By: Ben
Johnson
PREVIOUSLY: WIDE
RECEIVERS
Fantasy football is a big business stacked on
top of another big business, wrapped in a cocoon of business, delivered via
business. It’s the business equivalent of a Monte Carlo sandwich. It’s shaped
like a regular business, but it has been mad-scientist injected with the maximum,
most insanely disparate variety and amount of business, and it’s too much
business, really, and it’s bad for you, and if you pause the “this shit is
going down” momentum long enough to consider the merits of the actual thing
itself, it doesn’t even really taste all that good. Fantasy football is more some
opulent experiential dare than an actual thing to be enjoyed. It reduces
incredible feats of athleticism and dedication to math, deep fries that math in
game theory, coats it with the powdered sugar of small-stakes gambling. It’s a
disgusting, excessive mess that you love more in concept than in practice.
Really the whole purpose of it is to impress your friends by acting like a big
shot. It is not sustenance.
But: there is value in the conviviality of the
shared bad experience, and this is one that happens mostly in a digital space
in a way which can conveniently incorporate far flung friends and relatives. So
of course it’s not all bad. It’s just a lot. You can be bad at it. You don’t
have to eat the whole thing.
This year there are four “gonna be really good”
fantasy football tight ends, and then a bunch of fairly interchangeable “maybe
this guy too” guys. There are kickers. There are defenses. You could decide to
really get into the minutiae of who will be incrementally better than who, but
there is zero marginal utility in that decision.
So with that in mind, here’s some more fantasy
football info to shovel into your face, you slob:
TIGHT
ENDS
Rob
Gronkowski, New England
I have never had Rob Gronkowski on a fantasy
team of mine. I imagine it feels like you’ve “discovered” some weird hole in
the wall cheap Cuban restaurant that is actually delicious, and you’re just
trying to enjoy it and not worry about the inevitable eventual food poisoning.
Rob Gronkowski, the actual player, runs for long stretches of field while casually
vibrating the bones of his would-be tacklers like a pair of airborne rattlesnake eggs, which
is fun to watch unless you’re rooting for the would-be tacklers, in which case
it is terrifying. He’s often hurt, which means you should draft a backup tight
end, which means nothing, actually. That’s fine.
Greg
Olsen, Carolina
Does your fantasy football league award you
with one point of scoring per reception that somebody in your lineup catches?
If so, you may want to consider drafting the tight end who’s the only reliable pass
catcher on his team not named Jerricho Cotchery, who is somehow an actual
person and not the unreliable narrator of a symbolism-laden short story about a
murder that happens in the woods.
Jimmy
Graham, Seattle
Jimmy Graham is on a new team now, and nobody
knows what his role is going to be in the Seattle offense. I’ll tell you: his
role is going to be running around and catching passes and doing a great job at
playing football. C’mon.
Travis
Kelce, Kansas City
Everything I’ve read about Travis Kelce says
that he’s going to be really good, and he was pretty good last year, and then
people say he’ll probably be pretty good this year too, like in a way that the
three guys listed above are good. Okay, people who write things about Travis
Kelce. I am willing to take your word for this. I will not go so far as to
watch a Kansas City Chiefs game, though.
Other
tight ends that are probably gonna be okay, but nobody knows, really:
Martellus Bennett, Julius Thomas, Jason Witten,
Zach Ertz, Jordan Cameron, Delanie Walker, Owen Daniels, and Josh Hill could
all also be pretty good this year. And so could a bunch of other guys I didn’t
even talk about. Rob Gronkowski should be a late first or early second round
pick, and the rest can be peppered in no sooner than the third round. If you
don’t get one of the top 4 best dudes, you might as well wait for a while. Who’s
going to be a good fantasy football tight end this year is really just going to
be a fun surprise, and the ninth guy I listed has just as good of a shot at it
as the sixth guy I listed. Is my opinion. In practice, there are going to be a
very definite amount of and ordering of fantasy football tight ends. If it’s
any consolation, you also don’t know when you’re going to die, and this
ignorance is the basic engine for the way you’ve lived your whole life.
KICKERS:
Stephen
Gostkowski, New England
How is Stephen Gostkowski the best fantasy
football kicker year after year? Somehow. That’s how.
Other
kickers:
Do exist. Yes.
DEFENSES:
Seattle,
The Defense
Maybe Seattle won’t be as good at defense this
year as they have been in previous years, but they could still be pretty good
and have that be the case. I don’t know, guys, this is dumb. I’m glad I get to
stop doing this soon.
Other
defenses:
Relevant fantasy football statistic: NFL teams
have averaged exactly one defense per team for the entirety of the NFL’s
existence. (Source: SPORTSBLATHER INC.)
UP NEXT: THE SWEET EMBRACE OF DEATH
