Don't Be a Cheat Sheet Devotee

Fantasy football owners love shortcuts.

Actually, people love shortcuts.

That's why fast food exists.

That's why we doom scroll.

That's why Netflix asks if we're still watching after six straight episodes of White Lotus and we somehow interpret that as a personal attack..."What I cant have a day off. now?"

Human beings are constantly looking for the easy button.

The problem is that easy and effective aren't always the same thing.

A cheeseburger and fries are easier than grilled salmon and vegetables.

Watching six hours of television is easier than reading a book.

Scrolling social media is easier than developing an actual opinion.

Our brains are constantly searching for the path of least resistance and then giving us a little motivational speech to justify it.

"I've had a long week."

"I'll start tomorrow."

Fantasy football is no different.

Every August, millions of owners sit down for their drafts and immediately reach for the nearest cheat sheet.

The rankings.

The tiers.

The Top 300.

The color coded list created by some analyst they've never met.

And to be fair, cheat sheets are useful.

The problem is when they become a substitute for thinking.

The exact same cheat sheet you're using is being used by everyone else.

Your league mates are using it.

Their cousins are using it.

Some divorcee in Cleveland is using it.

Which means if you're simply drafting off a list, you're competing with the same information as everybody else.

That's not an edge. 

That's participation...you don't want the participation trophy, you want the championship trophy. 

Now maybe you sprinkle in some strategy.

Zero RB.

Hero RB.

Robust RB...Semi Robust RB..

Late round quarterback.

The Triple Lindy Reverse Double Helix Wide Receiver Build.

Whatever nonsense fantasy Twitter is selling this year...and there is not shortage of that.

But at the end of the day, fantasy football only comes down to one thing:

Value.

That's it.

Whether you're drafting snake.

Whether you're drafting auction.

Whether you're drafting both like the degenerates in our league.

You're looking for value.

If your sixth round receiver scores thirty more fantasy points than your opponent's fourth round receiver, you have an advantage.

That's the game.

The same way a hedge fund manager looks for undervalued companies.

The same way an investor looks at P/E ratio for a stock whose future is better than its current price.

Fantasy owners should be hunting mispriced assets.

Imagine walking into Home Depot and finding a $300 grill marked at one penny. 

Is it worth a penny?

Of course not.

The tag is wrong.

The value didn't change.

The price did.

That's what fantasy owners should be searching for.

Or imagine finding a Rolex priced like a department store watch.

Either everyone else missed it...

Or you know something they don't.

Great fantasy owners don't find good players.

Everybody knows who the good players are.

Great fantasy owners find the Home Depot grill marked at a penny.

The garage sale guitar.

The Rolex in the pawn shop.

They're hunting mistakes.

So where do you find these mispriced assets?

You use your eyes...use some basic stratagies...some objective criteria that point towards possibilites. Change in talent at QB, thats a clue. New Offensive Cordinator will be a clue as well. 

Take Terry McLaurin.

Before Jayden Daniels arrived, McLaurin was already a very good receiver.

From 2019 through 2023 he averaged over 1,000 receiving yards despite spending half his career catching passes from quarterbacks whose names even Commanders fans struggle to remember.

Fantasy managers knew he was talented.

What they failed to price in was what might happen if he finally got competent quarterback play.

Terry McLaurin spent the first half of his career catching passes from a quarterback room that looked like an NFL garage sale.

Case Keenum.

Taylor Heinicke.

Carson Wentz.

Sam Howell.

Kyle Allen.

Garrett Gilbert.

Terry McLaurin spent five years catching passes from quarterbacks that felt like they were won in a raffle.

Then Daniels arrived.

Suddenly the touchdown ceiling exploded.

The talent never changed.

The environment changed. Mark this down. Big upgrade at QB and his market price wasnt changed dramatically.

That's value.

Here is another New QB situation changed dusted with offensive genius sprinkled in to make the magic potion work. 

One of my favorite examples of finding value came in 2021 with Cooper Kupp.

Going into draft season, Kupp was being selected around the 4th round as a solid WR2. Nothing more. Nothing less. (liked him, but didnt draft him, so I remember)

In many drafts he was being taken right alongside his teammate Robert Woods.

What it failed to see was a massive change that had already happened.

Matthew Stafford had arrived.

The Rams had traded Jared Goff to Detroit and brought in Stafford because Sean McVay believed the offense had hit its ceiling. Stafford immediately gave McVay something he hadn't had before: a quarterback capable of attacking every blade of grass on the field. Stafford threw for 4,886 yards and 41 touchdowns in his first season with the Rams.

Now here's the important part.

Nobody predicted what came next.

Not the cheat sheets. Not the rankings. Not the experts.

Cooper Kupp proceeded to lead the NFL in receptions, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns, becoming just the fourth receiver since 1970 to win the receiving Triple Crown. He finished with 145 catches, 1,947 yards, and 16 touchdowns, one of the greatest receiving seasons in NFL history.

What changed?

The answer wasn't that Kupp suddenly became a great player.

He was already a great player.

The answer wasn't that Sean McVay suddenly became a great coach.

He already was.

The answer was that Stafford and McVay formed the perfect partnership and Kupp became the primary beneficiary. Even in the first two weeks of the season, Stafford had already targeted Kupp 21 times, and the connection was obvious to anyone paying attention.

That's the lesson.

Finding value isn't about predicting the future perfectly.

It's about identifying changes before the market fully prices them in.

Most fantasy owners looked at Cooper Kupp and saw last year's statistics.

The sharp owners looked at Matthew Stafford, Sean McVay, and an evolving offense and saw a different future.

That's where the profit lives.

Derrick Henry-Listen to what the OC says

One of the biggest fantasy lessons of the last decade came from Derrick Henry and the Tennessee Titans.

And the funny thing is, the clues were sitting right in front of everyone.

In 2018, the Titans' offensive coordinator was Matt LaFleur. Henry still had a solid year, rushing for 1,059 yards and 12 touchdowns, but much of the season felt frustrating. Tennessee often rotated Dion Lewis into the offense, and there were constant questions about whether Henry was ever going to become the true focal point of the attack. From Weeks 4 through 13, Henry averaged just 37 rushing yards per game and frequently disappeared from fantasy lineups.

Then something happened late in the season.

Henry went nuclear.

Over the final five games of 2018, he rushed for 625 yards and 8 touchdowns, including a legendary 238-yard, 4-touchdown demolition of Jacksonville. He looked less like a running back and more like a runaway dump truck with shoulder pads.

Most fantasy owners looked at those games and thought:

"Wow. Nice hot streak."

Arthur Smith looked at those games and thought:

"Why don't we just keep doing that?"

When LaFleur left to become head coach of the Packers, the Titans promoted Arthur Smith from tight ends coach to offensive coordinator. The important detail here is that Smith wasn't some outsider showing up with a mysterious new system. He had been in the building. He had watched Henry destroy defenses down the stretch. And immediately after getting the job, Smith publicly stated that Derrick Henry was going to be a huge part of the offense.

In hindsight, the fantasy community probably should have listened.

In 2019, Henry exploded for 1,540 rushing yards and 16 touchdowns, leading the NFL in rushing. Then in 2020 he somehow topped that with 2,027 rushing yards. The Titans' offense jumped from one of the league's most forgettable units to one of its most dangerous, built almost entirely around play action, physical football, and repeatedly handing the ball to a man built like a medieval siege weapon.

Now here's the important fantasy lesson.

The breakout wasn't hidden.

The clues were visible.

Arthur Smith had already shown us exactly what he wanted to do.

The market simply didn't fully connect the dots.

This is where fantasy owners get into trouble.

They stare at last year's final rankings.

They stare at projections.

Meanwhile the real clues are often sitting right in front of them.

A new coordinator arrives.

A coach starts talking differently.

A player's usage changes.

A role expands.

A depth chart clears out.

Fantasy football isn't always about predicting the future.

Sometimes it's about noticing that the future is already trying to introduce itself.

Or take Malik Nabers.

This was one of my favorite examples in recent memory.

In 2024, many fantasy managers drafted him behind a long list of established veterans because rookie receivers were considered "risky." Also Daniel Jones, was literally everyones favorite joke. 

Sounds logical.

Until you actually look.

The Giants spent the sixth overall pick on him.

The talent was obvious.

The depth chart looked like a Walmart parking lot at two in the morning.

There was almost no serious competition for targets.

Then preseason arrived.

Now preseason statistics are mostly useless.

But preseason clues? Listen up!!

Those matter.

Fantasy football isn't accounting.

It's detective work.

You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes.

You just need to be Columbo. You're trying to be Columbo wandering around the crime scene noticing that everyone else missed the muddy footprint.

You need to walk around the scene asking questions.

Why are they designing plays specifically for this guy?

Why does the quarterback keep looking for him? How many TDs could Daniel Jones throw?

Why does every beat writer keep mentioning the same player?

The stats weren't the clue.

The behavior was the clue.

The Giants were practically holding a press conference saying:

"We're going to feed this guy the football."

Most fantasy managers ignored it because the cheat sheets said otherwise.

I didn't.

I moved Nabers significantly up my board and drafted him ahead of several bigger names.

One owner in particular, let's call him Stan, informed me that I was abandoning logic.

Stan had a cheat sheet.

I had eyeballs.

Turns out eyeballs won.

Nabers exploded immediately and became a fantasy star.

The following year he was a first round fantasy pick.

That's how value works.

The goal isn't to discover players nobody has heard of.

The goal is to identify players whose future role is bigger than their current price.

The market eventually catches up.

It always does.

But on draft day, that's where the profit lives.

Not in the rankings.

Not in the cheat sheet.

In the gap between what everybody believes today and what will be true tomorrow.

So use the rankings.

Use the cheat sheets.

Just don't worship them.

The owners who win consistently aren't following the crowd.

They're paying attention.

They're looking.

They're thinking.

They are finding the muddy foot print in the mud