Wide Receiver Player B Case Study

Imagine that through some instance of clairvoyance, you have the foresight to see the outcome of this week’s upcoming Football games. You have the option to choose between 2 players to start at Wide Receiver. The first player is the quintessential “matchup proof” WR1 and the other one is a de facto starter of a far lower pedigree. The Wide Receivers score 18 and 21 fantasy points respectively. When given the option between Player A’s 18 points and Player B’s 21 Points, most, if not all owners would choose to start Player B. There’s no trick here, with the information provided so far this should be a straightforward decision.
Let’s take into consideration some tidbits of information that may make this seemly easy decision more nebulous. Would it affect your decision if Player A was your first round draft selection and Player B was a recent Free Agent pickup? Yet even with the previous knowledge that Player B should start and Player A left on the bench, the decision making becomes slightly clouded. Despite the obvious fact that starting Player A is the inferior lineup decision, our brains still covet starting Player A over Player B. There’s a psychological bias that exists where you want
to receive value for the price you paid for your first round pick. Benching a Free Agent pickup that didn’t cost you anything is easy to do, while benching your first overall pick proves to be more difficult. The decision to do this comes with great difficulty even when it’s guaranteed that Player B will return more fantasy points.
This is due to decision bias, which is a phenomenon that fantasy owners struggle with even when the facts stare them in the face. Let’s tweak this scenario slightly to see if your decision changes. What if Player A is returning from a foot injury and has not suited up for the past 4 games? Does it become easier to sit Player A for one more game in favor of Player B? Oddly enough, it might be a bit easier to start the superior performer once we add historical data to Player A’s resume. Why do we cling to our beloved players even when it is clear that we shouldn’t? Perhaps we are conditioned to rank players purely on nostalgia rather than by future outlooks. We heavily rely on our top draft picks to do well week to week without taking into account other pertinent information.
Our decision making is obviously flawed since we still gravitate towards starting Player A over Player B even though we know who is the optimal choice. Along with favoring to start Player A, we are also more forgiving when he does not deliver the point totals we seek. Meanwhile, we would be much more eager to drop Player B after a single poor performance. What if this sole lineup decision affected the outcome of the weekly matchup? If it was the difference between winning and losing, then suddenly we have no problem allowing our untrusted Free Agent pickup to start in favor of our prized draft pick. Our cognitive engines neither operate in a logical or rational manner despite the amount of information available.
As successful owners, it’s imperative that we look past the big names that we spent our pretty pennies on in the draft and consider all the information available. Of course we will never actually have the foresight to know that Brian Hartline will outperform Dez Bryant. Secondly, it would take an inhuman amount of gall to seriously consider starting Hartline over Bryant. If we analyze the facts at our disposal, we might be able to be more objective with our lineup decisions. We can rationalize the decision by citing Dez Bryant will face man-to-man coverage by Cornerback Darrell Revis, and Dallas has plenty of other offensive weapons to defer to. Brain Hartline, while in name alone won’t turn any heads, has a favorable matchup against the NFL’s worst defensive team.
Furthermore, we can take into account that Miami’s running game has been riddled with ineffectiveness, and they are likely to throw early and often.
Choosing the correct player to start is not always going to be an easy clear cut choice. The examples herein are a bit dramatic in comparison to what owners might encounter, but it does raise questions about our ability to make rational decisions. The main take away from this law is that you need to be okay with making an unconventional lineup decision when there is enough subtle details pointing you in that direction. It’s crucial that you cease taking the “he should be fine this week” approach to your starting lineup. When we create a hypothesis about a player’s value we are quick to find unrelated evidence to support our
prediction.