Dominating My Fantasy League — Week 7
Good pickups, wrong starters.
You know when you get great players and you think you’ve got this one in the bag and then during Sunday Night Football your opponent has one single guy that scores 42 points completely shifting the momentum your fantasy team had going in to the second to last game of the week? No? Too specific and just me? Well let me tell you — it STINKS. What’s worse is on my bench I had prolific players that I just didn’t start in favor of my more proven options and it was hard to watch. Let’s not harp on the negative; instead let’s talk about the pickups I made that will now spend next week dissecting and deciding who to start ahead of Week 8.
Starting with Quarterbacks — with Dak Prescott going down with a compound fracture I wanted to make sure I had two sturdy QBs on my team to choose from. Last week, I committed a major math sin — I created a sort of weighted score to measure my available players, assigning percentages, or weights, to those metrics I wanted to consider when choosing a quarterback. What I didn’t do and what makes this so terrible is I didn’t adjust for the different units. I was using per game averages, but I didn’t adjust for Yards per Games and Touchdowns per Game, two columns that read very different. Either way, I made this column and I did use it, picking up Gardner Minshew. He was to sit on my bench so it worked for the time being. This week, I wanted to go about things the right way, so I scaled all of my relevant features and combined them so everything would be comparable.
Why is scaling so important? Well the range of values can differ greatly which places unintentional emphasis on some observations while diminishing the value of others. Scaling is a big part of machine learning but I’m just doing some exploratory data analysis and making quick conclusions to change around my roster, but scaling is still important. Let’s focus on those two features I mentioned, Yards per Game and Touchdowns per Game and I’ll use Minshew as my example. After Week 5, Minshew had an average of 287.8 yards per game and 2 touchdowns per game. By combining them as is, I am equating the 2 touchdowns with 2 passing yards and frankly that’s just not one in the same. Minshew ranked third behind Rodgers and Herbert after Week 5. Now when I scaled for Week 6, Minshew sported an average 280.3 yards per game, very close to his Week 5 total and 1.83 touchdowns per game, but now scaling the values, he ranks fifth in available quarterbacks. I equated each of the following columns equally and included the negative impact of interceptions and lost fumbles in my combined score:
- Completed Passes/Game (+)
- Passes Attempted/Game (+)
- Completion Percentage (+)
- Passing Yards/Game (+)
- Passing TDs/Game (+)
- Yards/Attempt (+)
- Interceptions/Game (-)
- Lost Fumbles/Game (-)
- Rushing Yards/Game (+)
I added all these things up and subtracted my interceptions & lost fumbles to see just who is on top. Aaron Rodgers was number one with Justin Herbert, the rookie from the Los Angeles Charges coming in second. I dropped Minshew like a bad habit and grabbed Herbert. Now in terms of who I wanted to start, Rodgers was the safe choice especially going up against the Texans who allowed an average of 246 yards and 13 total touchdowns through the first 6 games. Herbert was facing the Jaguars who allowed more yards, but only slightly. Herbert throws nearly an interception per game, actually pretty good for a rookie who got thrown into the game minutes before kick off in Week 2, but Rodgers only threw .4 interceptions per game so I went with Rodgers. And he was decent. He threw for 283 yards and 4 touchdowns with no interceptions. Herbert on the other hand had an even better game — throwing for 347 yards, 3 passing touchdowns and 1 rushing touchdown. Rodgers was not a let down by any means but all of those points from Herbert! Could have been the difference of me winning versus me losing which is what happened.
I was worried about my wide receivers so I took a look at some options to have some backups and found Tyler Boyd. Prior to Week 7, Boyd had been targeted an average of 8 times per game and caught over 6 of those throws. He catches 77% of the targets he’s thrown and averages 69 yards per game. He’s only caught one touchdown, but he is a reliable wide receiver. I grabbed him and benched him (the story of my life this week) and he showed 👏🏼 up 👏🏼. Boyd was targeted 13 times, caught 11 of them, catching 84% — up from his season to date total. He caught a touchdown, doubling his touchdown count for the season as well.
While I’m “mad” that I had these guys but didn’t have them starting, I am actually really happy with the state of most my team. Now it’s just a decision on who to start based on their performance and who they’re playing for most of the positions. One place I’m still assessing is my kicker. This week CBS Sports was having data issues and didn’t have up to date information. I made a hasty decision to pick up McManus of the Broncos. McManus has tremendous power. I made my decision based on the fact that McManus not only has had more opportunities to attempt field goals from 40+ yards, he’s also hit them. I don’t mean to speak negatively on the Broncos offense, but they seem to struggle to get the ball all the way down the field, creating such opportunities. In Week 6, McManus made all 6 of his field goals, 2 from 20–29, 2 from 40–49 and 2 from 50+. He scored all of the Broncos points for the game and 24 fantasy points. So come Sunday I was excited. He averages 10.5 fantasy points per game. You know what I didn’t look at? The weather in Denver. It was SNOWING on Sunday. Snowing is the enemy of kickers. McManus did manage to make his one field goal attempt and scored an extra point. Kicking is about opportunities. Kicking is also totally about the weather.
So I’m 2–4. I was ahead for so long, but I think I do mainly have the tools to win next week. My focus will be understanding my Quarterbacks and their opponents, choosing amongst my many wide receivers and deciding on a kicker. And yes, I will be checking the weather this week.
Check out my github for all my analysis.
