The Perfect Fantasy Football Lineup Assembled Strictly From The Scrub Free Agent Pool On Sunday Morning Would CRUSH Your Team
Fun little thought experiment to bring to light how dumb we all are as a fantasty football community. Take no shame in this. It's not like I'm any better. I'm just an Alex Trebek like figure with a card giving me the answer to look smart.
The fact is we still can't grasp just how much luck and randomness rule in our dumb little fake football game. Almost half of us think we could have beaten the best possible team combination from the Sunday morning free agent pool. You're about to find out how wrong that is.
You know what though - I wonder if the people that said no aren't even that smart and just had a real shitty week. Let's see if anything changes if we ask the same question but about the highest scoring team in their league instead.
Let's see how dumb a little over half of us are. Keep in mind that every league will have slight differences on who's available to pick up Sunday morning, but we're working off averages from all ESPN leagues. Any player in the top 192 rostered players in the average ESPN league are considered off limits. Anyone else is eligble. Why 192? Figure 12-team leagues times 16 roster spots makes 192 rostered players in any given league.
Meet the little Thomas the Fantasy FREIGHT Train that could:
For those scoring at home that's 177 PPR points for a flex nine roster in PPR. This is your Power Ball free agent team for Week 1. A team you could have picked up five minutes before the Sunday opening slate. Pretty depressing to think about and this all goes to show just how dumb we are in understanding the full on fuckery the fantasy gods pull on a given week.
I mean really? The CARDINALS!? Grandpa Folk? Puka Shells Nacua?
Maybe this was all an aberration. Let's see how the next best free agent team performed if we remove any of the above scrub stars from consideration. Can we beat that team at least?
Probably not.
122 points is still pretty damn good, but maybe, just MAYBE your team with Tyreek Hill and the Cowboys DST pulled through. Those select managers can brag about besting the second-best available free agent team that anyone could have picked up five minutes before the games. What a group thread own that would be.
Look at this team. Who the hell is River Cracraft? What is even going on with that name? Do his parents have a stuttering problem? As it turns out, he didn't even make it in the ESPN roster data because his roster percentage for ESPN leagues was too low to even be registered leaving an "NA" in the roster percent column. But the headline below captures how fucked up the fantasy gods are for allowing this guy to outscore many of your wide receivers in Week 1.
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Dick move fantasy gods. Dick move.
Then there's Brett Maher. Because of course there's Brett Maher. You know, the guy who missed four extra points in the playoffs last year. And shoutout running back Chumbawamba for making sure even the worst player didn't knock this team down and make it get up again.
Let's have some fun now and do the total opposite. Let's figure out what the worst plausible started team in Week 1 was. Basically, if a player was started (not just rostered) in at least 30 percent of ESPN leagues in Week 1 they'll qualify as a plausible starter.
Per FCC rules - I'm obligated to preface this team with the following:
Unfortunately we couldn't count Aaron Rodgers as he was only started in 24 percent of leagues, but Joe put enough Brrr on this attrocity of an outfit. You better believe I'll be tracking the worst possible fantasy team for Weeks 2-17. I'm not sure if Week 1 will win worst potential team of the year but you gotta think it'll be in the running.
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Did your Week 1 team look similar to the slugs above? What if you went rogue and ditched these losers to play the Sunday morning free agent lottery? This week's free agent super squad is sitting there waiting for you to scoop them all up. Right now. All you have to do is pick the right combination to win the weekly fantasy football free agent Power Ball. That would be the ultimate flex for the group chat.
Please credit me if you end up winning. Good luck. You'll need it.
- Jeffro