Peyton Hillis, Madden Curses and Fantasy Sports

Its been a while since the last post but in my defense, I went to New Orleans over Thanksgiving and abused my liver so much it filed domestic abuse charges against me.  Also I was writing an article about how terrible the Dodgers were last year considering how they had both the Cy Young and MVP on the same team and barely finished .500, then the BBWAA fucked me over by giving the MVP to Ryan Braun.  I had to do a lot of math in that article, did you hear me BBWAA?! I had to do GODDAMN MATH! So instead I worked on this piece about Peyton Hillis.  I am also currently working on an article about Christmas Songs that don't suck, so stay tuned for that later in the week. 

 I have a confession, Peyton Hillis is better than me a football.  Alright, there I’ve said it. Now that that is out in the open though, I must confess compared to other professional football players this year though he sucks.  What other terms could you use to describe the constantly injured locker room cancer and how did this happen?  Last year the White Avalanche burst onto the scene with a good season and kind of looked like a poor man’s Christian Okoye or Mike Alstott had he been you’re starting tailback.  He ran through and over would be tacklers and paced the browns attack with over 330 touches (both rushing and receiving) and half of their offensive touchdowns (13). He was their 3^rd most productive receiver behind Ben Watson (768 yards, 3 TDs) and Mohamed Massaquoi (483 yards, 2 TDs). And if you had him on your fantasy team he was an absolute monster and was the 3^rd highest scoring RB in PPR formats and 4^th in Standard formats.  In short, Peyton Hillis was the by far the best offensive option on the 2^nd worst offense in the NFL.

Hillis numbers and ranks for 2010 season

YPA	4.4	18th
YPG	73.6	15th
Attempts	270	11th
Rushing Yards	1177	11th
Receiving Yards	477	8th among RBs
REC	61	4th among RBs
TD	13	5th
Fumbles	9	1st

(If you are into advanced stats they back up these numbers fairly well.  Hillis ranked ranked 8^th in the league in DYAR and 13^th in the league in DVOA. If you care to start getting an understanding of what these stats mean please go read www.footballoutsiders.com written by people much smarter than me.)

 To recap so far Peyton Hillis was probably somewhere around the 10^th best running back last year, his only year as a starting running back.  So after one good year why did Hillis start holding out and nursing injuries to the point that the Brown’s front office essentially told him to enjoy free agency, when like I’ve already pointed out, he was their best offensive player last year.

Let’s start off with this, fantasy football as a game is least like its sports counterpart. I’ve already written about the unreality of fantasy football, you can read about it below. But, FF is also big business so if you are good in that very specific way, then people will write about you, talk about you, cover you on Sports Center and buy your jerseys. Plus, Peyton did this all in Cleveland a place so devoid of sports joy (disregarding the schadenfreude of the Mavericks winning the NBA title) that they jumped all over him like they were starving and he was a Honey Baked Ham.

Second Hillis was on the cover of Madden which is the most popular sports game on the planet earth, or at least the part of the planet earth known as the United States.  The White Avalanche emblazoned on discs and cases as the greatest example of runningbackdom in the history of the grid iron.   But, they let fans vote for it and the Cleveland fans mobilized amazing well.  Couple this with a dubious win in the finals against Michael Vick (who was recently named the most hated player in the NFL) and suddenly this massive honor, isn’t that massive. (There is no way the final isn’t fixed , you’re EA sports this is your flagship game, are you going to risk getting in any hot water by putting an amazingly polarizing figure on the cover of your game. No you go with the boring white guy from that team in Ohio.)

So what happens one morning Hillis wakes up and says to himself, “White Avalanche, you’re the best running back in the history of not only University of Arkansas, and the Cleveland Browns but most likely also the world and you are only the 51^st highest paid RB in NFL? How is that possible?  You’re going to be a first round fantasy draft pick, you were on the cover of Madden, and you need more money now!”  So you hold out and milk injuries and generally act like a big bag of dicks.  Fast forward, you are injured not playing and Cleveland just told you to have fun with free agency.

Now to play devil’s advocate, I am not against holding out for a new contract; The NFL has some weird pay scales.  CJ2K was woefully underpaid for the first 3 years in the league in which he averaged over 1,500 yards/year (the highest in the NFL over that period) over those same 3 years he was paid an average of $410,000.  There is no argument that he didn’t deserve the contract he got.  And as much as he is underperforming this year technically he still on his rookie deal until next year so he’s only making 800K this year with his recent good games he will most likely end up somewhere around 1100 yards for the year, which though a drop off in performance is still a good monetary value. (I get all my salary info from here http://www.spotrac.com)

 I don’t know if it was a fluke last year and I’m sure there are other reasons that Hillis hasn’t played well, when he’s played at all this year.  Maybe he’ll turn it around down the stretch string together a few massive games and earn himself a big contract. But remember this Avalanche your team doesn’t get bonus points for you being on the cover of a video game or what your average draft position is in an ESPN fantasy league.  You earn big contracts on the field not on the internet.

Fantasy vs. Reality

Is your fantasy football team an awe inspiring, dominant juggernaut so good that people don’t mind listening to you talk about them? (The answer is no, it’s a well known fact that the most boring thing on the planet is listening to someone else talk about their fantasy team, of course it is super interesting to talk about your own.  This is the same phenomenon as talking about dreams). This could only be because of your deep understanding of the intricacies and minor subtleties of the team game (This may or may not be true, you could be Bill Belichick, Is that you BB?? I love you…moving on).  Now, take a deep breath here, for all of your understanding of the game, your fantasy team would win*Drum Roll* 0 real football games. Now before you get all butt hurt, relax, everyone’s team would.

Fantasy football is by far the most popular of fantasy sports and it’s seemingly easy to see why, the NFL is by far the most popular professional sports league, so why wouldn’t that be the case.  Here is the deeper and more brutal truth, FF is by far the dumbest and easiest fantasy sport to understand and it doesn’t really require any understanding of the sport.  If you don’t play FF let me break down this fairly easily for you, here’s how you can build a decent team with no research whatsoever.

Fantasy Football Team in 3 Easy Steps

1)      Sit down the season before and mindlessly watch hours of football highlights, specifically noting the names that are said the most often.

2)      Draft those names, and most the recognizable names available (gathered in your head from years of watching Joe Buck, Troy Aikman and Phil Simms call games i.e. Oh man, they keep talking about how great this Reggie Wayne guy has been, I’m getting him.)

3)      Pick some guys from your team that they talk about on your local sports radio drive time show.

Alright and we’re done.  Now this team probably won’t win you any trophies or bragging rights but it would probably go .500 over the course of a season, that’s not bad, and it probably makes it more fun for you to root on Sunday as you are toggling between afternoon games featuring teams you have no interest in. But I always thought the point of fantasy sports was to pit your intellect and understanding of the game against others and FF just doesn’t offer much, if any, of that. 

There are a few reasons for this, first is roster construction.  In a standard fantasy league you wouldn’t have a punter or an offensive line, you wouldn’t carry many backups and you just grabbed a random defense and kicker in the last 2 rounds.  You most likely drafted some combination of running back, wide receiver and Aaron Rodgers with your first two picks.  So far only that guy that picked up Aaron Rodgers is on his way to making an actual successful football team.  (It’s a QB league now.  You don’t win without a good one or Tim Tebow.  Don’t believe me, ask Larry Fitzgerald how much better his numbers would look if John Skelton and Kevin Kolb weren’t throwing ducks in his general vicinity)

Secondly FF values touchdowns over everything else. A 59 yard run to the opponent’s 1 yard line is less valuable than a plunge into the end zone from a goal line back.  Why should that 1 yard be worth so much more?  In last night’s Giants/Eagles game Desean Jackson ran a punt back to the 20 that set up a touchdown pass on the very next play, this did not factor at all into his fantasy output but most certainly helped his team win must needed game.  Other than the touchdown variance mentioned above FF also values rushing yards at 2.5X passing yards, which is exactly how real football is played because if its 3^rd and 1 you only need to run for the 1 yard but you need to throw for 2 and ½ yards…oh wait that actually isn’t true.  That creates a pretty huge schism between fantasy and reality if you ask me.

                Why am I just talking about FF and not the other fantasy sports (in this case basketball and baseball)?  Well because to be good at playing fantasy basketball and baseball you have to build a team that would actually be successful if constructed in real life.  Want to win your fantasy basketball league? Draft a super duper star in the first round, some one that can carry your team, for example KD  and surround that guy with a secondary scoring option, some bangers to rebound and block shots, a good point guard to create for everyone and other role players to fill in the stat sheet.  Well this is also how you build a championship basketball team.  You get your one elite player and build everything around them. It has worked pretty successfully since the beginning of forever.  That imaginary KD built team would probably win 50+ games depending on conference and schedule, that’s pretty friggin’ good. 

Fantasy baseball is cut from the same cloth, you need to find good hitters at each position and a pitching staff that strikes out a lot of guys, while keeping walks down and having low ERAs.  If you could build a team like that you would win 95+ games depending on ballpark and luck. Also, since you have to draft roughly a million guys and there are only about five elite guys at each position you also need to have a great understanding of depth charts, prospects etc.

“Hold on buddy, stop making fun of FF, fantasy baseball doesn’t have defense either.”  

                Hey imaginary guy yelling at me, shut up, but you are correct. However a baseball player’s defense is not that necessary for actual success. (Given that every professional baseball player is a PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL PLAYER and should be counted on to make routine plays.)  Put it this way the greatest hitting season ever, according to WAR is Babe Ruth in 1921 when he hit 59 HRs while driving in 171 with a slash line of .378/.512/.846 if you don’t understand baseball find someone who does and have them explain how ball-droppingly amazing that is.  That year Babe Ruth was worth almost 14 wins. That makes a 98-55 juggernaut into in 84-69 team that would have finished either 3^rd or 4^th in that division. On the other hand according to the same stat (WAR) except its defensive counterpart the best season ever belongs to Adam Everett who was worth 4 wins to Houston Astros team that finished 82-80.  If I had told Phil Garner (that team’s manager) that Adam Everett was going to hit .378/.512/.846 but boot every 5^th ball that was hit to him as opposed to playing amazing defense but hitting .239/.290/.352, Mr. Garner would be looking for a line-up card large enough to hide his visible erection behind.  I would argue that most of baseball defense is good pitching and the rest is some competent fielding. So yes, if you built your real life baseball team like a fantasy team (big hitters, strong starting pitching and one bullpen anchor) and ignored defense, you could be for example the 2004 Boston Red Sox. (My favoritist, whiskey-drinkingest team of all time)

                So my point is this Fantast Football as a whole is the least like its actual counterpart.(I had some line here about how you could win with a terrible rushing QB like Tim Tebow, I’m actually taking that back, I don’t know how it keeps working but it keeps working.)  It bastardizes the sport and throws off our perception of what makes players good and successful.  It makes stars out of 1 year flashes and…BOOM! My fantasy team is F*****g stacked this year. 10-1 BABY!!!  Championship here I come!

That's Not an Argument

http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/red-sox/post/_/id/15306/video-crawford-will-bounce-back-but

**Disclaimer, I’ve read almost every article over at FJM, I know this is kind of their thing, but they are busy making Parks and Recreation, and I can’t let articles like this stand.**

Before we get to my open letter I’m going to save everyone some time by paraphrasing the above video.  Jim Bowden was asked which big time free agent signing that had a rough year would bounce back.  Bowden said he thought Carl Crawford would come back and hit 20 home runs, steal 40 bases and play plus defense BUT!!! It would be for the Chicago Cubs. (I’m 100% sure there are a few earlier takes of this where Jim kept raising one finger and making the stupid “A-HA” face before some kindly stepped in and explained he looked like a gigantic douche)  His argument is that well, Theo Epstein is in Chicago now.  That’s it then the video ends.  I hate this kind of sports journalism, basically you just throw out some random dumb idea, hoping people will yell at you for your dumb idea and then you got a bunch of page hits.  This is basically how Colin Cowheard has operated his entire life.  Below you will find an open letter to JimBo.

Dear Jim Bowden,

                You owe me back at least 1 minute and 15 seconds of my life, for having to watch this video and the constantly embedded commercial that goes along with it. So, Carl Crawford is going to have a huge bounce back, but it’s going to be for the Cubs, because Theo Epstein now in charge in Chicago. Now, clearly I am not a professional writer of sports but I’m pretty sure you need to base your ideas somewhere in reality and that you just don’t give away players, ya know because you already have enough. Let us go over what we both know. The Sox signed CC to a very large contract and to trade him now they would probably have to continue to pay at least a part of that.  So already, they are paying someone not to play for them. (Why? He seems like a good enough guy, just seems like he killed himself trying to prove he was worth that big contract) Also the Sox would be selling extremely low on CC coming off 1 bad year (Again Why? Statistical analysis shows guys with CC’s skill set tend to age better than power hitters into their mid to late 30’s) The Sox aren’t losing money so why just give away CC?  Alright, alright maybe Theo Epstein really loves him and wants him so bad. Well the Red Sox and Cubs will need work out a deal for CC. (They can’t even decide on a deal for Theo, when are they going to work out the deal for CC?) What are they offering, Starlin Castro and Matt Garza? (Please god yes)No, they are not, because Theo is not Ed Wade and the Cubs are building for the future, again I am not a baseball professional but I am pretty sure you don’t build for the future around a 30 year old speedy OF.  

Jim, is this one of those things where you say something so dumb on the one and a million chance it happens and makes you look relevant for a few days? You don’t say anything that is based in the world of logic, so I am going to presume that that is the case and you are not just making wishes on eyelashes.   When I was a kid my favorite football player was Lawrence Taylor, (It’s been a sad road to adulthood for me) but my favorite team was the New England Patriots, so I always hoped that LT would play for the Pats.  See, you and I did the same thing except I was 6 at the time and still knew I was being unrealistic. I like your game though, say something crazy if it actually happens you turn into sports Nostradamus.  So I’ve come up with my own list.

What I expect to happen during the Hot Stove Season

1. Stephen Strasburg will be traded to the Red Sox because Adrian Gonzalez played in Strasburg’s hometown of San Diego.

2. Nolan Ryan will put Robin Ventura in a headlock until he gives the Rangers the White Sox best prospects.

3. Jered Weaver will wear an oversized cowboy hat and make all of his teammates call him “Turd Ferguson” because it’s a funny name.

4. Justin Verlander will make a PSA called “Strike Out Crime” where he rides around Detroit throwing 100 mph fastballs at would be criminals.

5. Tony La Russa will get picked up on a DUI, and be forced to use his last World Series get of jail free card.

6. Clayton Kershaw will challenge Ian Kennedy to an actual pitcher’s duel and shoot him in the chest with a pistol at 10 paces.

7. The Dodgers will be bought by Mikhail Prokhorov, who will then move them back to Brooklyn.  Then with his evil plan finally ready to be put in motion, move all of Brooklyn to Russia using thousands of land moving helicopters. The only people that can stop him are the unlikely duo of young hot shot detective Jose Reyes and his grizzled veteran partner Derek Jeter, who is too old for this shit.  “When a Russian Billionaire tries to steal part of New York City, only one duo can come together and make him stop…Shortstops.  A Michael Bay Film”

8. Jacoby Ellsbury will admit that his real name is Jacob Ellsbury and that he added the “y” in third grade because there was another Jacob in the class who got head lice and he didn’t want to be confused with him.

9. Jose Bautista will regress without sign stealing and hit negative 17 home runs.

10. Alex Rios (.227/.265/.348) will bounce back and win the Triple Crown, in horse racing! (Now that’s a prediction)

Suck it Jim Bowden.

XOXO

Jon