This is the first in a series of blog posts leading up to the start of the NFL Season this Thursday night, September 6th between the Falcons and the Eagles. I decided instead of writing another super long post, it was better to break it up a bit. This post is dedicated to predicting the final fantasy football points for NFL QB’s.
First a little background. I’ve participated in Fantasy Football (FF) leagues for a very long time. Just like anybody else, I would go to draft parties at somebody’s house or a local sports bar. I would spend lots of money downloading and/or printing all sorts of analyses from various experts in the field and draft accordingly. Then, at some point, I don’t remember when exactly, I decided no more drafting for me. It’s just easier to do an auto-draft based on criteria you feed into whatever outlet you choose to play FF. Then you can adjust as needed before the start of the season if there were some picks you didn’t like, or just leave it and see how things go.
Unfortunately I’ve never actually won a FF championship although I’ve come close a couple of times with the highest I’ve ever finished was in third place. One year, though, I went on a tear during the regular season. I started out 0-3, but went on to win every game during the FF regular season after that. For that league, only the top 4 teams made it to the playoffs. I went into those playoffs in first place…and promptly lost to the fourth place team in the semi-final round of the playoffs. So disappointing for sure!
These days I limit myself to two fantasy leagues per year. Any more than that, and you can really get lost in all that is going on around the NFL. I have one friend who loves FF so much, he participates in over a dozen leagues every year (maybe two dozen even!) I can’t imagine doing that; two for me is enough! This year I’m doing one standard FF league (free) and one survivor league (my first pay-to-play league in a very, very long time, in fact).
This year, with my new skills in machine learning, I decided to build my own predictive models for the year as a whole. I’m currently also working on weekly models as well which I hope to publish as the season continues.
For my models I used data from Pro Football Reference as well as Football Outsiders. The latter website, by the way, is an excellent source of data and analysis for pro football in the United States. I’ve read their articles for several years; I seriously doubt there is anybody better than Aaron Schatz and the rest of the writing staff there. They are to the NFL what Ken Pomeroy is to college basketball. Highly recommend both if you really enjoy statistics in sports.
As an aside, I also wanted to give props to my classmate and partner in machine learning, Ryan Frisella. He helped me to clear some fog out of my head in regards to the final predictions, and his help is greatly appreciated. Hire him! In fact, hire me too! Just a thought!
The Fantasy Points system I chose to predict is based on the Points-Per-Reception (PPR) system and has scoring broken out like this:
- 1 point per 25 yards passing
- 4 points per passing touchdown
- -2 points per interception thrown
- 1 point per reception
- 1 point per 10 yards rushing/receiving
- 6 points per TD
- 2 points per two-point conversion
- -2 points per fumbles lost
Different outlets have different scoring systems, and in some cases, League Commissioners can adjust the scoring of their leagues as they see fit. One year I was in a league that scored defensive players. That turned out to be my worst performance in a FF league ever! I had no idea what to do with my defensive players!
All right, all that aside, it’s time to take a look at my top 15 projected PPR Fantasy Points for NFL QB’s this year. Keep in mind, these projections assume that these players will be playing in all 16 games in the regular season. (Quick note, you should be able to hover over the bars below to see the total points for each QB).
I don’t really characterize this as too much of a surprise. Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay), obviously, is hungry after having only played seven games last year because of injury. He also just signed a four-year extension worth $134 million. The man has been a beast for FF players year after year, and intuitively it makes sense that he would be at the top of the leader board here.
Drew Brees (New Orleans) also signed a contract extension during this off season and has also been a pretty good QB to keep on your team.
Last year, Russell Wilson (Seattle), finished first for QB’s in PPR Scoring, and he falls to third in my projections. Tom Brady, another “good” QB to have on your team (sorry, not sorry, not a fan) led the league in passing yards last year and is projected to finish fifth in my projections.
Moving on down, in 11th place is Carson Wentz (Philadelphia), and this is where I feel that my model falls a bit flat. Carson had a tremendous season last year before it was cut short due to injury. With that in mind and only two years of data for my model (I don’t take into account any college football statistics), it’s not surprising that his projected points are lower than I would like. However, he has some pretty high expectations this year, and I’m sure he’ll surpass my projections assuming he stays healthy.
Rounding out the top 15 is Alex Smith (Washington), the only QB in this top 15 to be playing with a new team this year, and Jameis Winston (Tampa Bay) who will miss the first three games of the season due to a suspension. It will be interesting to see if he can make it up in fantasy points this year.
So that’s it for now. I’ll see if I can get out the Running Back projections in the next 24 hours or so, then the WR’s and then the TE’s.