Fake Supercontest Picks
I bought three $20 entries into an offshore sportsbook online “supercontest” with $250K in prize money. It’s a far cry from the real $1,000 entry contest, but as I mentioned earlier, I never made it to Vegas this summer to sign up, and they won’t let you do it remotely.
But I’m still in the game, and I’ll post my picks here. If you missed my Thursday Night Observations post, you’ll learn that I switched from the Chiefs to the Lions when Travis Kelce was declared out in my home picking pool, but the move didn’t take, so I got stuck with the Chiefs, something I discovered only after the game. Enraged as I am, at least I didn’t use that game in my biggest contests.
I’ve decided I’ll mostly use the same teams in two of the pools, and if they do well I can diverge strategically later in the year. For the third, I’m going ugly — picking teams I think no one would want and that appeal to my contrarian instincts. There will overlap between the “ugly” entry and the “normal” ones as sometimes ugly is normal, and normal is ugly.
Here’s what I have for the contests — so far:
Normal 1 and 2 — I used the same five teams: Steelers, Bears, Browns, Giants and Patriots.
I took the Steelers as a contrarian play — the Niners seem like a much better team, and yet the line hasn’t budged even with Nick Bosa signing. The Bears have a quarterback we know can make plays, while the Packers have an unknown that’s missing his top receiver. And yet the Bears are only laying 1.5. Bears owner Aaron Rodgers is in New York now.
The Browns are equal to the Bengals if Deshaun Watson is himself, but they too are getting points at home. Plus, Joe Burrow’s been off all month.
The Giants are getting more than a field-goal at home to the Mike McCarthy-Dak Prescott Cowboys, despite the Giants winning a playoff game last year. It’s not like the Giants got worse over the offseason, either. Way too much respct for Dallas with this line.
Finally, I believe in the Super Bowl hangover — you play 21 games, end with disappointment and have to get geared up all over again. It’s easy to imagine the alleged mechanism if it’s indeed a thing. Laying four on the road against a good Pats defense seems steep.
For the ugly entry, I kept the Steelers and Giants, but added the Bucs (Baker Mayfield is just Jared Goff two years ago!), Colts (I don’t know why this line isn’t seven, so I’ll fade the obvious) and the Rams (what a disaster without Cooper Kupp.) The book isn’t giving money away.
Taylor is gonna ball this year when he comes back Week 5. Bad luck that he was taken one pick ahead of me in the Primetime -- probably should have considered jumping up to the 4/5 turn.
(screenshot from RotoWire.com)
FFS -- usually it takes until the second quarter of Week 1 before I remember how much I hate fantasy football.
(screenshot of RotoWire.com)
This really came out of nowhere -- now he's week to week!?!
Skyy Moore should be named Skyy Less or Ground Moore. Just unable to go up and make catches.
That wasn’t the best game, but it was nice to be watching football again. Like when those shrooms kick in, and you realize, “I’m back!”
I had Jared Goff (259 yards, 1 TD) going in the Steak League, and he passed the eye test for me. Made decent throws under pressure, looked like a professional NFL quarterback. The Lions could really use Jameson Williams though, assuming Williams isn’t just another version of Kadarius Toney (more on him below.)
Amon-Ra St. Brown (9-6-71-1) scored a TD, putting in jeopardy my prediction he’d be under six this year. But he almost got tackled inside the five yard line again! That’s just how it goes when you get all your chances on receptions five-yards from the end zone, and you have to run around or through 2-3 defenders to get in. Tyreek Hill, he is not.
Jahmyr Gibbs (7-42-0, 2-2-18) also passed the eye test. He looked quick, fast, explosive and balanced, shook off tackles, gained extra yards. But David Montgomery (21-74-1), who looked sluggish until the Lions took control of the game late, isn’t going anywhere. There’s a chance for the elusive Ingram-Kamara tandem everyone invokes whenever a team has this kind of setup, but that’s obviously the ceiling of ceilings. Still, despite the modest production, I got some FOMO on Gibbs while watching.
Patrick Mahomes (226 yards, two TDs, one INT, 45 rush yards) had a poor statistical game, but he played well. The pick-six was on a Toney drop, Mahomes led the team in rushing, and he was missing his only reliable target.
Toney (5-1-1-0, 1- -1-0) had a terrible game. He had two drops, the first of which resulted in the Lions’ pick six. And he got stuffed on a running play too. When Toney has the ball in space, the talent is obvious, but he was hurt yet again this preseason, and I’m dubious he’ll sustain anything in the NFL.
Skyy Moore (3-0-0-0, 1-4-0) didn’t make the catastrophic mistakes Toney did, but “Skyy” is an awfully ironic name for a 5-10 guy who can’t elevate six inches to catch a pass.
Rookie Rashee Rice (5-3-29-1) was the only receiver who showed a spark. Maybe he’ll emerge, but once Kelce gets back, the distribution of targets will change again.
Clyde Edwards-Helaire (6-22-0, 1-1-7-0) got the first few carries, and I got excited since I drafted him everywhere, but Isiah Pacheco (8-23-0, 4-4-31-0) got the bulk of the work anyway. Jerick McKinnon (who I started in the Steak League) barely played. I watched the 40-minute edited version, so maybe I missed him getting dinged up. Pacheco runs hard, but CEH looked roughly as competent. I’m glad to have a few shares from Round 15.
Dan Campbell showed serious balls, faking a punt deep in his own end on 4th-and-2 which led to the Lions first TD drive. When you play the Chiefs, you should be thinking possessions > field position, and the more outrageous the decision, the greater the element of surprise. (It was odd he punted the ball back to them on 4th-and-3 from the KC 40 in the third quarter. I suppose he didn’t want to fake it again, and the Chiefs had stacked up the run the entire game.)
Marvin Jones had his first career fumble, then followed it up with a couple drops. It’s amazing he’s been around since 2012.
I’m enraged to discover (just now) that even though I changed my Chiefs pick to the Lions in my home picking pool, I never hit “save”, and it registered as the Chiefs. It’s really fucking annoying, especially after I posted this on NOSTR to record the pick:
It’s the dumb-ass CBS sports interface (that we’ve only been using for 15 years) that has the “save” button all the way in the bottom right corner of the screen, and when viewing the site on a 13-inch laptop, you’d have to scroll to see it. So it lets you switch the pick, but it doesn’t go through unless you scroll and save.
Already my first unforced error of the year, and we’re not even at Sunday kickoff of Week 1.
Just to timestamp this -- I switched from the Chiefs to the Lions (line is 6.5) in my home pool with no Chris Jones or Travis Kelce. I didn't use the pick in any of my three faux (online) Super Contest entries where the line is down to 4.5.
Kind of torn whether to use Skyy Moore in a league with Kelce out, but that Kadarius Toney is playing, and we really have no idea, I'll probably sit him for someone like Michael Thomas or Kyle Pitts.
I did this last year, and for the sake of transparency and accountability, I’ll do it again here.
Here’s everything I put money on (so far) for 2023:
I didn’t include the free BCLs in the tally, nor did I subtract the $80 deposit bonus I got from the online sportsbook (though I probably should have.)
I’ve risked $2,343 less than last year largely because I didn’t make it to Vegas to buy into the high-entry Circa Millions and Survivor contests. Otherwise, it’s more or less the same.
The details of my fantasy drafts are here. And I’ll keep an ongoing spread sheet of my picking pool and survivor contests picks during the year.
Not that you necessarily care about all these details, but it gives me satisfaction to show my work and peace of mind that I was sufficiently transparent.
Surviving Week 1 -- video with Alan Seslowsky
Although I didn’t make it to Vegas to sign up for the Circa pool, I’m doing a bunch of lower-stakes ones and will write about it here, so long as I’m still alive. (Unlike when I wrote for RotoWire, and I had to finish the season even if personally I were dead, I’m not gonna play out the string like some kind of zombie here.)
Let’s just hope I make it longer than last year, when I lost my Circa entry in Week 1, after making an embarrassing production about buying in.
For this week, it looks like I’m probably going chalk with most of my entries. Here’s the distribution of picks from Officefootballpools.com:
The Ravens are the most popular team, but 35.4 percent isn’t that high, given their status as 10-point favorites in a field of 7-point (or less) alternatives. Only the Football Team is remotely close (7), and 24.7 isn’t that much different. This isn’t close enough to do the math — if these percentages and the market’s numbers hold, the Ravens are the easy call.
Don’t confuse that for the notion that the Ravens are somehow a lock — they are not. There is roughly a 19 percent chance they lose per the Vegas numbers, and you don’t get your money back just because you took the team with the best risk/reward profile.
I’ll get deeper into this with Alan Seslowsky on tomorrow’s podcast.
You can only dodge the injury minefield on your teams for so long -- this one (3 leagues) hurts.
(screenshot from RotoWire.com)
This is a needle-mover for the Niners if Bosa doesn't play Week 1. (Nothing against Ferrell who has some compelling tape -- see the video below):
(Bosa screenshot from RotoWire.com)
It could also turn out to be nothing, but if no further news comes out tonight, he'll almost certainly slip out of the first round, down to Cooper Kupp territory around pick 20 or so I'd imagine.
This could turn out to be seismic. Good reminder that you don't get last year's stats when you draft, or even this year's projections. Just a soon-to-be 34 YO TE in the first round of your drafts if you took Kelce.
(screenshot from RotoWire.com)
It's amazing how little there is on the waiver wire from the entire summer -- I drafted a team on June 17, and the best players available are the trio of bad Colts running backs who might have jobs for a few weeks.
Dealing with preseason injuries/uncertainty isn't that hard. Just demand the proper discount on draft day.
I took Jerry Jeudy in the seventh even though I hated him in the third before the injury and fifth after it.
I would have taken Jonathan Taylor had he made it near his ADP in the seventh, but I got swiped. Thought it was crazy no one moved down Cooper Kupp after his hamstring injury this summer. And I've talked about Burrow/Chase/Higgins
If the discount isn't there, pass and take someone else. Why pay full price for damaged goods?
It's almost as if everyone is ignoring the injury because every is ignoring the injury, i.e., just a strange case of groupthink where everyone thinks someone else would object to drafting Chase at 1.2 Higgins early third and Burrow early fourth if there were a real concern. And because their ADP didn't move, their ADP didn't move.
Burrow might be fine for all I know, but he might not for all you know too.
That Joe Burrow is anything but full go after a month off is not ideal if you have him, Ja'Marr Chase or Tee Higgins. Maybe Burrow will be fine for Sunday, but it's amazing to me people drafted those three as though Burrow never got hurt.
(Screenshot from the RotoWire.com site)
deranged scrawlings from the coffee shop -- vastly overestimated the lines in these games
