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Fantasy Players
By Mike Beacom
3/14/2010
Q&A with a fantasy football pro
Ian Ritchie is no ordinary fantasy football player; he’s as close as it gets to being a professional. He and his partner, Mark Deming, make up Hawk and Roll, the No. 1 ranked fantasy team in the country based on their performances in recent years at national high stakes tournaments.
Ritchie and his partner earned the No. 1 ranking from the World Championships of Fantasy Football in May 2009 after finishing in the contest’s money round for a sixth consecutive season. The pair also serves as one of the expert avatars for Rapid Draft’s fantasy football game.
The 39-year-old Ritchie lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington and has been playing fantasy football since the mid-1980s; he and Deming partnered up several years later.
1) What does a fantasy pro do to keep busy in these "down" months of February and March?
The so called down months for fantasy football are difficult to adjust to. After spending so much time every day devoted to fantasy football, once the season is over, it’s a real downer. We have spent a lot of time doing a post mortem on the last season and trying to figure out how we got sucked into the Eddie Royal hype. We watched the scouting combine closely and have already begun to build the base for our 2010 tiered ranking system. We are also working on some really cool fantasy football projects for next season.
2) In your opinion, do fantasy owners over-value rookies?
I think a lot of owners over-value rookies because they would rather miss out four times in order to say that one time "I was all over that guy." It’s almost become a badge of honor to try and nail that seventh round pick from Hofstra (Marques Colston). Some guys are good at it, most are not.
3) What are the common mistakes fantasy owners make when preparing for their fantasy drafts?
Too many owners follow the leader and become sheep. They use someone else’s opinions to a fault instead of making their own decisions. I also don’t think people spend enough time trying to maximize value. Value drafting with tiers is the only way to go.
4) How much will the loss of Kurt Warner hurt Arizona's skill guys in 2010?
Losing Kurt Warner will take its toll on the Arizona wide receivers, especially Larry Fitzgerald. You may see better production from Beanie Wells, though. Arizona has to be more balanced and the obvious beneficiary is Wells. I also think Early Doucet could be a nice surprise taking over for Anquan Boldin, if he can stay healthy.
5) Give me an example of a player that burned you badly (last few years).
I was burned badly this year drafting Eddie Royal in the early fourth round. All offseason I laughed as everyone jumped on the "Royal is playing the Wes Welker role" bandwagon. I always repeated that Kyle Orton was playing the (Tom) Brady role and I hated the situation in Denver. For some totally inexplicable reason, I went against everything I had said and took the plunge. It turned out to be the disaster I had predicted and it still haunts me today.
6) How do you keep your edge at the draft of a high-stakes league, where you've invested money to enter?
I am a pretty conservative guy by nature but when it comes to fantasy football, it’s all out the window. Mark and I were drafting back to back wide receivers the first two rounds before it was vogue. We did it to take advantage of the value left at running back in the middle rounds and we did it for years. This year when everyone was drafting back to back wide receivers, we took two running backs waiting for the wide receiver value in the middle rounds. You need to trust your game plan, regardless of the money involved. We always try and dictate draft to others and not get dictated to.
7) Can Terrell Owens become a viable fantasy prospect again?
One of the toughest things to do in fantasy is to keep from getting emotionally attached to players when they perform well for you. I am 100 percent guilty of it with Brett Favre; luckily he tends to be a draft value every year. Another I am guilty with is Owens. So my heart screams YES, he can absolutely be a viable contributor, but my head says pretty emphatically NO. Once an older wide receiver loses a step, they lose that separation that made them special. Hard to see it shake out any other way.
8) Tell me something that was true of fantasy football five years ago that isn’t the case today.
Fantasy football five years ago did not have even close to as much competition as it does today. There are so many great fantasy players now and information is everywhere. The national contests are full of great players, many of which have really good content driven websites. I used to be able to sleep walk through my home leagues with free agency and such but not anymore. Last year I missed the playoffs in a local restaurant league called San Carlos ... I mean, are you kidding me? That used to be a guaranteed cash out.
9) Are you for or against the idea of handcuffing an elite fantasy starting running back to his backup?
In the right situation, handcuffing a stud is absolutely the right idea, and I would not only include running backs in this discussion but also quarterbacks and, surprisingly, wide receivers.
At running back, the right situation for me last year would have been taking Chester Taylor if I had Adrian Peterson because I know his production will not be a huge dropoff. However, if I had drafted Steven Jackson, I am not sure how big of a hurry I would have been in to handcuff Kenneth Darby or Samkon Gado. I also don’t mind the idea of drafting a backup quarterback as a handcuff in the right situation. Think back to last season if you had Donovan McNabb and also drafted Kevin Kolb late.
In 2008, we drafted Anquan Boldin in the third round and Steve Breaston much later because we wanted that position locked up. If Boldin got hurt you automatically plug in a starting wide receiver on an explosive offense. We did this with Joey Galloway and Antonio Bryant in Tampa Bay the same season. The theory was Jeff Garcia was going to make someone productive and if Galloway got hurt, Bryant had enormous upside and we would carry both on our roster. Many times it is the position as much as the player.
10) Finish the sentence: The elite fantasy players ...
The elite fantasy players always find value in the middle rounds and free agents late in the season. At the end of each season, the middle round picks that outperform their ADP (average draft position) are on teams that are in the hunt for the title. Those are many times the difference makers. And, when your team has a very solid foundation and you add a couple key free agents, like Jamaal Charles last year, you have a very good chance to win on a weekly basis.
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