Fantasy Football Week 1 Absurdity Check: Should I Drop Vance Mcdonald, Peyton Barber, Every Cleveland Brown, and My Will to Go on?

Playing fantasy football is like fishing… except from the point of view of a fish: Sooner or later, that delicious worm turns on us all.

We spend all off-season preparing, learning, mocking, knowing that our efforts will be rewarded with a strong fantasy football team. We’ll sit atop our leagues while our unpolished fellow owners scramble to the waiver wire, desperately trying to fill out their makeshift teams. We dream of uttering peals of derisive laughter down at those fantasy players who chose to draft with their hearts and cheat sheets, while our methodically-researched squads bring a buzzsaw to the table each and every Sunday.

Then fantasy football week 1 hits, and it turns out all our ivory towers were made of glass.

The important thing to remember is that, just because we fell from the sky week 1, the sky itself is not falling. While it’s smart to tweak your teams with the ripest waiver wire of the year, don’t run out and trade your slow-starting studs for the new hotness. Regression is real, and most of your decisions that feel wrong will be proven to be right.

Should you drop or trade hyped players such as Curtis Samuel, Baker Mayfield, Devonta Freeman, and Corey Davis? No! These guys saw their fantasy stocks rise for a solid bevy of reasons, one bad game isn’t enough to sell low.

However, for fringe roster people that never had more than an offseason buzz, it’s important to recognize when to drop them: Peyton Barber looks to be taking a back seat to Ronald Jones, who seems to have figured out how to play football. If you need the roster spot, drop Barber. Vance Mcdonald has never been a good football player and despite opportunity proved he is “just a guy”: Drop him.

The rule of thumb is pretty much: If the guy was a double digit, $1-3 player, he can be dropped. If they required a more significant draft investment, believe in them.

It’s just week 1: I’m in a league with dozens of teams, modeled after the Scott Fish Bowl. Week 1 of 2018, I had the third lowest score out of 36 teams. I did some roster tweaks, but nothing major. In the end I won that league.

Stay the course: Fantasy is a fickle mistress, especially week 1. It’s not an end-all benchmark of your mental strength.

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Photo Credit: https://live.staticflickr.com/123/338663978_dc1dfeee06_z.jpg under https://pixabay.com/photos/broken-glass-pieces-sharp-dangerous-1794449/

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