Suppose you look back on your season so far, and nothing terrible stands out. Good draft, not decimated by injuries, and your guys are doing pretty well on the stat sheet. Your strategy worked, and you should be feeling great. Instead, you’re struggling to make the playoffs and the losses are piling up. With just a few games left, how can you fix what’s wrong if nothing looks particularly wrong?
It's possible that nothing is actually wrong, and “doing something” just to do it could be the final nail in your fantasy coffin.
It happens with the real teams, too. Kansas City and Detroit aren’t broken franchises. They’re relatively healthy, their star players are producing decently and they still resemble the guys who were preseason favorites the past few years. But they’re a combined 11-9 and neither looks like a lock to even make the playoffs, much less play football in February. And if your fantasy team is in the same boat, it can be frustrating and baffling. You can’t point to a responsible injury or a major misfire on draft day. You’re just watching your team lose too many games, and you realize that you can’t win a title if you can’t even make the postseason. So what’s going on?
It sounds like a cop out to blame things on luck, but the fantasy schedule is one of the biggest variables in your season and it can make or break your team. I could probably take your league’s best team, play with the schedule, and make them a loser. Face the wrong team at the wrong time, and you come up short. Lose a nail-biter two weeks in a row, then face a good opponent when the bye weeks have hurt you, and you’re on a losing streak. And suddenly your contender is looking like a longshot. So what can you do?
You can actually do lots of things, and none of them good. You can start tinkering with your lineup, taking out solid producers and hoping that a streaky backup will rescue you. You can “punish” a player who had a bad week by benching them, and watch them revert back to their normal production on your bench. You can even grab a one-week wonder off the waiver wire and promote them to your starting lineup. And when they revert back to their normal lack of production, you’re worse off than before.
Often, the best thing you can do is nothing. If your team is producing, let them continue. Unless you can identify a weekly problem, you’re just as likely to create a new one by messing with what’s already working. Yes, you might be suffering from bad luck on a weekly basis, but you need to trust that things will balance out before the season is over. You might start winning those close games, or your opponent might suffer some of that tough luck and you’ll take your rightful place in the playoffs.
Or maybe not. Sometimes it’s just not your year. But don’t let that mentality seep in right now. You have a job to do, and sometimes that job requires patience and a willingness to let things play out if your team is sound. You can’t control the schedule, your opponent, a team’s baffling coaching decisions, or what actually happens in a game. All you can do is control who you start, using the best information and your instinct. If that part is going well, don’t try to influence variables that are beyond your influence. Just keep doing your job and start your best guys each week. And when panic sets in, remember that sometimes the best thing you can do is stop yourself from doing something. Stay the course, and good luck this week.
Do you have a good team that has a bad record? What’s to blame? Are you tempted to shake things up, or are you sticking with your players? Share your thoughts below.