East Coast Offense: Season Long Leagues Should Be Best Ball

This article is part of our East Coast Offense series.

Season Long Leagues Should Be "Best Ball"

I've been lucky to advance the last two weeks in the Stopa Law Firm $10K league, but before each matchup I had a nearly impossible decision to make. Two weeks ago, it was Blake Bortles against the Colts vs. Eli Manning against the Dolphins, and this past week it was Bilal Powell against the Cowboys vs. Brandon Bolden against the Titans. It turned out neither decision was consequential, but it might have been had my opponent's team scored more points. Put differently, this team with which I lived and died all year, that I spent the last 16 weeks managing and adjusting, that could potentially win me thousands of dollars might all come to naught on a random guess.

I realize so much of what happens in football (and hence fantasy football) is arbitrary, e.g., kickers missing field goals, players getting hurt in the first quarter, your star running back marginalized due to game-flow. That's something with which we have to live. But when you add in 50/50 lineup decisions, we're compounding the unavoidable randomness with another unnecessary layer of dumb luck. Moreover, this layer is worse because we feel responsible for it. When your star running back gets hurt, you feel cheated, but it's nothing like the despair you'd experience (as my friend did) had you sat Isaiah Crowell (No. 1 back) in Week 14 for Alfred Blue (didn't play an offensive snap.)

As someone who writes for a fantasy web site, I get asked start/sit questions all the time, not only on Twitter and in my columns, but also via email from friends. If someone's a low-information fantasy player asking a question to which the answer is obvious, I'll just answer it. But that type of fantasy player is becoming increasingly rare - even my friends who play casually know enough that any start/sit question they'd ask is one with which I'd have trouble myself. When I get one, my instinct is to be helpful until I read the question and understand why he's in a bind, at which point, I don't want anything to do with it. Sorry, brother, this isn't my cross to bear. By having me answer the question, he's making me responsible for his decision. Even though it's he who has to live with the consequences, it's I who has to live with causing them, and I find myself rooting to be right (or more precisely not to have steered him wrong) even though I have no stake in it.

As a result, I'll usually say, "I'd probably do x, but it's really 50/50, so go with your gut." I can tell you what I might do (though two days later, I might easily change my mind), but in the end, listening to me won't help you on a 50/50 call. No one knows the answer.

One could argue this is a cop out, wanting to avoid a tough choice, but I don't agree. A tough choice is typically one where you know the likely consquences, but the right thing to do might not be the most pleasant. For example, deciding to break up with someone with whom you don't see a long-term future, turning down a friend's business proposition, telling your boss the truth about his bad idea, etc. Those are tough decisions because what's right or true is likely to be received badly. But if someone offered you $1 million on a coin flip, calling it in the air - no matter how consequential - is not a tough decision.

The bottom line, the random guessing we do when setting lineups (especially in the playoffs) is my least favorite part of fantasy football. If I get it right, I was lucky, and if I get it wrong, I destroyed my entire season. The "best ball" format - which retroactively counts your ideal lineup - is a better way to settle things. It also makes watching the games on Sunday a lot less taxing.

One last word of advice: If your league is like most where lineup decisions are necessary, trust your instincts and don't ever make a last second impulse switch unless it's in response to actionable news, e.g., your time-share running back's partner is scratched from the game.

Mike Pettine, Mike McCarthy and the NFL's Authority Problem

Last week I came upon a blog post by Ken White about a judge who's facing a complaint from the Judicial Tenure Commission for sending three kids to juvenile detention for not obeying her orders to "cultivate a warm relationship with their father."

The point of the post was that even if you presume the father was not abusive and the mother was being vindictive in a bitter divorce (facts that were in dispute), treating the kids like criminals because they didn't do what the judge ordered was outrageous.

White writes:

Judge Lisa Gorcyca doesn't hate kids. She isn't some monster who has hidden sociopathy her whole career. The evil of Lisa Gorcyca - and people like her throughout America's justice system - isn't of the cinematic sort. It's banal. It's not the evil of wanting to hurt children; it's the evil of indifference to them. It's not the evil of bloodthirstiness; its the evil of petulance, the evil of mediocrity given power and then thwarted.

Isn't this what's really going on when Pettine benches Johnny Manziel for being at a club during his bye week, or McCarthy yo-yos Eddie Lacy in and out of the lineup based on his week of practice?

White continues:

Judge Lisa Gorcyca has power because she's a judge. She's infuriated that her power is, for the moment, insufficient to make children do what she wants. She's not angry in the abstract because kids ought to have good relationships with their dads. She's apoplectic that children are disrespecting her power by not bending to her will. She's been elevated beyond her ability and character: given power, and lacking the maturity or intellect to wield it justly...

The question one should ask in these situations is whether the coach's behavior is really better for the player and the team, or instead it's the frustrated reaction of a coach "elevated beyond his ability and character, given power and lacking the maturity or intellect to wield it justly."

I'd argue the NFL as an organization suffers from this defect, and it's the reason players like Josh Gordon are suspended for the better part of two years while Greg Hardy is an active player. While Hardy caused serious harm to another person, he wasn't repeatedly defying the NFL's or his team's commands. It's also why Ray Rice got only a two-game suspension before the NFL (for PR reasons) had to re-suspend him illegally. Rice was more or less a "yes-man" when it came to advertising and being a spokesman for the Ravens and had never had issues with practice habits or off-field partying.

While the league obviously doesn't want its players committing domestic violence (and less so now that the public is more aware of the issue), doing so is not a challenge to the league's authority the way Manziel going to a club or Gordon having drinks on the team plane is. Domestic violence is a serious crime, and it's not something narrowly disallowed in the context of being an NFL player. Anyone who commits it, then, isn't specifically thumbing his nose at the NFL's or his team's rules - he's got a bigger problem and could very well be facing jail time. By contrast, repeated trivial infractions for which no regular citizen would face repercussions, but that are specifically disallowed by the league, indicate the player doesn't respect the league's rules and are therefore punished severely and disproportionately to the offense.

On its face it makes no sense Gordon would have his career derailed for drinking and smoking pot in his early 20s while someone who assaulted his girlfriend is suiting up every week, but looked at in this context, it adds up. It's not about the relative harm the players cause to other human beings, their teammates or "The Shield" but the extent to which they thwart teams' and the league's sense of authority.

Week 15 Observations

• What an epic two-game no-show in the fantasy playoffs by Calvin Johnson. He played 50 of 53 snaps, recovered an onside kick and was in defending the Saints Hail Mary, so he can't be that hurt, but for some reason he received only one target all game. I have no idea what to do with him this week in a final. He has a nice matchup against the 49ers, but I might have to bench him for Travis Benjamin.

•Drew Brees hurt his foot in Monday's game, but not before putting up 341 yards and three touchdowns, and that doesn't include a TD at the end of the first half called back for an illegal man downfield. While Brees has been a good fantasy QB all year, he's even more valuable if you only played him at home. In seven games in the dome, he has 2,441 yards, 20 TDs, five picks and an 8.1 YPA. Over 16 games, that prorates to 5,579 yards and 46 TDs. On the road, Brees had only eight TDs and six picks in six games.

• The Saints defense is amazingly bad. Not only did Matt Stafford have 10.2 YPA, three TDs and no picks, but both Ameer Abdullah and Joique Bell averaged more than eight yards per carry.

• While Odell Beckham foolishly got caught up in a brawl with Norman most of the game, and was lucky not to be ejected, it's incorrect (as the announcers and many on Twitter were doing) to allege Norman dominated the matchup. Not only did Beckham blow by him for a would-be 52-yard TD, but he caught six passes for 76 yards including the game-tying TD. Moreover, Beckham got loose down the field another time, but Eli Manning was under pressure and threw it short off his back foot. If Beckham catches only the 52-yarder, he's at 128 and two TDs. While you can't credit Beckham with the yardage for a pass he dropped, it still goes on the beating-Norman ledger because Norman had nothing to do with it. If one samurai slays the other, then trips and falls off a cliff afterward, you can't say the fight was a draw because they both died. Norman was already dead on that play when Beckham dropped it.

•Eli Manning played well except for an awful back-foot forced pick on first down as the Giants were mounting a comeback. The Giants made it back anyway after a blocked field goal and a fumbled hand-off, but that poor decision could easily have been game-sealing.

•Cam Newton is as automatic as it gets in fantasy with a high floor and high ceiling. And he's spreading the ball around to his mediocre receivers the way Carson Palmer does with his elite ones.

• I can't believe the Redskins are going to win the NFC East. As a Giants fan, it's like coming home to find the village idiot having sex with your wife.

• Like the Panthers, the Seahawks are suddenly a passing team, and that means targets like Doug Baldwin and Tyler Lockett are as reliable as ones like Larry Fitzgerald and John Brown.

•Christine Michael had a strong game and could be a difference maker this week as the Seahawks are double-digit home favorites against the Rams.

• The Steelers put up 380 passing yards against the Broncos, but it wasn't especially efficient (6.9 YPA.) Antonio Brown managed a robust 10 yards per target, but the rest of the Steelers were held in check.

• The Denver offense was actually similar with Brown's former teammate Emmanuel Sanders gashing Pittsburgh down the field and the rest of the pass-catchers not doing much. (Demaryius Thomas scored twice but had only five yards per look.)

• The Steelers sealed their win by throwing for a first down on 3rd-and-6 rather than running more time off the clock and punting.

• It was foreseeable a San Diego running back would go off Sunday against a terrible Dolphins defense, so I invested in some Melvin Gordon shares.

• I regret persuading Dalton Del Don to trade for Lamar Miller for our multi-sport League of Leagues team (We gave up Jason Heyward.) The Dolphins couldn't be trusted with peak Earl Campbell, and at this point, I'm not sure we can use Miller, despite a favorable matchup against the Colts, in the finals.

•Julio Jones finally showed up, but it wasn't enough to drag Matt Ryan with him.

• Recency bias is a killer. I faded the Cardinals this week after watching how poorly they played last Thursday night against the Vikings, and I'm sure most faded Amari Cooper, Stefon Diggs and Jordan Matthews. While Matthews was a tough call given the Eagles almost random targeting of their players, the equation is always skill, opportunity and matchup. Whether or not someone did well last week might affect opportunity, but in many cases it does not.

•Teddy Bridgewater had his second straight strong game. I'm still not sold fantasy-wise because the Vikings don't throw enough, but his efficiency's been off the charts.

•David Johnson had a monster game against the Eagles and might be the No. 1 fantasy back this week against the Packers as he's tied to a great offense, gets a ton of work, gets work at the goal line and catches passes.

• I have no idea why Mike McCarthy uses or doesn't use Eddie Lacy. The Packers were actually playing John Kuhn over him in the second half.

• I went big on Brandon Bolden last week given how cheap he was and because he was the starter on a 14-point favorite. Of course, someone named Joey Iosefa saw 14 carries, and James White caught seven passes and scored a TD.

• When you see a flag for offensive pass interference, there's a 75-percent chance replay will reveal it should not have been called.

• There are five good coaches in the NFL: Bill Belichick, Pete Carroll, John Harbaugh, Bruce Arians and Ron Rivera.