Dynasty, in Theory: The 5 Position Paradigm

Photo: USA Today Sports

There's a lot of really strong dynasty analysis out there, especially when compared to five or ten years ago. But most of it is so dang practical-- Player X is undervalued, Player Y's workload is troubling, the market at this position is irrational, take this specific action to win your league. Dynasty, in Theory is meant as a corrective, offering insights and takeaways into the strategic and structural nature of the game that might not lead to an immediate benefit, but which should help us become better players over time. (Additionally, it serves as a vehicle for me to make jokes like "theoretically, this column will help you out".)

Another Way of Looking at Paradigms

For our first entry after a long hiatus, I wanted to talk about paradigms. Paradigm is simply a fancy word for "way of looking at reality". For instance, I have a paradigm that governs all of my interactions on the internet:

Modified principle of charity:
If a statement has two interpretations and one means the speaker is an idiot or an asshole, choose the other.

— Adam Harstad (@AdamHarstad) October 30, 2017

The thing about paradigms is they don't actually change anything. I can believe with all my heart that people aren't jerks, but that belief doesn't change the underlying reality that some people are jerks. Paradigms need to be evaluated not by whether they are true-- paradigms by definition cannot be true or false-- but by whether they are useful. In this case, it's a lot easier to engage when I believe that everyone else is well-meaning and any conflicts are accidents in the common pursuit of truth than it is when I believe I'm beset on all sides by enemies seeking to bring me low.

My favorite example is one of the most famous paradigm shifts of all time. For most of human history, it was believed that the sun revolved around the earth, a position known as geocentrism. Some were proposing as early as the 3rd century BC that the earth was not actually the center of the universe, but the position wasn't widely adopted until the Copernican Revolution starting in the 16th century AD. You undoubtedly learned the fact as a small child that the earth revolved around the sun, a position known as heliocentrism.

But this is not actually true. In actual fact, there is no such thing as "absolute motion"; all motion is relative to a frame of reference. I could tell you right now that I am sitting stationary at my desk while I type this, and that statement would be accurate relative to a frame of reference consisting of my immediate surroundings. But to an observer on Mars, I'm not sitting still, I'm hurtling through the void of space at 67,000 miles per hour, and my desk and computer are hurtling alongside me.

We model our solar system as having a stationary sun at the center that everything else orbits, but in reality, our sun is itself orbiting the center of the Milky Way, and the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy are both orbiting each other, and on and on down the line. Heliocentrism was a good paradigm not because it was true, but because it was useful. If you want to predict where heavenly bodies will be at some point in the future, both a geocentric model and a heliocentric model can accomplish the task, but the math on the heliocentric model is substantially easier. It's not wrong to say that the sun revolves around the earth. It just makes things harder than they need to be.

This property, the idea that paradigms can't change anything and can't possibly be correct, makes them a perfect launch pad for a fantasy football column whose tagline could be "practically useless".

The "Five-Position" Paradigm

In a relatively standard dynasty league, most managers opt to evaluate their teams based on strength and weakness at the four main positions: quarterback, running back, wide receiver, and tight end. Managers who are strong at running back and weak at wide receiver might look for a deal trading away one of their running backs and getting a receiver back. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this, but I personally prefer to evaluate my teams based on strength and weakness at the five main positions: quarterback, running back, wide receiver, tight end, and prospect. Prospect, in this paradigm, is its own position.