The Kahneman Flaw: How A Nobel Prize Winner’s Studies Apply To Drafting In Fantasy Football

Introduction

In 2002, psychologist Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on human judgment and decision making under uncertainty. His work fundamentally changed how economists view people's decision making, revealing that our minds use predictable patterns that often lead us away from rational thinking. But why can’t these principles of human judgment be applied to areas outside of economic science? The same cognitive biases that apply to economics also apply to fields such as sports. So, with the fantasy football season revving up, I decided to take a look at what a Nobel Prize winning study can teach us about building a fantasy football team.

System 1 and System 2 Thinking

One of the core fundamentals in Kahneman's studies is how he separates our brains into basic functions. System 1, which is the "thinking fast" brain. This system is the side of your brain that functions off of fast, automatic, and involuntary instincts and decisions. System 1 operates continuously and runs involuntary constructions of a coherent interpretation of the world. Then you have System 2, which is the "thinking slow" brain. This system of your brain is slow, deliberate, and effortful. It doesn’t, however, operate continuously, but instead allocates attention to effortful mental operations that demand it. System 2 is typically interpreted as lazy, as it regularly prefers to accept the simple conclusions provided by System 1 unless it is forced into use.

The Bat and Ball Problem

For example, let’s use a highly popular question Kahneman used during his research. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? If your answer was 10 cents, you aren’t in the minority. However, the correct answer is actually 5 cents. This is because if the ball costs 5 cents and the bat is a dollar more, the bat is then $1.05, which added together would be $1.10. But the reason you likely answered 10 cents was because System 1, the fast brain, immediately jumps to an answer that feels right without actually taking the steps to truly solve it.

Heuristics: The Mental Shortcuts That Ruin Fantasy Football Teams

Regression Candidates

Many common misconceptions in football, and specifically fantasy football, occur from these mental errors. These mental shortcuts that occur when System 1 is in control are called heuristics. For example, one area of these heuristics can be found in the draft. A lot of times, your brain will see a player who broke fantasy football the year prior and simply assume he will do it again. And not only will it make this assumption, it will even do it sometimes without looking at how or why he broke fantasy football in the first place. For example, heading into the 2025 season, we had just come off of a year where Saquon had one of the most dominant rushing seasons of all time. He was easily a top 5 pick and a top 3 RB without anyone even looking at the possibility of regression. That’s System 1 working, not System 2. If we had used System 2, the thinking slow brain, we would’ve found that it's estimated that only about 38-44% of first-round draft picks return their value, and that he was a player primed for high regression.

For instance, in 2024, Saquon got the majority of his fantasy points because of his hyper efficient nature. However, it is almost inevitable for that efficiency to dip coming off of a season with as much workload as he had. If that efficiency dips, not only will his yards and raw rushing stats dip, but his TDs will too. Because he is in the Eagles’ offense where the tush push is so prevalent, his TDs will also dip because he got nearly 40% of his TDs in 2024 off of 20+ yard runs. All of these were signs of regression and signs he wouldn't return draft value going into the year. However, because we were operating in the wrong system, we completely missed these signs of regression. These signs of regression proved to be true in 2025, where he finished only as the RB14 even though he was being drafted as a consensus top 3 option at the RB position.

Why Jonathan Taylor Is Riskier Than People Think

This same fallacy, I believe, is carrying over this year with guys like Jonathan Taylor. Many are expecting these players to break fantasy again this year without acknowledging the amount of luck and context that goes into his statistically dominant season. When it comes to Jonathan Taylor, the reason his season was spectacular last year was because he had an absurd TD number. But in order to get TDs, you have to be a part of a highly efficient offense, which he was to start the year last year. In fact, through the first 8 weeks of the season, the Colts ranked first offensively, averaging 31 PPG. But after Daniel Jones got injured, their offense plummeted, averaging only 15 PPG. Along with that offensive plummet, we also saw a huge dip in Jonathan Taylor's fantasy PPG, where he dropped to only 12.94 PPG, ranking as the RB22 in that stretch. With Daniel Jones recovering from an Achilles tear and not looking like he will be back Week 1, or if he is back, won’t be 100%, I think it's a safe bet to steer clear of Taylor at his current ADP.

When Labels Replace Analysis

Not only do these heuristics allow us to overlook the potential red flags of regression candidates, but they can also make us overlook potential breakouts. One of the most obvious candidates to me when it comes to these common mental errors, and how it relates to us overlooking players, is Amon Ra St. Brown. The main thing I have heard about Amon Ra heading into this season is that he is the ultimate safe guy to draft and will be good, but he isn’t the type of player who can break fantasy and finish first at his position. The simple conclusion attached to him is that he isn’t a high ceiling draft pick, but a high floor type of pick. But why? What is the reason he can’t? The only reason I have been able to find, or have heard, is just the fact that he simply hasn’t done it before. But if we are gauging purely off of the fact that someone hasn’t broken fantasy football before, then we are essentially ruling out the possibility of growth and of a breakout.

If we look at history, that logic simply doesn’t align with good drafting. By that logic, last year heading into the draft you shouldn’t have taken guys like Puka, JSN, Drake Maye, but instead should have drafted Justin Jefferson, Jonathan Taylor, and Lamar Jackson. As we can see, this logic is just very flawed and simply isn’t a logical reason. The fact of the matter with Amon Ra is that he checks every box you want when it comes to player talent and what you want to see from a guy who has high upside in fantasy football. He is in a good offense, has a good quarterback, commands a high target share, plays a central role in the offense, and has consistently been one of the league's most efficient receivers on a per route basis. These are all traits fantasy managers associate with elite upside, yet many still label Amon Ra as simply a "safe" pick rather than someone capable of finishing as the WR1.

Another variable that often gets overlooked is offensive structure and how a team's personnel usage can influence a player's production. One very interesting statistic Ryan Heath recently pointed out is that WRs who are used in heavy personnel schemes see a 32% increase in fantasy points per route compared to 3+ WR sets. The interesting thing about this stat, and its relation to Amon Ra, is the fact that one of the play callers who uses the most heavy personnel sets is the Lions' new OC, Drew Petzing. In fact, in 2025, his Cardinals ranked 1st in the NFL in 13 personnel sets. Not only will the heavier sets already help Amon Ra, but he is actually one of the best fits for an offense like this considering he ranked 4th in the entire NFL in yards per route run last year in heavy personnel packages. These coaching changes make him a prime candidate for a huge season and give him extraordinarily high upside. These simple heuristics of mislabeling players are way too common in our current draft strategies. In fact, it's partially the exact same reason we missed plenty of players in the past, such as JSN in 2025 or Cooper Kupp in 2021.

Remembering Self and Experiencing Self

Later in Kahneman's career, he established a new breakdown of human thought. He introduced the idea of the experiencing self and the remembering self. The experiencing self lives in the now. It serves to answer the question, "Does it hurt right now?" The remembering self keeps score and maintains a narrative of our lives. It serves to answer the question, "How was it overall?" However, Kahneman proved that our remembering self completely dominates our choices, even though its memories can be highly inaccurate. It relies heavily on two rules: the peak end rule and duration neglect. The peak end rule states that we evaluate past experiences almost entirely on two points, which are how we felt at the peak and how we felt at the very end. Conversely, the duration of an experience has almost zero impact on how we remember it, leading to duration neglect.

The Cold Water Experiment

For example, Kahneman led an experiment where participants held their hands under cold water in two different conditions. In the first condition, participants held their hands under painfully cold water for 60 seconds. In trial B, participants held their hands under painfully cold water for 60 seconds, plus an additional 30 seconds where the temperature of the water was raised slightly for that last stretch. After the trials, he asked the participants which condition they would prefer to repeat. Shockingly, the vast majority chose trial B, even though trial B included an additional 30 seconds of painfully cold water.

Fantasy Football's Memory Trap

This same concept of how our perception shapes memory applies to fantasy football as well. Often, how a player performed in the fantasy football playoffs late in the season, or how they performed for our specific team the season prior, deeply affects how we evaluate them. These grudges we form based on past performance create an incorrect bias outside of what the data and context say. For example, if you had Christian McCaffrey on your team in 2024 and he dealt with all of those injuries and had an unfortunate season, you could've formed an underlying bias against him that wasn’t backed up by factual evidence. This, in turn, could’ve caused you to avoid drafting him the following year, causing you to miss out on a dominant season.

I think the candidate who resembles this best heading into this upcoming year is Justin Jefferson. He had a down year last year, but that was due to a lot of context. There is no reason to assume he is any less of a player today than he was two years ago. Nothing has changed with his talent. He isn’t old, and he hasn't experienced a career-altering major injury. The only thing that changed last year was his team's situation. They had a lot of offensive line injuries and, most importantly, had a major downgrade at QB, which directly hindered Jefferson. But heading into the 2026 season, the Vikings' offensive line is healthy, and he will also get a major upgrade at the QB position with the Vikings bringing in Kyler Murray. So, I'd be a little hesitant to hold onto any biases from the past season when it comes to him.

Conclusion

In conclusion, yes, a Nobel Prize winning framework can absolutely teach us how to build a better fantasy football team. These human errors aren’t exclusive to Wall Street or financial portfolios. They manifest in many vastly different areas of life, including something as simple as a fantasy football draft. So, this year when you go to draft, be aware of these mental tendencies and be prepared to correct them. Whether it means defeating biases from the previous season, looking at the data instead of how a player is labeled, or simply trying to tap into more of a System 2 type of draft strategy, keep these principles in mind. The Kahneman flaw proves we aren’t perfectly rational people, and in turn, we are not perfectly rational fantasy managers. But once we begin to realize these irrational patterns, we can begin to correct them and make better decisions in an array of different areas of life, including making better draft day decisions.