“Self-examination, the observation of one’s own experience, is the very root of the intelligence.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti.
Using self-examination to accept the person you are could be worthwhile for your mental health, but it can’t generally improve your performance at a craft. Using self-examination to become better requires action. And it begins with an honest evaluation of what you have been doing and what results those methods produce.
The first step for me in the 2023 chapter of my coming-of-age story as a fantasy football analyst is to review the things I’ve been most convicted of regarding fantasy football to see how the things I valued aided or failed me. Fortunately for me, as a person who states his convictions openly on a public website several times a week, I have a built-in journal already recorded and easy to access.
I put many things on paper, so I will break this down into five parts. There will be four like this one, breaking the data down into chronological quarters, in which I will dissect all the calls I’ve made and categorize them. Then, there will be one more at the end to sum up what it all means. This fifth article will be the most critical piece, as it will explore how and why the what came to be. Only then can we seek to identify lessons from a season’s worth of observation.
The point is to be honest and start with my defenses down. The data may lead me right back to a defensive posture, and that’s because, inevitably, some of the misses will be justified, just as some of the hits will be fortunate. But I want to be clear that while the first four articles will explore the results, they are not to imply that the process is less valuable than the result. The key to fantasy football is ultimately finding a reliable way to untangle what is predictive from what is random, and that begins and ends with process.
But we’ll dig into process more at the end of the series. For now, here we go. Let’s continue working through every call I’ve made in 2023, picking it up with Weeks 5-8.
INDIRECT HITS AND NEAR MISSES – FORGET IT, JAKE, IT’S CHINATOWN
Whether it ended up incomplete or didn’t pass or fail in any particular way, these are the ones where the tree fell in the woods with no witnesses — nobody got hurt, and nihilism won the day.
DAK PRESCOTT MAY NOT BE A TOP-HALF NFL QB
When I called it: 5 Things that Matter from Week 5, and 5 Things that (Probably) Don’t, October 10, 2023
What I wrote:
Cris Collinsworth noted on the broadcast that Prescott came into Week 5 having only thrown two near-interceptions all year, marking a dramatic improvement in the carelessness he demonstrated a year ago when he lofted a league-leading 15 picks. But a waterfall of interceptions came on Sunday. Prescott handed a platform to the Pardon the Take shock jocks that fail to recognize . . . for all his warts, Prescott is still better than half of the starting QBs in the league.
But . . . is he?
He has been. He probably still is. Anecdotally speaking, we remember him flailing in the playoffs a year ago against this same 49ers squad. Still, we forget he had the best game of his career one week prior in a playoff game against the GOAT and the Bucs, whose championship rings were still shiny, in a high-pressure environment when many believed he would crumble.
But in 2023, Prescott has not been very good. He has been transitioning from Kellen Moore’s modern scheme to a more traditional West Coast Offense, which McCarthy plucked right from the source when he worked under Paul Hackett (Bill Walsh’s OC in San Francisco) with the Joe Montana-led Chiefs. In it, Prescott’s advanced stats have suffered as he is having the worst season of his career.
Until Prescott puts it together, everyone suffers . . . For fantasy and reality football, this has not been the Dak you think you know, and there are indicators that no regression may be coming to save the day.
How it came out: The jury’s still out on whether or not he’s a great QB (or at least, if he’s got the
