Never Ever Leave Your Wingman
For those of you who listen to Colton & The Wolfman on Sirius XM Fantasy Sports Radio each Tuesday night from 10-Midnight, you know the theme of our show surrounds movies and sports but specifically the Tom Cruise megahit, Top Gun. The reason the show was created with this theme is for more than a decade, my college friend Glenn Colton and I have competed in so-called expert’s leagues and have a pretty good track record. We are simply better as a team. To that end, one of our main rules is
“never ever leave your wingman.â€Well, I left my wingman. Here’s the story…
All my fantasy life, I have almost always drafted with a partner. The collaboration makes for a better draft and the in-season moves are always better when checked off of someone else. Well, this weekend, a good friend gave me a High-Stakes team for my birthday. I wanted to play.
Hmmm…who can I play with? Or…not to sound gross…what can I play with?
That is right.Â
The Machine. So, I selected a draft on
Real-Time Fantasy Sports. Set up The Machine and got ready.  Now
The Machine automatically loads all the settings and I manually go into one screen to set when to draft QB/K/DT and how many of each position to draft. Then, sit back and relax and let the pilot take me and agree to
NEVER EVER leave my Wingman. Now I had the 11th Pick and here is my team:Russell Wilson QB SEA
Frank Gore RB SFO
Darren McFadden RB OAK
Matt Forte RB CHI
Brandon Marshall WR CHI
Antonio Brown WR PIT
Owen Daniels TE HOU
Randy Bullock K HOU
Pittsburgh Steelers DT PIT
Robert Griffin III QB WAS
Bryce Brown RB PHI
Malcom Floyd WR SDG
Lance Moore WR NOR
Sidney Rice WR SEA
Kendall Wright WR TEN
Zach Sudfeld TE NWE
As you can see, this is a pretty standard SMART System draft except for my team is much better than if I drafted that way. Using The Machine as a partner enabled me to maximize the skills of The Machine and use my own time tested strategies to churn out a great draft.So what does that have to do with the Wingman…
Always know your partner’s strengths and even though I have done a lot of drafts with The Machine, I did not heed to its wishes in the middle rounds. Starting in Round 8,
The Machine wanted me to take a Defense. I had set it to not allow it before that. The Machine has knowledge of all types of systems and has drafted 100s of times in each type of draft. The last six or so rounds of my draft were awful, because I left my wingman,
The Machine. If I had taken, the defense (and kicker, btw) when
The Machine had told me too, I would have had much superior players. Same thing is true at TE.
Playing Defense…
In the 9
th round, it got kinda crazy. The Machine was telling me to take RGIII. I already had Russell Wilson. Isn’t it better to get another WR or RB there. Then I looked at the draft board and the number 12 team behind me was the only team without a QB and three teams had taken their second QB. If I take RGIII, Team 12 has to play with Andy Dalton. Yeah. Play defense.
There are no trades in the league and
The Machine immediately recognized by examining all rosters that this would increase my chances to win as it would lessen my opponent’s chance to win.
So, no matter what, when you are drafting...
NEVER EVER LEAVE YOUR WINGMANÂ
Rick Wolf, Co-Host of Colton & The Wolfman - Sirius XM Fantasy Sports Radio Rick Wolf is a leader in the fantasy sports industry. Wolf is a founding Board Member and one of only fifteen FSTA Hall of Famers including Bill James and Matthew Berry. Wolf’s career accomplishments include starting the fantasy sports division at SportsLine USA that became CBS SportsLine, incubating Rotoworld to become the #1 fantasy sports news site, and spearheading the sale of Allstar Stats/Rotoworld to NBC Sports in 2006.  With college friend and fellow Hall of Famer, Glenn Colton, the team has won 7 expert titles in baseball and football.
Twitter:Â
RickWolf1
