Week 15 is my favorite week of the Dynasty Season. Congratulations if you’re reading this as that probably means you are playoff bound. At this point you’re playing for a championship. All the hard work got you to this point so breath deep but also enjoy the process.
Do you ever stress over who to start this week? All mistakes are magnified aren’t they? This week we’ll look at how to make start sit decisions that give you the best chance to win. My last start sit agonization came in 2022 in my now 26th year dynasty league. I thought my best option was Jakobi Meyers (NE) while my son told me to start Tim Patrick (Den) and yet I looked to an “expert” and they thought I should start Darnell Mooney (Chi). I ultimately learned several lessons through this experience. I personally own my fantasy success or failure, so I need to be good with how I arrive at the decision…right or wrong. Crowd sourcing is never a recipe to making a good decision but will merely confuse the situation. If following an “expert” understand the “why.”
I listened to a story about a high stakes player in a 10K entry league that was agonizing over whether to start Patrick or Boyd last week. I thought my answer was clearly Patrick but wanted to double check so I went to my process when I’m not 100% and sure enough the answer was Patrick. Hindsight is 20/20 and my process isn’t always the best but what I can tell you is when you stay consistent with a process then you have the highest probability to win. I suggest you find a weekly ranker that you trust and then simply play the highest ranked guy. The 17th WR is better than the 18th WR every time. Some of you may do your own rankings. I don’t really do rankings of my own, I merely start my guys unless I need a tie breaker then I go to one set of rankings that uses 1000 simulations of all the games to give me midpoints. I simply am looking to score the most points each week. I don’t take home run upside swings I do that on draft day. On lineup setting I simply try to build points.
Reflecting back to 2022, I did indeed start the experts selection, however I only did it because they were an expert and really I was the one that missed the playoffs not the expert. It felt terrible to know that I didn’t make my own decision. If I would have played Meyers I would have also lost but at least it would have been on me. My son gave me the correct answer and all it did was have him remind me that I simply didn’t trust his judgement. I want to give that expert some credit now however, as I’ve utilized their rankings several years in a row now and the difference is that I use them regularly so as it would have turned out I would have lost that week however the week before I did my own thing and that lost that matchup. The expert had a win for me, so the loss that I blamed on the expert wouldn’t have kept me out of the playoffs.
The key to this is an emotionless process. Many players make decisions based on think, feel, and believe. If you were to trade stocks this way I promise long term it would be a loser. This will also hold true in Fantasy Football and in the dynasty game it’s about winning multiple years. 16 NFL games are in action this week so check out Chris or Justin’s rankings and simply start the highest ranked guy. Good Luck as you conquer a fantasy championship.
