Fantasy Football vs. Reality - You Must Know The Difference To Win!

StatLeader.com Fantasy Football is always harping on the fact that too many fantasy football owners let "real life" get in the way of their victories.

In fantasy football - who the star is, which team is undefeated and who is leading their Division is all stuff that makes no difference. I love to look at "Power Rankings" and other nonsense offered by other sites that provides absolutely no insight to how to pick fantasy players, who to start or sit, and how to win.

A perfect example is the San Francisco 49ers' defense. I picked them up in three of my leagues this year - and some people "smacked" me about such a dumb move. One person who gave me grief had the Jaguar defense.

Well, in real life, I would rather have the Jacksonville's defense over the 49ers any day. (I hear that they can actually defend against the pass.) In the fantasy football world however, my 49er defense scored me 21 points in our league last week where the Jag's defense scored only 7.

How can this be?

In most leagues, there is no penalty for yards given up by a defense. Also, the points for holding opponents to a certain score are usually undervalued so much that any score outside of a shut-out provides very few fantasy points to the defense. On the other hand, defensive sacks, ints, and touchdowns usually score big. The San Francisco front 7 are good enough, and opportunistic enough to score in these categories - no matter how many long passes the secondary surrenders. In the Yahoo fantasy football league I play in - the 49ers' Defense is the second ranked defense by fantasy points scored.

It is also frequently overlooked that the 49er defense is on the field so long that they have as much as a 30% increased exposure to their opponents offense to GET those points. It's like you get a defense that plays an extra quarter each game. That exposure is killing the 49ers, but not the defense points scored in fantasy football!

Who cares if the 49ers lose by 30 if their defense scores you 21 pts?

Remember: Look at how statistics affect your fantasy points - not the win-loss column in the newspaper. Our fantasy football point projections are based strictly on how real-life performance translates to fantasy football league scoring.