An Introduction to Picking Pass Catchers in DFS
Here’s the thing:
You should only purchase this course if you actually have time to invest in daily fantasy football. That’s not reverse psychology. That’s just the truth.
If you usually spend hours each week studying up on different fantasy football players for your season-long league (or if you are a salty old daily fantasy football vet, if you usually spend hours studying up for daily fantasy football), you should be fine to purchase this course. If you find yourself looking for fantasy football articles each week penned by various writers across the Net, this course will help you. If you typically find yourself staring at your computer screen for hours as you try to figure out a way to pull off a big trade in your season-long league, or if you spend a bunch of time each week trying to decide which waiver wire move to make or which player to start at a particular position, you may as well purchase this course and start using that same time for something far more rewarding and valuable: daily fantasy football winnings.
But if you are generally “too busy to really dig in too deep” most weeks (and trust me, I get it! Many of us are full-grown adults, and that means adult responsibilities and jobs and family and picking up dog poop, etc.), you should save your money.
Because, honestly, “pass catchers” (which is how we will refer to wide receivers and tight ends throughout this course, in order to lump them together wherever it makes sense to do so) are generally the guys who will be able to make or break your daily fantasy football weekend more than any others. These are the players who can kill your team with a complete dud, or can send you to the top of the leaderboards all at once. But…
Well, you see, quarterbacks are generally fairly reliable and predictable — especially once you have studied the elements that go into picking the best quarterbacks for your daily fantasy football rosters.
And once you understand how to properly assess and value running backs, this is a position that will become reliable and predictable for you as well.
“Reliable and predictable,” however, is not a description you are likely to see in regards to wide receivers in daily fantasy football.
And the worst part of all? With wide receivers, the tools we have at our disposal for assessing the four core components we look at with players at every position (talent, matchup, opportunity, and price) are less accurate and, ultimately, less useful for wide receivers than they are for any other position.
And this, my friend, is why I say you should only purchase this course if you actually have time each week to invest into daily fantasy football.
Of course, many of you have this time. Many of you spend far too much time with your season-long league, anyway! Many of you waste time reading articles about the players on your season-long team, even though these players are already on your team! Many of you could easily convert some time that is currently being used for season-long into time that could be used winning money in daily fantasy football. If that’s the case for you: by all means, purchase this course! Join me on this journey, and come out on the other side of it far more equipped to pick pass catchers on your daily fantasy football lineups — and to consistently profit in daily fantasy football as a result — than you have ever been before.
Why am I saying all this? Why do I keep saying you need a bit of time?
I guess the best way to explain it is this:
I got my start in daily fantasy sports playing daily fantasy baseball. I had never even played season-long fantasy baseball before, and outside of watching the Red Sox most days while working on freelance writing projects, I didn’t really follow baseball at all. Was that a problem? Not remotely! Because of the numbers-based element of baseball — and because of my affinity for numbers — I was able to pick up this sport quickly and was able to attain a fairly high level of success in daily fantasy baseball almost right away.
When football season began that first year, however, I quickly realized just how different daily fantasy football was from daily fantasy baseball. Thankfully, I had been playing season-long fantasy football for over ten years; I had followed the NFL closely all my life, and I even had a fairly solid background in film study and player assessment and game flow understanding, having spent a couple years in the coaches’ booth above the field on Friday nights and in the film room on Saturday mornings for a high school football team that lost in the state championship my second season helping out. Thankfully, I knew football pretty well.
And while I was also able to carry my numbers-based approach from baseball into multiple areas of my daily fantasy football play — and while I was able to use my understanding of roster construction (all of which, incidentally, is shared in my RotoAcademy course on roster construction in daily fantasy football!) to start profiting in NFL DFS right away as well — I quickly realized that “feel” had almost as much to do with daily fantasy football as “numbers.” In fact, when it came to pass catchers, “feel” had more to do with daily fantasy football than numbers.
In MLB, you can calculate exactly what is “likeliest to happen,” and can make your decisions from there. Even with quarterbacks and running backs, you can pull together all of the most relevant and useful numbers, can make sure you are valuing these numbers correctly, and can then use these numbers to create a fairly accurate assessment of how the players at these positions are likeliest to perform.
For pass catchers? Yeah. Not so much.
Throughout this course, I am going to guide you to the numbers you should be paying attention to — the numbers that actually will help — but also, I am going to guide you to the other elements you should be paying attention to. I am going to point you in the direction of the elements that will help you gain a “feel” for pass catcher play each week!
If you have the time, it truly is not difficult at all. If you have the time, properly picking pass catchers can become your greatest strength and can become the largest edge you gain on your competition. If you have the time, you can combine “the numbers that matter” with the “feel” you have gained, in order to continually roster the pass catchers who “make” your week while others fall for the pass catchers who “break.”
Do you have the time? If so, join me! I’ll take you to the places you need to go in order to gain a “feel” for picking wide receivers.
After all, it’s sure a better use of your time than trying to figure out which kicker you should start each week in your season-long league.