Chris Dell | (TNS) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Per­fec­tion is an il­lu­sion. Just when we think it’s firmly in our grasp, it some­how evades us. How­ever, as the late great Vince Lom­bardi said, “Per­fec­tion is not at­tain­able, but if we chase per­fec­tion, then we can come close to catch­ing ex­cel­lence.

” This is never more true when it comes to our fan­tasy foot­ball drafts in 2024. If you’re read­ing this col­umn in mid-Au­gust — be­fore a sin­gle NFL reg­u­lar sea­son game has been played — then that prob­a­bly means you’ll be par­tic­i­pat­ing in a fan­tasy draft with around 10 or so oth­ers some­time over the next two weeks. That prob­a­bly also means that each of those 10 or so op­po­nents you’re com­pet­ing against will en­ter those drafts hav­ing some idea of the play­ers they ei­ther love or hate.

Some will even think they have some ge­nius “strat­egy” that they read in some three-months-old, now com­pletely ir­rel­e­vant fan­tasy mag­a­zine. It’s OK, we’ve all been there. Heck, I still even up­hold my an­nual tra­di­tion of buy­ing at least one fan­tasy mag, fresh off the racks at Bar­nes & Noble ev­ery fall, though I might not ever read a sin­gle page of it.

At this point, it’s all just for the vibes — and also to ap­pease those ever-judge­men­tal fan­tasy gods, of course. All kid­ding aside, there might be some­thing more pro­found to that Lom­bardi quote af­ter al.