Fantasy Football Discussion [Both Leagues]

[EPW]

EPW's Ultimate Week 6 Predictions

Last Week: 4-3
Overall: 9-5

Teh Peeled Bananas(3-2-0) vs. Vicious Rabbits(2-3-0)
Maurice Jones Drew has a monster 40 point week against the Rams, which puts EPW over the edge in this close match-up. Teh Peeled Bananas wins 150-135.

Da Boyz(3-2-0) vs. Deviations(1-4-0)
This game matches the projections closely, and the Deviations win in a blowout. Deviations win 160-130

Topecka Twisters(3-2-0) vs. The Priapic Love WoW(0-5-0)
The outcome of this game will be surprisingly close, much like the Da Boyz/WoW game last week. But once again The Priapic Love WoW loses with another sub-100 performance. Topecka Twisters win 110-90

JediBolts(3-2-0) vs. HairBall Express(2-3-0)
The Chargers will be routed by the Denver Broncos on Monday, sending the JediBolt's back to the .500 mark. HairBall Express wins 135-100

Calamitous Intent(2-3-0) vs Forte's Firemen(2-3-0)
Snoopy scores a ton of points with great performances by Aaron Rodgers and Chris Johnson. Matt Ryan has a poor game against Chicago, sealing Calamitous Intent's fate. Forte's Firemen win in a blowout, 170-110

Belichick Magnets(3-2-0) vs. Detroit Deity Duo(2-3-0)
Detriot Deity Due recovers from last week's close loss with a close win this week. Detroit Deity Duo wins 130-125.

GAME OF THE WEEK:

Dallas Dwarf Tossers(5-0-0) vs Mountain Goats(4-1-0)
Both Teams are going to falter this week with poor performances out of just about everybody.The Mountain Goats will falter a little less, defeating Slowwy for the first time this season. Mountain Goats win 115-100.

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm noticing a trend here.

EPW picks me to lose.
I pick EPW to lose.

[EPW]

I've noticed that the JediBolts always win in your predictions.

[snoopy369]

He's probably right about the Broncos/Chargers (at least as far as your players go), with the Mike Nolan Express controlling the run, and thus pass, game of the Chargers... unless Vincent Jackson and Phillip Rivers find a magical shoestring that allows VJ to run on air, or LT suddenly becomes 27 again, anyway. The only question is, does Denver score enough points to win the game actually...

[snoopy369]

Also, Topeka, not Topecka. Are you a furriner or something

[Ben Kenobi]

I would have gone 7-0 in week 4, if PR hadn't fumbled.

He's probably right about the Broncos/Chargers (at least as far as your players go), with the Mike Nolan Express controlling the run, and thus pass, game of the Chargers... unless Vincent Jackson and Phillip Rivers find a magical shoestring that allows VJ to run on air, or LT suddenly becomes 27 again, anyway. The only question is, does Denver score enough points to win the game actually...

Is Mike Nolan for real? They did a good job against the Patriots, but they still only won in OT at home. I'd rank the Patriots as the better team, given the home field advantage. This is the first real test for Nolan against a top-tier offense, at the Q. No one has shut down the pass game for the Chargers at home, since the Falcons in November of last year. You have to go back all the way to 2005 to find another game where the chargers have been kept to less than 200 yards passing, and under 20 points.

[snoopy369]

200 yards passing and 20 points wouldn't be enough for you to win, though, which is the point... say 2 passing TDs, one of which goes to your players, 200 yards, 20/30 passing, and one turnover by one of your players, plus a 50 yard running effort by LT with no TDs. That's a fine game, and could well beat DEN if SD's defense remembers to come to the game (which is very much in question), but probably not enough for you to win your matchup, given your heavy reliance on the chargers. I think you'll need more like 30/40, 350 yards, 3 TDs, two of which go to your players, and 100 yards from LT in order to have a likely win.

The other half of the coin of course is NO's also resurgent D - can they hold Eli to the 25 points that are projected, or does he go for more like 35-40, which in IDP is not unlikely. If he stays down in the low 20s, you have a good chance to win regardless, unless LJ or someone else has an unusually high game.

[Ben Kenobi]

No, 200 yards would probably not be enough, but you overestimate what I do need.

19-30 250 yards 2 TD 1 INT -- Rivers

66 yards 1 TD, 1 rec 10 yards. -- LT

5 receptions 65 yards -- Gates

5 receptions 85 yards 1 TD -- Jackson

2 FGs, and 2 PATs. -- Kaeding.

That's all I need to win.

So, say a game in which there are 21 points, 3 TDs, 1 ran in by LT and 2 thrown in by Rivers one caught by either Jackson or Gates, and 2 FGs, at 27 points, is enough for me to win. Even 1 TD by Rivers, or no LT touchdown is enough.

I'm not as dependent on the Chargers as you might think. According to projections, the Chargers are 53 percent of my total points.

EPW has 23 percent dependent on just two players, Schaub and MJD.

Week one, I had 48 percent of my points from Chargers. (won)
Week two, I had 58 percent of my points from Chargers. (won)
Week three, I had 44 percent of my points from Chargers. (lost)
Week four, I had 54 percent of my points from Chargers. (lost)

So I've won big with just chargers, and won big, with them being less than half.

[snoopy369]

Percent of total points is actually far less relevant than you think. You still haven't learned the key element of fantasy (and real) football is points above replacement, or above average, depending on what you're describing. IE, if I took the bottom RB starter pair [12th and 24th], and compared them to your team, how many more points do you score? What about QB and WR, compared to the last starter in both of their positions? Your POR (points over replacement) total comes far and away from chargers, primarily from Rivers, Gates, and VJ. Colston is your main other source of POR, but even he isn't doing particularly well, and your other RBs are below replacement value, I think (not calculating it out by hand).

In general, I consider something like:
QB: 20
WR1: 15
WR2: 10
RB1: 15
RB2: 12
W/R: 8
TE: 6
K: 6
LBx2: 7
DL: 4
DBx2: 5
----
120 total
though that's not calculated with any degree of accuracy, just off the top of my head. Each player that scores above that for you is worth that many 'plus' points, and players doing worse than that are 'minus' points. Pretty much you could start a dead guy at kicker and score 6 to 8 points a week on average, and the same for several of the D positions. I suppose I could do some sort of actual statistics on this, but I'm a bit too lazy.

[Ben Kenobi]

Ok, using your system, here's the numbers.

3 Charger players have been above replacement:

Rivers: (33) (+13)
Gates: (13) (+8)
Kaeding: (9.00) (+3)

3 Charges Under replacement: (WR1)

Jackson: (13) (-2)

Backups/Injured

LT (3)
Merriman (1)

Above Replacement/Non Chargers:

Ward(12) (+2)
Colston(12) (+2)
McGahee(16) (+1)
Jackson(15) (+3)
Wimbly(9) (+2)
Ware (8) (+1)
Peppers(7) (+2)
Landry(7) (+1)
Bethea(9) (+3)

Backups at or above the curve.
Collie(10)
Shiancoe(9)
Mathis(7)

Backups below the curve:

Polamalu (3).

Which works out to about 158. Split is (24/14) if you include starters but not LT. If you include LT, and swap out Jackson its (13/11), which is about the same proportion as I see on the points.

[SlowwHand]

Rashard Mendenhall's been sick all week. Great.

[EPW]

I would have gone 7-0 in week 4, if PR hadn't fumbled.

7-0 in week 4?!

[Berzerker]

hey Rabbit, or whoever the commish is, go ahead and edit DoY team so he's got a DB in there

[SlowwHand]

No. I've seen him posting here. It's on him..

[snoopy369]

So I was JUST a bit off on my guesses. Grabbed the data from pfr.com and did a few analyses.

First off, decided it was idiotic to compare WR2 to WR2 and WR1 to WR1; WR is WR, period. For reference, though, this is how far I was off... *

QB14: 31.3 (Eli Manning)
RB14: 13.6 (Michael Turner)
RB28: 11.0 (DeAngelo Williams)
WR14: 11.6 (Hines Ward)
WR28: 10.0 (Devin Hester)
W/R35: 9.9 (Tashard Choice and Steve Breaston, averaged)
TE14: 8.7 (Chris Cooley)
(I'll ignore d players and k players, for the moment, particularly as their stats are not going to be nearly as close between yahoo and pfr; the above tend to have lower scores as it is, because PFR seems to count more fumbles (i'm guessing Fumbles, not Fumbles Lost, and that's the only stat I have) and does not show tackles for offensive players (maybe in the defensive pages, but I don't care about a point or two. Also, K and D players tend to be much closer to the mean starting player, usually, except for the occasional KR/PR DB.)
(Also, is that RB pair hilarious or what)

About 96 points from the bottom-starter offense, plus let's say 6 from K, and 20sh from D, giving us 120 or so points. It's important to note that I don't claim this is an accurate representation of a 'bad' team; in fact, 120 would win many matchups. That's a bit of a sad statement on our drafting and playing abilities I suppose, but in general, this is calculated not based on 'presumed' 14th place etc., but _actual_, ie, hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

The stats I think are actually useful are VOA, value over average NFL Starter at that position (arbitrarily, top 32 QBs and TEs, top 48 RBs, top 64 WRs); and VOS, value over bottom fantasy starter at that position (14th ranked QB and TE, 35th ranked RB and WR).

The numbers to compare to:
VOA:
QB: 28.7
RB: 12.1
TE: 8.1
WR: 10.5
VOS:
QB: 31.3
RB: 10.2
TE: 8.7
WR: 9.6

I'll note in a later post some of the details, this one is getting long enough.



*All stats are in fantasy points per game played in, according to my calculation from PFR stats, which will differ from Yahoo. Breaston, for example, played in only 3 games, so his fantasy points were divided by 3, not 4. I do not factor in partial games (Sorry, Matt Hasselbeck), and the positions are imperfect, as PFR does not note the position of players in the stats I grabbed; in general, I selected QBs and RBs based on pass/rush attempts (>15 for both) and TEs based on names of the top 41 according to some reference site or another; anyone else qualified as WR, so there are almost certainly some RBs in the WR list, and same for TE. I did my best to QC the list, but I did not go through every single person beyond 25 or so.