The 6 Riskiest Players in Fantasy Football This Season

Fantasy football is many things. I could begin with any number of metaphors or similes here, and find a meaningful comparison to the fake football game we all know and love.

But the honest truth is that fantasy football is a game of risk and chance. Putting honor, pride, or even money on the line by constructing a "team" full of NFL players that you can't control is closer to blackjack than it is to a video game or actually playing a sport. Both of the latter examples involve direct application of skill for the duration of the activity, while fantasy football involves a lot of sitting, waiting, and hoping for the right breaks.

That's not to say there's not an element of skill involved, however. Assessing risk, and adopting the right balance of high risk and low risk, can produce incredible results in fantasy sports. But is it possible to quantify risk? And if so, how can we use this information to our advantage?

Our fantasy football projections attempt to do just that with what we like to call "Confidence Interval." Any website can spit out a number that quantifies what they think a player will do in the upcoming season, but we take it a step forward, and reveal the most likely - not all - range of outcomes based on our math. And just like the projections, the size and span of the Confidence Interval, or CI, range is different for every player. (You can find them alongside our fantasy football projections by clicking here.)

Tread carefully, but consider these six players, who are among the biggest gambles in fantasy football this year. Keep in mind that this isn't due to market value, but their range in projections.