Throughout the course of this season, I have been running a weekly series arguing that fantasy football is based on all luck. Each week, I’ve highlighted the biggest lucky and rotten breaks of the week when it comes to fantasy football to show that the hobby doesn’t take any skill. In fact, this controversial series even got me banned from the Footballguys Fantasy Football forum last week after winning my league proved my argument true.
Week 16 was perhaps the best example yet of how fantasy football is simply determined by sheer luck. It was the Championship week for many football leagues out there, and a lot of people ended up getting screwed out of their entire season.
The lucky break of the week goes to Green Bay Packers running back Ryan Grant. Wait… who? This guy was only owned in 5% of all Yahoo! leagues last week but that 5% pretty much hit the lottery. Grant had 80 yards rushing, 34 yards receiving, and two touchdowns for 23 fantasy points – fourth among all running backs in fantasy scoring for the week. Not too shabby for some nobody.
To put things in perspective, Grant had just one carry through the first 13 weeks of the season. Through the first 15 weeks, he managed to earn a total of three fantasy points. In other words, he was pretty much completely useless. Now all of a sudden he explodes for 23 points on one week? What makes it even funnier is that Grant’s touchdowns both came later on in the fourth quarter to put the Packers up 48-0 and then 55-0. Talking about just running up the score.
The rotten break of the week is arguably the worst bad luck any fantasy owner could have suffered this season. Fantasy stud Arian Foster scored just one fantasy point after having to leave the game with an irregular heartbeat. This condition wasn’t a game-related injury. Nobody could have predicted something like this would force Foster out of the game early.
Arian Foster is hands down one of the best running backs in the game. He is currently second in total fantasy points at his position, behind only Adrian Peterson. Foster was the highest picked player overall in drafts at the start of the year with an Average Draft Position of 1.5 (second highest was another running back, Ray Rice, with an ADP of 2.8).
It is safe to say that Foster was probably responsible for a lot of his fantasy owners even making it to the Championship. He got them there only to let them down when they needed him most. How many people lost their matchup because Foster only scored one point? Did skill have anything to do with this freak occurrence? No.
Fantasy football is all luck.
