Larejo is a mid-stakes tournament mastermind who specializes in outmaneuvering 150-max players with a small number of entries
“Hindsight is 20/20.” This is among the top five most annoying and frustrating things to hear. Looking back on an event, of course we have perfect vision and think we could have predicted this result! But every time this thought comes across my mind or from someone else, it’s interesting to consider why. Hindsight is always, by nature, after the fact. When an event occurs, we reflect on it and justify why it happened. Hindsight bias (which is where the “perfect vision” comes from) occurs when we look back on past events and think about them as being more predictable than they really were. So the question becomes, when predictions for outcomes don’t play out how we thought they would, were they really predictable in the first place? And to get that answer (scenario-specific, of course) we really have to dive in.
There are essentially three states of our brain in how we see the world: hindsight, insight, and foresight. Hindsight looks back, while foresight looks forward, and insight becomes our “ah-ha!” moments that can drive meaningful change in how we alter our actions going forward. The goal for all of us should be creating a tighter, infinite loop that can repeat itself between these three states. This is also where we could argue the saying, you live and you learn comes from. Experiences shape us. In many events in our daily lives, our foresight gives us the context to set our expectations and creates the structure of our thinking in how these events will play out. In shaping those thoughts, insights we’ve learned along the way fundamentally change how we determine most likely scenarios, including expecting the unexpected. And then finally, regardless of outcomes, hindsight allows us to reflect on the why of an event and empowers us to create better frameworks (powered also by our insights) for when the next event is on the horizon.
You can see now how these states of thinking can affect how we approach daily fantasy sports. A slate is presented to us, we go through our processes and set our own expectations, and combine our foresight with our insights to predict rational outcomes. But what if we consider how scenarios can unfold where our upcoming hindsight can look back and justify exactly why? In The Oracle each week, the team here at OWS always includes a question, “that was so obvious, how did I not see it?!” This is one of the most helpful pieces of content to consume each week in preparing for a slate. It’s one of the rare pieces of forced hindsight we all can draw from. Consider this question for yourself this week. What are those one or two outcomes that don’t look obvious, but could be easily justified come Sunday Night? With this framework in mind, here is how we’ll be Willing to Lose this weekend . . .
I didn’t choose Ridley here, Ridley chose me. Let’s harken back to Week 1, when Ridley dominated the Colts, scored one of the first touchdowns of the 2023 season, and had us all thinking he is going to be THE GUY this year. This strong Week 1 game (8/101/1) came on the heels of a few training camp social media clips showing him looking like he was playing at a different speed than everyone else, too. Ridley looked primed for a massive 2023. Now here we are, in Week 8, and Ridley has popped for only one other 100+ yard receiving game (vs. Buffalo, in London) and he trails his teammate Christian Kirk in virtually every wide receiver metric that matters (targets, targets per route run, 3rd/4th down targets, PPR rank) . . . except one, air yards. Ridley sits at 617 air yards through seven games, while Kirk has 448. With all his yards after the catch, Kirk actually has more receiving yards (474) than air yards, while Ridley sits at just 368. We could dive into how catchable some of Calvin’s targets have been, but if there is any positive regression coming for Kirk or Ridley, it’s going to be for Ridley.
Ridley is $100 cheaper than Kirk on DK, sitting at just $5,800, his lowest salary of the season. It’s widely known at this point that Kirk is a zone-defense winner. Ridley has more of the pure tools to beat man coverage, and this week the Jags go to Pittsburgh, where the Steelers historically play man coverage at above average rates. Additionally, only the Chargers have allowed more fantasy points to opposing wide receivers than the Steelers this season. We’ve seen massive games from Puka Nacua (8/154/0), Brandon Aiyuk (8/129/2), Nico Collins (7/168/2), and Davante Adams (13/172/2) just to name a few. The only thing holding back Ridley right now is the Jags balanced offensive approach. If you’re playing Ridley, we’re also hoping the Steelers can push the scoreboard, and for that reason, a Ridley and George Pickens stack makes some sense.
