The Five People You'll Hate in Your Fantasy League

As most fantasy drafts take place during the Labor Day weekend, I'm here to warn you of the five guys in your league who will annoy you more than Albert Haynesworth annoys Mike Shanahan. These guys will throw you off your game, drive you up a wall and leave you never wanting to play fantasy football again.

So here is who they are and how to defeat them.

1) Mr. Excuse

This guy will spend every second before your draft talking about how great his team will be. He'll say his team will be the best fantasy team ever put together. He won't talk smack about your team, because he'll be too busy talking about how good his is, and the second your draft ends he'll spend the rest of the season making excuses for his team being awful.

He'll blame injuries, bad games, the kicker, the weather, Jesus, and even you for taking Andre Johnson in the second round when he was going to take him in the third. The good thing about this guy is he'll beat himself trying to scramble to find anyone he thinks can get him a win, which in turn will only make his team worse so you don't have to worry about him much. 

2) The Hater

This guy will spend every minute talking about how bad everyone else's team is. He won't say two words about his team because he can't remember anything about them, he just knows that your team sucks and that's it. Get Peyton Manning as your QB, you suck. Pick up Dez Bryant when everyone else is grabbing a kicker, you suck. Start the Ravens defense against the Lions, you suck. 

This guy won't be much of a problem after week four because that's when he'll realize he's spent so much time hating on you, he forgot to manage his team and he'll be in last place right below Mr. Excuse who will be so happy someone is worse than him he'll make the hater look like an amateur.

3) The Stat Guy

Mr. Stats has every statistic on every player who's ever stepped on a practice field. He knew five seconds after Matt Lienart was released who would sign him. He knows how many catches of 20 or more yards Donald Driver caught at night, in the rain, with two guys on him, and what Jon Gruden said after the catch. He'll come to the draft with 30 mock drafts and rifle through them pissing everyone off as he wears his fake glasses.

The problem with this guy is he wouldn't know a fair catch from a foul ball, so even though he has all the stats he doesn't know what half of them mean, because while you spent your childhood dreaming of being the quarterback for the Cowboys and playing touch football, he was sitting in his house sucking on his inhaler.

This guy will make the playoffs but won't go to far after that.

4) The Dumb Chick

This girl knows less about the NFL game than Steve Spurrier. The only reason she even joined your league is because the hot guy that works in the mail room signed up. You already hate her because she won the NCAA tournament pool by picking Duke because their colors match the sky on a sunny day and some guy she hooked up with at her graduation party took summer classes at Butler.

She'll show up late for the draft, never approve a trade and for the most part won't care once the season begins, but she'll beat you into the dirt every time you play her with a bunch of guys no one expected to have good seasons. 

She'll also make the playoffs, but by then she'll have forgotten that she was in the league to begin with so once teams start sitting their starters once they clinch a playoff spot, she'll fall fast. 

5) The first timer

This guy watches 11 hours of football every Sunday, is unbelievably passionate about his team (he cried every time Brett Favre retired) and has never been in a fantasy league. So naturally you had to beg him to join because you needed one more guy to make it even. This guy won't look at one article about a fantasy draft and will pretty much run his season on the fly. That could make this guy the most dangerous person in the field.

He's probably the guy you'll face if you make it deep, because his knowledge of football is just good enough to get him past everyone else, and since he doesn't really care, he won't piss anyone off along the way. In order to beat him you're going to need all the skill and hope you can muster up, and a little trash talk won't hurt either as he'll know your taking it seriously so he won't want to lose.  

So now that you know who your main competition is get cracking on how to beat them and own your fantasy league.