The Victory Lap Economy

In this week's P.O. Box:

One hilarious side effect of best ball exploding is the overreactions to what happens in Week 1.

Sure, fantasy footballers have been overreacting to small sample sizes since its inception, but there is way more intensity to the overreactions this year. It makes sense when you consider that there is 1) way more people playing, 2) way more money on the line, and, most importantly, 3) way more people jockeying for attention and social capital.

In traditional fantasy football, victory laps are actual “victory” laps. You talk shit to your buddy for beating them in your H2H. But best ball is different beast. No one really cares about how they are doing in any one specific league/pod. Our “Round 1” lasts 14 weeks. That means our victory laps take a much different form because best ballers care about other things…like our portfolio…our takes…our…get ready to throw up…personal brand.

Most of the Week 1 victory laps in the best ball sphere revolve around people touting their individual exposures to players. If you logged onto X last Thursday night after the BAL/KC opener, your feed was littered with Isaiah Likely bros flexing their clairvoyance.

I enjoy these types of posts. The are entertaining and harmless because they have very little to do with actually being a good best ball player or winning tournaments. They are just a fun fact, like something you’d read on the back of a Snapple cap.

Not to mention, for every 21% Isaiah Likely screen grab, there’s a conspicuously absent photo of 28% Deshaun Watson.

Nailing your top exposures will certainly boost your advance rate (and min-cashes), but when you show up to the BBM finals with one team (something you’ll be lucky to do once every 8 years if you are an average drafter), you’ll have the same number of Likely shares as everyone else.

If you don’t believe me, check out the BBM4 champ’s exposures from last year. Yes, the guy with 17% Kenny Pickett and 18% Jerick McKinnon and 16% Malik Davis (I could keep going) won $3M because he drafted the perfect team, not because he had the perfect basket of exposures.

It’s why I have no problem taking Ls on my hysterically low Likely exposure or eating the early shit on fading Saquon Barkley. It’s funny and I know it doesn’t have anything to do with what I actually care about—getting a team, not a player—to the finals.

But the victory laps didn’t stop there this week.