When you go to set your fantasy football lineups each week, usually an empirical approach is employed. You study every matchup, every scheme involved and start crunching the numbers.
This run defense is soft and allowing 5.2 yards per carry. I have to start this running back. This pass defense ranks third overall and hasn’t allowed a touchdown through the air yet. Maybe I use my backup quarterback instead.
The analysis is thorough, the data is clear and your choices can be made. But what about the so-called intangibles? Can our decisions be made solely by the numbers? Absolutely not.
They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but on the gridiron, it can arrive at any temperature. Many people dismiss the notion of a player returning to face a team that discarded him. They say it has no relevance. But that is simply not the case.
Take Isaiah Crowell’s Thursday night performance, for example. Dismissed by the Browns in the offseason, the Jets running back walked into FirstEnergy Stadium with a chip on his shoulder. A team that hadn’t won a game since December 2016 told him they had no use for him? The Jets’ offensive line may not be able to protect a quarterback, but their zone-blocking scheme allowed Crowell to run hard and find the end zone, not once, but twice. Could he have done that against any opponent? Probably. But there’s an edge a player has when he has something to prove, and fantasy owners should always take notice.
The Cardinals told Adrian Peterson they were done with him, and in Week 1, as a member of the Redskins, he pounded them for 96 yards and a touchdown. In Week 2, DeSean Jackson got the opportunity to face the Eagles, the team that drafted him, and he burned them for 129 yards, including a 75-yard touchdown on the first play of the game. If you want to call that a fluke, just look back to when he left the Eagles to go to the Redskins and had 117 yards and a score the first time he faced them then 126 yards the next time.
Revenge isn’t the only narrative, though. What about inspiration? Go back to Thursday and think about how Carlos Hyde felt. Not only was it his birthday, but he spent the day at the hospital with his wife who was in labor with the couple’s first child. After rushing for 98 yards and two touchdowns, he was rushed to the hospital to meet his newborn son.
To dismiss the mental aspect of the game is doing your fantasy team a disservice. Not every player works the same way and circumstances will help dictate what narratives command your attention. But it’s always important to remember that these are still human beings, not robots.
Howard Bender is the VP of operations and head of content at NFL player rankings.