Don't listen to the boomers about Keaton Mitchell

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I’m writing the Offseason Stealing Signals for the Chargers right now, and I’ll have a lot more about their team there — from pace and concentration concerns, to my optimism for a top-five season anyway — but I found myself writing so much about Keaton Mitchell that I just had to spin it off into its own post. One of my favorite parts of the current fantasy football meta is the whole “slappy” thing they talk about a lot over at Ship Chasing , where there are players efficiency-chasers love, and then boomers love to subtweet it on social and in their own content, and it’s always like, “You don’t know ball if you think this obviously limited player is meaningful, you’re just a nerd chasing the wrong stuff.” And the boomers are often right, and they love to tell you they are right, while smugly taking the position that the energetic slappies are the actually arrogant ones, because they liked players they shouldn’t have liked? I mean, I’m biased here because I clearly fall on the slappy side more often than not, but I always think this part of it is so hilariously backward, where the boomer victory laps are always like, “That oughta teach ya!” with a wagged fist, but they don’t even seem to understand what it was the slappies were chasing in the first place (which is often the idea that outlier efficiency creates the ceilings we need for the key breakout fantasy plays that define seasons, which we might call “league winners,” and often chasing that means knowingly embracing low floors, because of the intersection of cost/benefit and price, and where the bets make sense). But I digress, because this isn’t about the meta, or about how there are way more people who fall into this boomer category, and their victory laps are way more about how the audience doesn’t understand the difference in what actually wins , so they can garner cheap social media clout and act like they Really Get It and Actually Know Ball Like For Real in a way nerdier way than whatever the slappies were doing in the first place — I was never really one of the cool kids, but it’s so funny the boomers in this analogy position themselves as the jocks and the slappies the nerds, because it’s just so obviously backward when the slappies are having a great time and the boomers are losing their shit over stuff that ultimately doesn’t even matter, like if they get credit for the veteran “small win” they hit on that didn’t change their chances of actually winning any real league — it’s about Keaton Mitchell. (You thought I wasn’t going to close the loop on that sentence? Think again. I brought my fastball today.) I have to open a discussion about Keaton Mitchell with this conversation about the meta because while he’s one of the slappiest players of all time, as a guy who has gotten insane hype, he’s also very small and fast and thus fun, but has also only managed 140 offensive touches in three years in the NFL. And you’re damn right a very small player who is fun but also seems unlikely to be able to Handle The Rigors Of This Sport (I’ll lay off the capitalization thing from here on out) is going to be mocked for that. You’re right to be skeptical! But I’m here to tell you that while it’s not impossible for fun players to get overhyped, and the boomers aren’t always wrong, if you don’t see the hype for Keaton Mitchell, pardon my language, but you’re fucking blind. A fair look at his profile Read more