Fantasy Football: 5 Disturbing Trends You Should Know for Next Season

The 2011 fantasy season is winding down. And while it's nice to go back to rooting for our home teams exclusively and avoid the awkward moment during the regular season when someone asks who you're rooting for ("Well, for the Bears I need Matt Forte to have a big day, but I also have the Packers' Greg Jennings...so...uh...offense"). 

But there are some important trends that need to be locked away in our minds during the playoffs, offseason and coming into next year's draft.

These are the trends that have rocked our rosters and changed our thinking.

These are the five trends we need to keep in mind for next year's fantasy season.

A TE Can Determine Your Team’s Success

According to Yahoo!’s fantasy MVP calculator, the top five players common to first place teams are Wes Welker, LeSean McCoy, Rob Gronkowski, Aaron Rodgers and Jimmy Graham.

Two of the top five MVPs are tight ends.

This is crazy.

Of course, Graham and Gronkowski are valuable for reasons that reach outside their immense production, as they were typically drafted between picks 100 and 150.

But the main reason for their value is their separation from the rest of TEs.

Gronkowski is the No. 15 total fantasy scorer in standard format this year. Graham is No. 28.

The next tight end on the list is Tony Gonzalez at No. 67.

And that's why this trend is disturbing. If you didn’t have Graham or Gronkowski this season, your team was at a huge disadvantage.

So, what do you do next season? Use a high draft pick on one of these two? Try to find the next rookie sensation or breakout star at TE?

Either way, there’s no denying the importance of a high-performing TE to your fantasy success.

Most Skill Players Wait for Full Recovery from Injuries

First, let me state that this is only a disturbing trend for fantasy owners. Stepping away from the computer and just looking at this as fans (and humans), it’s much better for players to not risk their careers (or lives) for the sake of machismo.

However, many skill players in the last few years have avoided rushing back into the lineup, which has been frustrating to fantasy owners. When roster space is limited, those lingering injuries can really hurt a fantasy team.

This year, fantasy stud Darren McFadden has been on the shelf for seven weeks with a foot injury. This was a player who was a top-25 draft pick in most fantasy leagues.

Perhaps even worse, consensus first-round pick Jamaal Charles was placed on IR after a Week 2 injury. However, unlike McFadden, at least you knew to cut ties for the season.

Michael Vick is another first-round pick who misses at least a few games a year. He’s missed three this season thus far.

The culture has shifted, and players don’t catch as much flak for sitting out with questionable injuries anymore.

This shift in culture works in addition to league-mandated requirements (with specific regards to head injuries) that have been in place since 2009.

Of course, you want your fantasy stars to play, but can you blame them for protecting their careers in a league without guaranteed contracts?

They call the NFL “Not For Long” for a reason…10 years is an accomplishment, and for RBs especially, nearly impossible.

Quarterbacks Are the Highest Scoring but Most Vulnerable Players

In the early 2000s, most fantasy owners wouldn’t take a QB in the first or second round of a fantasy draft.

But since the Tom Brady dream season of 2007, the quarterback position has slowly taken over with the top overall fantasy performers each season. Because of this, fantasy owners have made a QB selection in the first or second round a regular occurrence in fantasy drafts.

The important trend here is that the top five fantasy scorers of the season are quarterbacks.

Cam Newton, a rookie QB, is the second-leading scorer to the far and away No. 1 Aaron Rodgers.

But, despite a seemingly new list of rules every year intended to protect quarterbacks, four or five starters go down every year for significant time.

Matt Schaub, Jason Campbell, Jay Cutler, Matt Cassel and Michael Vick have all missed significant time or are out for the season.

And that's the disturbing part.

It makes the quarterback position a tough position to draft and project. Clearly, a quarterback is important, but you have to weigh the depth of the position league-wide and the likelihood of an injury as well.

For instance, backup running backs are more likely to come in and perform at a high level than backup quarterbacks. So, when your fantasy running back goes down, if you’re quick, you can pick up his backup and expect a similar level of production. Not so with quarterbacks.

It will be interesting to see where Aaron Rodgers gets drafted next season. Will owners pay for his career year?

Will you?

Easy Access to Valuable Fantasy Information

It used to be that a devoted fantasy football owner could gain an edge simply by doing a few extra calculations, searching multiple sources looking for injury updates and mapping schedules for matchups and bye weeks.

Now this information (like points against) is readily available and easily accessible to the average fantasy owner, often through the league website itself. The list of available resources grows every year.

Alerts on cell phones and Twitter updates from NFL insiders like Adam Schefter are the norm for many fantasy owners those days. Looking forward to 2011, the implication is a leveling of the playing field for tech-savvy owners.

I guess the question for next year will be, how fast can you get to that waiver wire?

While there are still probably owners in your league who set their lineups without looking further than any red letters next to the players’ names, owners can now get what used to take hours in 10-15 minutes a day.

With that being said, there's a downside to all of this readily accessible fantasy info…

Information Overload

With the wealth of information now available to the fantasy football owner, it’s quite possible to think yourself out of the smart and practical play. 

Ultimately, the best lineup decisions are the ones you the owner can live with if they go awry. I don’t know about you, but I feel the worst when I've gone against my gut because the stats or experts said otherwise. 

It's after all, a game. While some people bet money with their friends or just play for pride, the appeal of being a fantasy owner rests in owning the decisions you make. It’s just not very fun if you let the numbers or experts pick for you.

And that, perhaps, is the most disturbing trend of all.