Fantasy Football

[Mike]

How many of you are playing this Fall? Have you already drafted? How did it go?

I'm in a 12-team league with starting positions for: QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, WR, TE, K, DEF (team). Six bench spots.

I don't follow football religiously and don't follow college football at all. I ended up writing a program to help me with my draft. I wanted to optimize the number of fantasy points I could expect based on which positions to draft in which rounds. I had the #2 overall pick.

I fed the program the following input: three year averages of the fantasy point productions for every position (e.g. the #5 WR, #1 QB, #11 DEF, etc...). Then, I fed the program the three year average draft slots (e.g. how many QBs are taken by pick #17, how many WR are taken by pick #48, etc...).

The program then computed total fantasy points for every possible drafting scenario. In the end, the optimized draft order (by position) for my settings was: RB, QB, RB, WR, WR, TE, WR. I didn't run the code for bench players and the K and DEF didn't factor in since they are never picked in the first seven rounds in our league.

Writing the code was a lot of fun and hopefully it pays off. I'll let you know how the season turned out!

[mbr311]

So how did the draft go? What's your roster? I'm just very interested in your program because we think so similar about the best way to win. And it works bc I quite frankly win or come in top 4 in every game I play. I'm not being cocky just saying it works.

You taught me how to really delve into the stats and what's important and what's not. And like I said it translates to every sport. We also care so much more about production than the name on the back of the jersey and that's extremely important.

Last season I won this keeper league. By about week 14 honestly I knew I had no shot at winning with my current roster. I ended up proposing and getting the fastest trade response ever (haha) when I offered a good team Ced Benson for Tebow & Donald Brown. Here's the thing: I had Josh Freeman at QB at he was getting like 7-12 points while Brady/Rodgers/Brees/etc would pile upwards of 30. Tebow gets rushing yards and TDs...and a rushing TD gets you more points than a passing TD (6 pts vs 4pts). I also had Ced as my flex and I could replace him). So when I crunched the data, it was clear that this trade was hugely important for me. Tebow was getting 22-27 points per week. That a net gain of say 15 points a week! Then over the next few weeks and didn't pluck anyone from the waiver wire so I could position myself much higher. I love to handcuff other owners so I tend to be very active on the wire. This time I sat and waited. Forte went down...I got Khalil Bell. Dude had like 20, 25 and 30 points or something crazy in the 3 games he played...which just so happened to include my 2 playoff rounds. The net gain of that was another 10+ points. If I told you my roster I put up in the championship game you'd probably laugh

This season I'm in 3 leagues. Don't know why I don't even particularly like football at any level.

In one I'm 5-0
In the other 2 I'm 3-2 but in both I started 0-2. I think the ship has been righted

Let me know your roster and how you're doing when you get a chance.

[Mike]

This is the team we drafted (I co-manage the team with a brother of mine not named Patrick):



Right now, the McCoy pick has been hurting us the most, but I'm not expecting it to remain that way. Manning has turned out to be the #5 overall player in our scoring system, so getting him in the 2nd round turned into a steal. We're currently sitting at the middle of the pack of a 12-team league.

Our league requires us to start: 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 PK, and 1 DEF.

Ignoring minor bench changes, the major changes to the starting lineup have been:

Add: Heath Miller (TE), Atlanta Falcons (DEF), Andre Brown (RB - just for two weeks)

Drop: Brandon Pettigrew (TE), Philadelphia Eagles (DEF)

One positive for this team is that the scoring has been consistent week-to-week. As you can see, we used our later round picks on injury gambles (Peterson, Vick).

[Tim]

Good thing you didn't draft Stafford or Megatron. Both flat out suck this year

[Mike]

Barring some stat correction (please!), I lost in the championship by 0.82 points.

[Tim]

Good thing you didn't draft Stafford or Megatron. Both flat out suck this year

Well I couldn't have been more wrong about Megatron lol. Too bad the Lions still couldn't win games even with him setting the record

[cgjoe]

Barring some stat correction (please!), I lost in the championship by 0.82 points.

I have two teams. In one league, I finished 8th in the regular season and 9th after the playoffs.

In the other league, I snuck into the playoffs as the #8 seed & knocked off the #1 seed in the first round. I lost last week in the semi-finals, and I'm playing for 3rd place this weekend. I was a pretty good 8th-place team; I had the 4th most total points scored in the league, but kept losing match-ups throughout the season, with 300+ more points against than the 1st place team.

Joe

[Mike]

I was a pretty good 8th-place team; I had the 4th most total points scored in the league, but kept losing match-ups throughout the season, with 300+ more points against than the 1st place team.

Joe

I wonder how long the FF season would need to be for this stuff to even out a bit more. The guy who won our league scored the 2nd fewest points in the league and had the fewest points scored against him all season.