Larejo is a mid-stakes tournament mastermind who specializes in outmaneuvering 150-max players with a small number of entries
When you write content for long enough, you are going to look like a fool eventually. “It’s the nature of the business,” says this part-time writer who has been partaking in content creation for about five years now. But it’s true, we all have bad takes. The truth is, by putting yourself out there and taking a stand, you are just destined to be wrong if you do it enough. When you try to make accurate predictions in an imperfect world, where the future can’t be perfectly predicted, you’re bound to run into a goose egg from time to time. That all said, one of the more difficult stands to take is the same stand the week after it went completely wrong. Some will say “going back to the well” or “holding my ground,” but the truth is when a take goes off the reserve, there is such an overwhelming urge to do something different in the next public showing.
You won’t have to go far to see where Willing to Lose has gone wrong this season. It’s not the cold takes that get me, though; it’s the takes that come to fruition a week or two later, which really crush me. I remember writing about rookie WR Amon-Ra St. Brown in the middle of the 2021 season because I found an article about how the coaches and Jared Goff were talking him up. It must have been Week 8 or 9, because he went out and had just four targets the next week. And then he burst out with 10 or more targets in every game from Weeks 12 to 17, and the rest is history. I had the situation pegged, but my timing was off.
This season, I wrote about Russell Wilson in Week 1. I joked about how boring it sounded to wait all summer, and football was finally back, and I chose to highlight Wilson and Malik Nabers. He puts up a dud, then promptly wins all the money in Week 2 with Nabers and Wan’Dale. Similarly, Sam Darnold in Week 3 made the article, and he threw the ball just 18 times in a drubbing win against New Orleans. Fast forward to Week 5, when Darnold is now under the radar, and he goes nuclear against Tampa Bay with 341 yards passing and four touchdowns, again winning loads of tournaments.
It takes some real ones to stay stubborn and remain on the block. The next time you wake up on Monday and realize that a content provider you follow was dead wrong, make a note to see what they do the following week related to that player. If they go back to it, despite a flop, and it’s not some player with a significant track record, props to them.
Here’s what I’m looking at in Week 9, and why I feel like being stubborn might be my optimal outcome.
