Fantasy Football Fact or Fluke: What we wished we knew before Week 1 to use in Week 2

Knowledge is power, they say. As someone who has dedicated their life to accumulating and disseminating knowledge, I mostly agree. I always try to learn as much as possible before making a decision and I don’t enjoy being forced to decide when I feel some information is lacking.

Yet, there is something exciting about the period of not knowing: anything is possible.

Scientists who study gambling and addictive behavior have found that the part of the brain that signals reward through the neurochemical dopamine is most active during the period of uncertainty — after a wager is placed but before the result is known. This is true whether the bet wins or loses and applies to various gambling and gambling-adjacent tasks. The implication is that the part of gambling that’s addicting is the possibility of what might be, the potential for a win rather than the win itself.

We don’t have to be problem gamblers to appreciate this about our fantasy football lineups.

From the moment we drafted until Thursday evening, our rosters were perfect. We could imagine the stats piling up and just that bit of wishful thinking led to a burst of dopamine that felt good. Now that the games have been played and we know the outcome of our matchups, things have changed. We enjoy winning, of course, and probably hate losing too, but the sense that anything is possible is long gone. The good news is that it’ll be back by Thursday morning. Most of us have a well of optimism we can go back to again and again. With some small tweaks to our starting lineups, Week 2 could be perfect.

For today, I’m hitting on some things that we wished we knew going into Week 1 … and what we now know for Week 2 and beyond.

With nine catches on 12 targets for 111 yards and a touchdown, Likely nearly doubled the next-best TE fantasy score (Foster Moreau). We’d seen flashes of goodness from Likely before, notably when Mark Andrews was out in the second half of last season, but this still came out of nowhere…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-09-10 15:43:39

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