So as some of you may know, I first heard about this site from a fantasy football site, fleaflicker. I love fantasy football and being a league commissioner which has led to my desire to be a GM here. So, when I saw that the NSFL has fantasy football too, I was pretty excited. I also enjoy stats and analytical break-downs. So here's a little of both based off of last year's data only.
First, I wanted to take a look at which positions would be important to prioritize in the draft. Obviously, QBs are important, and TPE makes someone play better, but maybe it would be smart to prioritize my picks at a different, more valuable position? So, I ran a test to find the standard deviation from the mean for each position's seasonal and weekly fantasy point totals. What this essentially measures is how closely the scores are packed in together. The lower the standard deviation, the more closely aligned the data points are. This is important because a position with a high standard deviation would have players who truly excel more than the rest (or just suck a whole lot more than the rest). That would make this a more important position to target with higher round picks that a position in which almost all players score about the same amount. So, here's what I found:
![[Image: jblL54G.png?1]](https://i.imgur.com/jblL54G.png?1)
As you can see, in terms of deviation from the mean, QB is right there in the middle. Remember, the lower standard deviation, the more closely the totals are aligned, and the higher the standard deviation, the more high scoring players stand out above the rest. This would mean then, that WR and RB would be the most important positions to target early in the draft---not QB. This isn't that surprising, it's how fantasy football works in "real life" as well. Of course, it's not how you'd draft a real team, but in scoring fantasy points, most QBs are middle of the pack. Tight Ends in our system, all score about the same. When looking at average points scored though, I was surprised to find that Kickers and Defense scored a lot more points than I thought, even up there with the RBs and WRs. There isn't as much variance as WR and RB, but it might make them a higher priority than TE, for example.
Next, I wanted to look at how draft position affected championship contention. The graphic below shows of the 11 groups that played last year, how many champions came from each draft position. It also shows the average total fantasy points of all teams who drafted in those positions.
![[Image: bHGmT7k.png?1]](https://i.imgur.com/bHGmT7k.png?1)
As you can see, teams who drafted in the #5 and #6 spots overall won more than half of the leagues. That's not an insignificant margin! Teams in the #6 position scored on average 197.14 points more than those in the #1 position. It seems like it would really be an advantage to pick later in the draft (lucky me, I have #6OA). And in case you were wondering, @Bwestfield picked #1OA last year, so he didn't have this advantage.
Then, I wanted to look at which players would be the most helpful in winning a fantasy championship. In other words, what are the most common players on the championship rosters? This next picture shows how many fantasy championship teams each player was on. One might surmise that the more often a player showed up on a fantasy roster, the more helpful the player might be in winning the championship.
![[Image: GALj3np.png?1]](https://i.imgur.com/GALj3np.png?1)
Some really interesting stuff here. Most people would have guessed that Yates would be a staple on championship teams, but who would have thought that Orosz would be the most common QB? I think this might be a coincidence in fact, and have more to do with the draft position of the teams that picked them up. This is because Orosz was only the 5th best fantasy QB last year. Also, 3 of the 5 championship teams he was on picked him from the #5 or #6 spot. Akselson was notably missing from championship teams--probably due to his sucky season--but he was still the #3 QB in fantasy points scored. Had Akselsen had a season more representative of the talent he is, I think we would have seen a different result. Blocksdale doesn't have the excuse of a biased sim, though, as he was the #2 QB in fantasy points scored last year and wasn't on a single winning team.
Another surprise to see on so many championship teams? Law. I was totally expecting to see DiMirio as the most common TE, but he wasn't (although he was still on a lot of them). I'm not really sure how to interpret it other than that championship winning users didn't want to pick DiMirio as highly as he was being drafted and so prioritized other positions more.
Mackworthy was also interesting to see so commonly on fantasy winning teams. But it's interesting to note that all three winning teams who drafted him utilized him in the FLEX spot. Which means the likely had a higher-scoring RB as a starter.
Finally, I was surprised to see so many of the same defenses as 10 of the 11 championship teams had either SJS, YKW or OCO.
The last way I looked at the data from last year was by taking the standard deviation of the fantasy points score in each group. For this, I elimted the teams that drafted less than half their team as this would have skewed the data too much. What we see is that some teams were a lot more competitive than others.
![[Image: f7Co1Dc.png?1]](https://i.imgur.com/f7Co1Dc.png?1)
For example, groups 5, 8, and 10 were very competitive. So I think more kudos deserved to those winners (@ErMurazor, @`BayleyIsland`, @ckroyal92) than the winners of the less competitive groups like group 11 (sorry @speculadora).
That's all that I have! Hopefully it was interesting in some way and who know, maybe your own interpretation of the data might make your team better as we are now in the midst of drafting. Let me know your thoughts!
First, I wanted to take a look at which positions would be important to prioritize in the draft. Obviously, QBs are important, and TPE makes someone play better, but maybe it would be smart to prioritize my picks at a different, more valuable position? So, I ran a test to find the standard deviation from the mean for each position's seasonal and weekly fantasy point totals. What this essentially measures is how closely the scores are packed in together. The lower the standard deviation, the more closely aligned the data points are. This is important because a position with a high standard deviation would have players who truly excel more than the rest (or just suck a whole lot more than the rest). That would make this a more important position to target with higher round picks that a position in which almost all players score about the same amount. So, here's what I found:
As you can see, in terms of deviation from the mean, QB is right there in the middle. Remember, the lower standard deviation, the more closely the totals are aligned, and the higher the standard deviation, the more high scoring players stand out above the rest. This would mean then, that WR and RB would be the most important positions to target early in the draft---not QB. This isn't that surprising, it's how fantasy football works in "real life" as well. Of course, it's not how you'd draft a real team, but in scoring fantasy points, most QBs are middle of the pack. Tight Ends in our system, all score about the same. When looking at average points scored though, I was surprised to find that Kickers and Defense scored a lot more points than I thought, even up there with the RBs and WRs. There isn't as much variance as WR and RB, but it might make them a higher priority than TE, for example.
Next, I wanted to look at how draft position affected championship contention. The graphic below shows of the 11 groups that played last year, how many champions came from each draft position. It also shows the average total fantasy points of all teams who drafted in those positions.
As you can see, teams who drafted in the #5 and #6 spots overall won more than half of the leagues. That's not an insignificant margin! Teams in the #6 position scored on average 197.14 points more than those in the #1 position. It seems like it would really be an advantage to pick later in the draft (lucky me, I have #6OA). And in case you were wondering, @Bwestfield picked #1OA last year, so he didn't have this advantage.
Then, I wanted to look at which players would be the most helpful in winning a fantasy championship. In other words, what are the most common players on the championship rosters? This next picture shows how many fantasy championship teams each player was on. One might surmise that the more often a player showed up on a fantasy roster, the more helpful the player might be in winning the championship.
Some really interesting stuff here. Most people would have guessed that Yates would be a staple on championship teams, but who would have thought that Orosz would be the most common QB? I think this might be a coincidence in fact, and have more to do with the draft position of the teams that picked them up. This is because Orosz was only the 5th best fantasy QB last year. Also, 3 of the 5 championship teams he was on picked him from the #5 or #6 spot. Akselson was notably missing from championship teams--probably due to his sucky season--but he was still the #3 QB in fantasy points scored. Had Akselsen had a season more representative of the talent he is, I think we would have seen a different result. Blocksdale doesn't have the excuse of a biased sim, though, as he was the #2 QB in fantasy points scored last year and wasn't on a single winning team.
Another surprise to see on so many championship teams? Law. I was totally expecting to see DiMirio as the most common TE, but he wasn't (although he was still on a lot of them). I'm not really sure how to interpret it other than that championship winning users didn't want to pick DiMirio as highly as he was being drafted and so prioritized other positions more.
Mackworthy was also interesting to see so commonly on fantasy winning teams. But it's interesting to note that all three winning teams who drafted him utilized him in the FLEX spot. Which means the likely had a higher-scoring RB as a starter.
Finally, I was surprised to see so many of the same defenses as 10 of the 11 championship teams had either SJS, YKW or OCO.
The last way I looked at the data from last year was by taking the standard deviation of the fantasy points score in each group. For this, I elimted the teams that drafted less than half their team as this would have skewed the data too much. What we see is that some teams were a lot more competitive than others.
For example, groups 5, 8, and 10 were very competitive. So I think more kudos deserved to those winners (@ErMurazor, @`BayleyIsland`, @ckroyal92) than the winners of the less competitive groups like group 11 (sorry @speculadora).
That's all that I have! Hopefully it was interesting in some way and who know, maybe your own interpretation of the data might make your team better as we are now in the midst of drafting. Let me know your thoughts!
![[Image: 56106_s.gif]](https://signavatar.com/56106_s.gif)
![[Image: h5Ta7H1.png]](https://i.imgur.com/h5Ta7H1.png)
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![[Image: rq0K779.png]](https://i.imgur.com/rq0K779.png)
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