Fantasy Football IQ (#2): Winning Your League in the First Round, T.Y. Hilton’s Value, and Game Theory

In this version of the Fantasy Football IQ, we look at articles on first round picks, T.Y. Hilton, Game Theory, and DraftKings Best Ball Strategy.

August 11, 2020 - by Jason Lisk

Fantasy Football IQ is back again, where we highlight fantasy football analysis from around the web that we find interesting and insightful.

High IQ Fantasy Football Articles: August 11th, 2020 Edition

With football ramping up, here’s some fantasy research from the last week that expanded our minds:

1. Footballguys: Winning your league in the first round
2. 4for4: Why T.Y. Hilton should see a bump with Philip Rivers at QB
3. FantasyPros: Some lessons from game theory, and how a contestant once turned the prisoner’s dilemma on its head
4. Establish The Run: Best Ball Strategy for DraftKings

Note: Many of the sites publishing the highest quality fantasy football research are, unsurprisingly, premium sites. So you may need to purchase a subscription to read the full articles mentioned below. We’ll tell you why we think the analysis is valuable, and you can make that decision for yourself. 

You Can Win Your League With the First Round Pick (Footballguys)

Adam Harstad of Footballguys turned the axiom “you can’t win your league in the first round, but can lose it” on its head last week. He looked at actual scoring from first round picks to show that, in truth, hitting the correct first round pick goes a lot further toward winning leagues than busts do toward losing them.

Christian McCaffrey was an outlier last year, turning in one of the greatest seasons in fantasy football history. (His was one of those three 450+ point campaigns I mentioned earlier.) But it’s typical for the difference between a great first-round pick and an average first-round pick to be 100+ points. …

In fact, in nine of the last ten seasons, the 6th-most-valuable running back was closer in value to the 24th-most-valuable running back than he was to the most-valuable running back. (2018 was the lone exception.) In half of those seasons, the top running back either doubled up the value of the #6 running back or came within a touchdown of doing so. Wide receiver shows similar patterns.

Our Take: You win fantasy football leagues by getting the most points in your starting lineup, and nowhere do those points get in your lineup more than most first round picks. Add in the high variation that Harstad noted between the top performers each year and others that still finish in the top 10, and identifying elite outlier potential is valuable in fantasy.

Even though our projections are more conservative and not focused on the “best case scenario,” we see this trend in our PPR RB projections. The difference between Christian McCaffrey and Joe Mixon (10th-highest points projection) is 120 points, the same difference as between Mixon and the 55th-highest projected running back. Avoiding busts, and getting upside, are both considerations right away in drafts.

Read the post on Winning Your League in the First Round on Footballguys

 

Philip Rivers Could Be Great For T.Y. Hilton (4for4)

C.D. Carter of 4for4.com looked into Philip Rivers’ potential impact for a T.Y. Hilton bounce back season. After noting that Rivers attempted twice as many deep throws last year as Jacoby Brissett (62 versus 28), Carter wrote:

A meager 16% of Brissett’s attempts over his career have been more than 15 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. Meanwhile, nearly 20% of Rivers’s attempts have traveled that distance. The old guy hasn’t lost his downfield feistiness either: last year, Rivers attempted throws of at least 15 yards on 21.9% of his attempts. They weren’t all that good—his adjusted yards per attempt dipped considerably compared to his career numbers—but the tries were there. Consider it a moral victory for Hilton in 2020.

Our Take: Rivers is one of the familiar faces in a new place in Fantasy Football, and his style could not be more different than last year’s starter in Indianapolis, Jacoby Brissett. Brissett is conservative, avoids turnovers, takes sacks, and doesn’t push the ball downfield. Rivers will risk throwing interceptions but make throws. Looking at last year’s Colts team splits probably won’t tell you much.

Hilton does turn 31 years old this year and is coming off a year where he was injured, so there is some risk that he doesn’t bounce back fully healthy. But if he does, he should be the clear top receiver in Indianapolis, on a team that should pass for more than 4,000 yards with the change at QB.

Read about how T.Y. Hilton Could Be Great With Philip Rivers on 4for4.com

 

This Lesson from Game Theory will Change How You Draft Forever (FantasyPros)

David Giardino of FantasyPros went into some game theory with a cool story about Nick Corrigan, his appearance on the British game show, and how he manipulated the prisoner’s dilemma and engaged in a strategy that was unconventional.

We don’t like to admit it, but the research is emphatic: we often make decisions based less on what they will achieve, and more on how they will look. This concept, known as herd behavior, might affect everything from what restaurant we choose to dine in to what clothes we decide to buy. …

Fantasy football drafts are exercises in herd behavior. Mock draft platforms reward us for choosing players in a certain, conventional order. On draft day, we power up our fantasy modules, which include built-in player rankings, overtly framing which players are “supposed” to be drafted, and when.

Our Take: Average draft position is a useful tool, to get a general sense of how drafts are likely to proceed. But being entirely bound by it can lead to Group Think. It’s also slow to respond to changes and news, such as injury impacts. And as drafts proceed, there’s not much difference in expectation between players a round or two apart in ADP. We’ll write about it more in the future, but the best drafters use ADP information to decide when to pull the trigger on players they want, so they get the most value on the roster.

Read This Lesson from Game Theory Will Change How You Draft Forever on FantasyPros

 

DraftKings Best Ball Strategy (Establish the Run)

DraftKings launched their new Best Ball format fantasy games on August 3rd. Adam Levitan of Establish The Run went through some strategy on roster construction. For those that are unfamiliar, in Best Ball leagues you build your roster and then make no further transactions, and don’t set weekly lineups. You get the highest scorers at each starting position each week, among those on your roster. Here is Levitan on running backs:

The data shows that the market is over-investing in the RB position. Winning roster trends included taking RBs in the early rounds, but not taking a lot of them. Mike Leone investigated that here. Of course that strategy opens ourselves up to downside at the most injury-prone (and worst job security) position, but we are not overly concerned with floor in this format. We are going for first place.

Note that the usability rate drops off far steeper at RB vs. WR. Generally speaking, we do not want our double-digit round flier selections to be at RB. We want our RBs early in Best Ball, but want fewer of them than the field will take. Furthermore, we do not want to block our upside by handcuffing any of our early-round RBs.

Our Take: Best Ball can be a great format if you want to have some contests or leagues where you get the strategy and thrill of drafting against other competitors, but don’t want to continually monitor and make decisions after the season begins. Because of the format, you need to adopt some different strategies, and paying attention to how you allocate your resources for the best chance to get a great score is very important. To maximize your chances, you have to take risks and treat it differently than you might in a season-long league where half the teams make the playoffs.

Read DraftKings Best Ball Strategy on Establish the Run

 

Past Versions of Fantasy Football IQ

Fantasy Football IQ #1: Zero RB Strategy, QB Bust Rates, Austin Ekeler’s Value