Before I hit on the overall point of this edition, I just wanted to update my readers on the unfortunate circumstances of my Week 15. I am missing out on the Championship game this year (playing for 3rd place, which is still worth some prize money). I got beat by the team in my league who, after our draft was completed on Summerslam Sunday, I felt had the best draft on a round by round basis, so I'm not too upset about the loss in that regard. Rivalries do exist in my 8 man league amongst friends, but the guy who I played this week has been a solid owner, a great trade partner, and a guy who trusts in the guys he drafts (he had the fewest roster moves in our league). I lost this week because of something I wrote about in my 3rd blog: TOO MANY PLAYERS FROM THE SAME TEAM. I wrote in that blog that you could do this to an extent, but if you had more than one member of the Giants or Packers this week, you are likely resigned to the same fate I am. I started Aaron Rodgers, who delivered 24.60 fantasy points in my league, a total that, for most any other QB, is acceptable. For Rodgers, it was his 3rd worst total of the season. I also had Mason Crosby (2 pts) and the Green Bay Defense (1 pt). If anyone out there foresaw zero sacks and zero turnovers from the Packer defense this week, you are a liar. My studs simply did not perform. My whole lineup was Rodgers, Nicks, AJ Green, Santana Moss, Ray Rice, Helu, Felix Jones, Owen Daniels, Crosby and GB's Defense. That roster of top notch studs got me an underwhelming 90.50 pts and a place in the 3rd place game. I'll probably go for 150 next week.
Now that I've vented, I wanted to extend a word of warning to those owners still involved in their league's championship round (or Semi-Finals if you're in a brutal league that includes Week 17). Don't ever EVER trust the default projections that your league host provides you. I use Yahoo to host my league and I always find their projections to be on the conservative side. ESPN has everyone projected to score a TD, so that's a bit insane. I don't know how CBS or NFL.com projects their scoring, but no matter how you look at it, you are a fool to trust projections. If you are plugging in a lineup based on the highest projected score, you are not using critical thinking and you are trusting a computer to generate a lineup for you based on what exactly? ESPN had Percy Harvin projected at 14.7 pts (87 Yards & 1 TD). Yahoo had him projected at 9.82 (I guess that's 37 Total Yards, 3 Passing Yards & 1 TD?). The average there is 12.26. You would most certainly have taken that in most cases from a WR2 like Harvin. He gave you 0.7 this week. No one projected that. Now, based on the last few weeks, no one was benching Harvin. He has been an absolute monster the last 4 weeks and was one of the hotter starts in all of Fantasy Football. No one had Drew Brees projected at 44.88 or Calvin Johnson at 33.4. Projections cannot possibly consider gameflow or situations. You are short changing yourself by trusting projected points as a top tool for lineup decisions.
Here's the point: When you trust projections to plug in your weekly lineup, you are throwing out matchups, intangibles, and all aspects of critical thinking. My plea since Blog 1 has been to use your own judgement when plugging in a lineup. If you like a guy who is projected at 5.5 and you don't play him because someone else was projected at 8.4, you are robbing yourself of the opportunity to play manager and outthink your opponent. We all like checking our rosters on Tuesday morning and seeing that we've got an RB projected at 20 pts, but when that guy fails to meet those lofty expectations, you're left disappointed. If you are someone who uses projections in factoring your lineup decisions, you are not wrong for doing so, but you don't know where these numbers come from and you shouldn't trust that the number is the letter of the law. Plug in your lineup based on your own hunches, how guys are playing, their matchup, and how you can possibly offset points from your opponent.
Good luck in Week 16! Many championships will be won this week and if you are in this spot, use the judgement you've used to get to this point. It will not fail you at this point.
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I always wonder who or what creates the fantasy projections each week. There are many times were I look at the projections between my team and my opponent's and I feel like throwing in the towel as there is no possible way I can over come that deficit; then I end up winning.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct when the projections do not take gameflow or situations into consideration. I have found that they also do not realistically take into account hot streaks in both players and teams and they do not accurately reflect the match-up on the field. For example, a team may have great overall Defensive numbers but they might not be great at preventing short routes, what happens, the opposing QB will have low projections. However, if this QB's offense specializes in these type of routes then the projections can be off. This is just one overly simplized example of many, just to highlight the need to understand your players and the match-up of the week.
Always trust your own research and analysis when deciding who to start and who to sit. You drafted, traded for, or picked up the players and you know who they are playing this upcomming week. You also watch, listen, and read football news so you know the general trend of what is going on.
On a side note, looking at the match-up of GB and KC it looked like GB would have a high scoring game and be able to shut down KC's offense, especially with Orton coming off of an injury to his finger. I saw three GB players on the opposing match-up screen and did think I was in serious trouble, especially when one of them is Aaron Rodgers. I got lucky this week in overcoming that obstacle. In a loose tie in to the projection point, these GB players had high projections but what was not taken into consideration was going undefeated is extremely difficult and replicating those type of numbers week in and week out is equally as difficult.
I am not a fan of having more than two players from the same team in my line-up. You never know when a game can go sour quickly or if in general it is just a bad match-up for that team. Your eggs are all in one basket. What can also happen is that the team does well but you have three of the players that did not perform well that game, i.e. a running back going off for 200+ yards and 2 TDs, yet you only have the QB, WR, and K.
P.S. Thanks for the respectful words on our match-up last week. Good luck going forward.