After a long and dreadful summer, football season is finally upon us (and now I can be happy again). With football season obviously comes fantasy football season, which arguably is the best part of my life for the next five months. No matter if you’re in one fantasy league or twenty, you’ll likely see some crossover with similar personalities across your leagues. Here are the five guys in every fantasy football league:
1. The Psycho
I get that big-money fantasy leagues can get intense. However, there will always be at least one guy in your fantasy league that is downright psychotic, regardless of buy-in or not. This is the guy that will send you trade requests at 3:00 am and blow up your phone with text messages if you haven’t accepted the offer by 5:00 am the same morning. Everyone hates this guy – even himself probably. If you’re smart, you’ll identify the psycho during your draft and then block him on every form of communication possible before the season starts. That way you can sleep soundly at night without having to worry about your safety.
2. Mr. Unlucky
“Mr. Unlucky” will always get the short end of the stick in every situation possible. It’s not even because he makes poor decisions – it’s literally only because of bad luck. In my high school fantasy league, our “Mr. Unlucky” drafted Andrew Luck fifteen minutes prior to his surprise retirement. I won’t act like it’s not hilarious when Mr. Unlucky gets screwed over time and time again, but I do feel somewhat bad for him. If you believe yourself to be Mr. Unlucky, just relieve yourself of any stress caused by fantasy football. No matter how hard you try, you will always find yourself in last place come playoff time. That might sound depressing, but you should take a look at Mr. Unlucky’s FanDuel betting history. Yikes.
3. The Homer
Without fail, every fantasy football league around the country will have “The Homer”. This is the guy who picks his entire fantasy team based on his favorite real-life NFL team. For teams like the Chiefs or the Bills, maybe it isn’t all that bad to support your home team. But, the Texans or Colts? Not a good strategy whatsoever. Although this guy might not literally only pick players from his favorite team, I can say for certain that he would never select a player from his most-hated team. A Bears fan would never pick Aaron Rodgers. A Steelers fan would never take Lamar Jackson (maybe for more reasons than one). You get the idea.
4. The Statistician
“The Statistician” is the guy who shows up to your draft with three separate devices and a binder of research organized by player position. This dude leaves absolutely no pages unturned. He knows about every undrafted rookie with breakout potential and swears that [insert star player here] is going to be a bust. Everyone trusts him because he’s done his due diligence – but he’s never all that right about anything. His sleeper picks more often than not stay asleep. At best, he’ll finish in third place after barely squeaking into the playoffs. Don’t be fooled by the confidence of your league’s statistician. It’s all a front.
5. The Varsity Stud
“The Varsity Stud” might be worse than “The Psycho”. This guy refuses to do any preparation for the draft but still believes his opinion is better than everyone else’s because he played four years of varsity football. Sure, they probably understand the strategy of an NFL game better than other people in the league, but at the same time they also currently work construction and go through two packs of Marlboro Reds a day. Every opinion this guy gives is always prefaced by “Back in my playing days…”. Trust me pal, everyone stopped listening to you after the first round.
