What Makes a Good Fantasy Analyst?

Yesterday, Nathaniel T. Powell asked whether someone needed to be good at fantasy football to be a good fantasy analyst.

I considered it for a long time before crafting a carefully-thought-out and nuanced response.

Because I have some time to kill right now, and because I can damn well use as many characters as I damn well please shut up Twitter you’re not the boss of me,  I figured I’d write a quick blog post to expound.

Success in fantasy football, like success in many fields that are largely mental, can be modeled as a two-part process. The first part is building a robust conceptual framework, and the second part is consistently executing that framework at a high level. Both steps are important, though I’d imagine the second is more important than the first; I tend to believe that a team that ran a very basic offense at a high level will outperform a brilliant, forward-thinking offense executed at a low level. It doesn’t matter if you can scheme everyone open on the blackboard if the quarterback is always making the wrong reads and the receivers are always running the wrong routes.

Being a good fantasy analyst means improving the reader’s ability at either task, but is largely going to focus more on the conceptual framework than the detailed execution, if for no other reason than practical limitations. Broad strategy is universally applicable, while specific advice is tailored by design to a very small audience.

Often, building a framework is a team effort. At Footballguys, Jene Bramel and Craig Zumsteg focus on a very tiny slice of that pie. Jene Bramel is a doctor, and Craig Zumsteg has a ridiculously detailed database of past football injuries. The two of them combine to dramatically improve the framework of how we understand and respond to player injuries, and that is an incredible value-add.

That value exists entirely independently of their ability to build the rest of their framework, or their ability to execute it. I’m not saying for a second that they’re bad at fantasy football, I’m saying that their analysis would be very valuable even if they were both avowed proponents of drafting a kicker in the first round. Their skill at fantasy is wholly irrelevant to their value as an analyst.

In fact, in many fields people who struggle at a task are often best suited to help others complete it. In the NFL, for instance, most of the best position coaches were mediocre-to-bad at actually playing the position. Mike Shanahan was a mediocre college quarterback. Gary Kubiak was a lifelong NFL backup. Between them, they have two of the most impressive resumes for developing quarterbacks. Steve Young, John Elway, Brian Griese, Jake Plummer, Jay Cutler, Matt Schaub, Rex Grossman, Robert Griffin III, and Joe Flacco all had their best seasons under one coach, the other, or both.

But just because they possessed the tools to know what needs to be done at quarterback doesn’t mean they possessed the skills to execute that knowledge in real time consistently enough to excel. And most of the quarterbacks who were good enough to execute their creative visions would have no chance of crafting a creative vision of their own and teaching another how to execute it.

Now, an ability to conceptualize and execute a framework is going to be highly correlated with the ability to help others do the same, especially in a field like fantasy football where there are are very few physical restrictions and owners generally have more than ample time to process information at their leisure. But such an ability is neither a necessary nor sufficient component of being a quality fantasy analyst, especially with the trend towards specialization in the field.

In fact, the fantasy space is large and diverse and there are many paths to being a quality analyst. One can rise to the top through creativity, advancing thoughts and ideas that are new and fresh. Or one can rise by executing time-worn ideas at a higher level than the competition.

And we cannot ignore the fact that fantasy football is largely an entertainment product, and the fantasy advice industry is even more-so. It’s easy to acknowledge room for a Bill Simmons-like contributor who establishes a following not at all because of the quality of his or her analysis, but because of the compelling nature of his or her personality. (It is not at all meant as a slam on Simmons to say that the quality of his analysis and even the quality of his writing is by far of secondary importance to the force of his personality.)

Being a fantasy analyst is a mix of helping people and entertaining people. Doing so requires a lot of skill, but the skills required are open-ended. To my mind, there is only one thing that is an absolutely necessary requirement- only one skill that is truly indispensable, the sine qua non of the field. That is the ability to communicate information. It doesn’t matter how great your ideas are or how compelling your personality is if you cannot effectively communicate either. And obviously communication skills have no bearing whatsoever on how good you are at fantasy football.

As for the rest of it, it sure is nice, and it’s naturally going to be pretty strongly correlated, but none of it is strictly speaking necessary.

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