/analyst for Footballguys.com since 2004 and an industry veteran of 17+ years. His responsibilities at Footballguys include leading the annual training camp reports, providing detailed preseason and year-forward projections during the season that help drive the Footballguys suite of mobile, web and desktop draft and in-season management tools, along with managing the depth charts and his popular weekly Sleepers column during the season.
ALAN SATTERLEE
Well, in terms of an unlucky win that stands out one jumps to mind for me, here's one. We do a playoff fantasy football league. While I don't view it anywhere near "real fantasy football", I look forward to the draft and it makes the playoffs all the more exciting as you tend to add players from the same team to make a run. I had it sewed up in 2003 and was looking forward to watching the Super Bowl and collecting my jelly beans (it is total points through the playoffs and I had a large lead). The only thing that could beat me was the Tampa Bay defense, and they would have to go nuts and have some weird 3-TD game or something for me to lose. Boom. You guessed it and you know the story. The Warren Sapp-led defense came up legendary with a 3-TD game (Dwight Smith had an INT return TD in the 3rd quarter, then Derrick Brooks had an INT return TD in the 4th quarter, and then it happened, Dwight Smith had another INT return TD late). With that, indeed there were three defensive TDs and I lost the playoff league that year.
Satterlee is Co-Owner and Chief Editor/COO of FantasyFootballWarehouse.com. FFW features comprehensive profiles for all the major 2013 skill-position rookies, its Trading Spaces series, the team Deep Dives, the Speed Bump competition plus draft strategies, rankings, projections and more. FFW runs in tandem with its dynasty site DynastyFootballWarehouse.com.
PRETZEL MAY
On Dec. 14 2009 I was in the semifinals and going into the Monday night game up by 50 points, obviously feeling pretty good. And then I got Brandon Marshalled!! Marshall had a record setting night catching 21 balls for 200 yards and 2 touch downs resulting in.....drum roll....56 points. 56 POINTS! As a fantasy wide receiver it is so easy to not get 56 points! Needless to say, I watched the games the following week and did the math to find I would have won the championship by 25+ points. Brandon Marshall, why have you forsaken me!!! You couldn't get 48 points huh?
The May brothers have more than 20 years of combined fantasy football experience and are the co-founders of FantasyDraftMaster.com. In FDM's first 3 years as part of the Fantasy Index Experts Poll, they have amassed 1st- and 2nd-place finishes. The cornerstone of FantasyDraftMaster.com is the UberRank which is a revolutionary approach to the traditional fantasy football cheat sheet. FantasyDraftMaster.com also offers insightful and humorous commentary and recommendations on waiver wire pickups, lineup submissions and weekly pick em' pools. For more info on FDM, visit the web site or email info@fantasydraftmaster.com.
ERIC CATURIA
One can have all the football know-how in the world, but with an oblong spheroid all that separates fantasy players from glory or defeat, luck is generally (and happily) on the side of those that come out on top week-to-week. In all honesty, I generally brush aside bad beats and focus on how to improve a squad for the upcoming matchup, so no past win or loss really jumps to the forefront. However, the 2012 season included each of my three teams -- yes, just three! -- reaching the championship portion of the bracket, one with a three-week postseason and the remaining featuring two. The first league pitted yours truly versus one of my bosses at RotoWire, Jeff Erickson, who was promptly crushed by more than 50 points, thus granting me 1-in-4 odds of achieving fantasy football immortality, or ignominy, in the respective leagues. How did the following two weeks (and six matchups) shake out, you ask? Of course, abject failure ensued, with fourth-place finishes across the board and shakes of the head anytime a friend or colleague attempted to discover the aftermath. In the end, all we, as fantasy enthusiasts, can do is move forward and focus on the next campaign in hopes that intuition, along with a friendly bounce or two, will culminate in an eventual champ. (Four chances this year...)
Caturia is a writer/editor of NFL, MLB, and NBA content for RotoWire. He can be found on Twitter @etcat30.
SCOTT SACHS
Human nature, plus being a Browns fan, makes me look at the unlucky games. A recent one: I had a game about won, then I got Tebow-ed when he ran in a long TD on a Monday night late in the 4th quarter while playing for Denver. An ancient history one: I had a team iced by 10 points, my players were done, his players were done except for one--a back-up TE he was forced to start due to injury, so of course he caught two 1 yard TDs.
Sachs runs Perfect Season Fantasy Football, offering LIVE Talk/Text/Email consulting & advice. Winner of Fantasy Football Index's 2012 Experts Poll & 2011 Mock Auction League, Scott can be found at http://perfectseasonffb.com/.
ANDY RICHARDSON
A championship win that I still can't quite believe. It was a dynasty league I had been very close to winning for a number of years but lost in the semis or finals each time. This year, I was down by 40 points going into the primetime Vikings-Eagles game, with Percy Harvin and Brent Celek going. This was the year that snow collapsed the Metrodome roof, and the game was actually postponed until Tuesday night. Harvin had his typical 7- or 8-catch game, but I needed Celek (who hadn't caught more than 4 passes in a game all season) to vastly exceed expectations. He ended up catching 10 balls, including the final 3 plays of the game with the Eagles down 10 points but just throwing these meaningless 10-yard dumpoffs to him over the middle of the field. The final reception, as the clock expired, gave me the championship -- by 6/10ths of a point. I couldn't believe it then, and I still can't. I don't think the guy I beat is over it yet. I know I wouldn't be.
Richardson has been a columnist and contributor to the Fantasy Football Index magazine and web site for 12 years. His responsibilities include team defense and IDP projections and various site features, and he has run the magazine's annual draft and auction leagues since their inception. He previews all the NFL games on Saturdays and writes a wrap-up column on Mondays during the NFL season.