*S18 Fantasy breakdown

[JuOSu]

I know someone else did this article last season and I really enjoyed it. So I decided to do my own version of it. I am not sure if this counts as statistical analysis so I posted it here. Obviously a lot of work was put into the research so I'd appreciate if that was considered for the payout here, given that a lot of it is graphs and such.

So I looked through where everyone was picked in fantasy. I used the same system as the guy last season, who gave everyone undrafted the rank 60. Every other spot is obviously their real draft spot. There were some very interesting differences, so let's take a closer look per position:



Quarterback ended up very tight, with the top three quarterbacks only apart by less than one rank on average. It's also interesting, that all ten starting quarterbacks were picked in at least one league. Easten Cole, who has been extremely successful this year, was only the 6th QB on average picked. In the end, Havran was the #1 quarterback picked on average.




Running back is obviously a very interesting position for fantasy. Torenson, Gump and Reed dominated fantasy drafts in general, as the top three picks in most fantasy drafts, with some exceptions. Torenson ended up the overall number 1 pick in the league for fantasy purposes. Gump who was 2nd, has been the dominant running back in the league so far. Canton was a top pick in most leagues but then picked 44th in one league. Very odd. Past the top 7 running backs, basically everyone after that was not picked in one league or more. It's particularly interesting for Taffy and Toriki who were picked in the first round in some leagues and not at all in others.




Wide Receiver is a very difficult position to predict sometimes and there are lots of different options that will work out well. Maddox ends up in the first position among WRs but only barely ahead of Valentine. There are quite a lot of wide receivers in the middle ranks, with some of them definitely steals and others disappointing. As pointed out elsewhere, people picked Fyodo over Jones for NOLA, mostly based on pre-regression TPE or last years statistics, but Jones ends up a huge steal as NOLAs first WR and currently easily a top 10 WR in the league in points.




There are three obvious choices for Tight End, with Blaze being the top choice, then Olsen and then Irving. In general, tight end seemed very obvious or structured in terms of everyone being picked in order as a general rule, with obvious exceptions. Both Blaze and Olsen were somehow not picked in a league each. I was shocked to see that Kwemen got picked a couple times.




Kicker was a very interesting thing again. You can see that kicker is basically a coin flip in many ways, with all the kickers very tightly grouped together. Donaldson wins out in the end. With Stephen Harris Jr. we had an odd first overall pick in one league, but hey, I won't judge. There is a small error in the screenshot, that I am too lazy to fix. In group 14, Alex Frost was taken 46th, not Clutch.




The Yellowknife Wraiths are the best defense in the league and this shows in their average draft position. Otters and Arizona follow closely afterwards. It's tough to say in regards to fantasy points, but in terms of points given up, NOLA has been near the top of the league so far this season and has exceeded their average position in my eyes. One very high Sabercats pick is definitely a fun outlier.

Like I said, I hope that the research and graphs will be graded in a different way than just word count here.

[ValorX77]

Great writeup! @JuOSu

[TeyonSchavari]

I love this! I did one of these myself last year (pretty sure someone else did too) so I know how tedious it can be. Would you happen to have a spreadsheet of the complete ADP of all players regardless of position @JuOSu?

[Murtsi]

Really interesting stuff and great points. Thanks for the analysis!

[Bigred1580]

Great write up! I agree it is super fun to write about. When I did it it was very time consuming but super interesting as well

[run_CMC]

This is actually really interesting, I like it!

[tlk742]

cant even spell my name right...

[br0_0ker]

but Jones ends up a huge steal as NOLAs first WR and currently easily a top 10 WR in the league in points.

I don't know about you, but a 2 round difference in pick and getting outscored by the #7 overall WR seems like a bigger steal to me (Rod Tidwell). As well as the other 2 guys in that range who are only ~10 pts behind Jones, but went 2 rounds later on average (undrafted in most cases). Like, you can basically get a top 10 WR off the WW right now...

[AdamS]

Django was pick #14 in group 14