Dynasty Content

One of my goals this offseason was to quantitatively find out when to grab certain positions in a standard serpentine draft. Here are the parameters I used behind the curtain to yield these results:

The top-24 quarterbacks from the past three seasons were charted based based on their positional rank and average draft position (ADP). The draft data was compiled from MyFantasyLeague.com’s completed drafts after August 15^th of each season. Next, average value theory (AVT) was used to provide an expected value (PPG) for every player based on their positional rank in the draft. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest ways to find an edge in dynasty leagues is acquiring undervalued receivers on the cheap. Receivers have a long shelf life and can stock a dynasty roster with usable production and trade value for years to come. A key component to finding these receivers is using PFF’s snap data. Full-time starting receivers in the NFL average 900+ snaps a season. The snap count on this search is capped at 500 snaps from 2011 data. This gives the targets plenty of room to improve on their 2011 numbers.  Other factors include: age, efficiency, potential upside, and acquisition cost. Read the rest of this entry »

The inclusion of the risk of a decrease in positional relevancy, as I previously discussed, made a sizable but still insufficient decrease to the present-day worth of the future fantasy points of wide receiver Joseph Hands. Hands was a useful placeholder to help build a framework for valuation. That framework is now in place, and so now it is time to replace him with real players.

I have established that the factors that devalue even a perfect player’s future contributions are the preference for immediate consumption, opportunity cost, and potential loss of positional value. A real player introduces additional risk. First, his career is finite, which caps the ceiling of his production. Second, his value can change from year to year because of changes in his level of play, injuries, randomness—which includes sample-size factors such as changes in catch rate, touchdown rate, and offensive snaps played—and situation.

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Now that the Super Bowl is over, we can finally close the book the 2011 season. It is easy to forget we almost did not have football this year due to the lockout, and we still had one of the most exciting seasons in recent memory. While many fantasy football owners go into hibernation in the off-season, dynasty owners are just getting started for 2012 and beyond.

Last weekend I published the first edition of my 2012 dynasty rankings. You may find where I rank some players surprising, but a lot can change with free agency and the NFL Draft. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the best ways to improve your fantasy football dynasty acumen is to study other initial dynasty drafts. This article takes an initial dynasty draft and breaks it down team by team. I was involved in this draft as the owner of team #12.

League Name: Maximum Security Dynasty League, hosted by MyFantasyLeague.com

Draft Start Date: January 28, 2012 Read the rest of this entry »

Making the switch from IDP to Dynasty, my new boss Bryan Fontaine recommended that my first piece be a look at a prospect that performed better than I expected in his rookie year. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), there were not many offensive players who fit that bill. For starters, there were a ton of rookies injured or that weren’t, well, “starters”.  I am also a very conservative grader and the only wide receivers that I was very high on were A.J. Green and Julio Jones – though that doesn’t make me a unique snowflake. Still, some hyped Torrey Smith as a first round pick and I wasn’t ready to do that. So, what did I think about the Baltimore Ravens wideout in his rookie year and where should we go from there?

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In my last article, I took the first step in assigning a current price to the future value of a dynasty keeper, but Joseph Hands, my hypothetical player, was worth more than the budget could allow. In order to make the sample easy, I excluded the risk that Hands could see changes in his performance and the risk that the scoring environment could change. First, I will reintroduce the latter.

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Updated: February 4, 2012

One of the new features for our dynasty rankings is a player category (CAT). Descriptions of these categories are as follows:

Cornerstone Player (C) – Elite level talents with three or more productive seasons remaining.
Transition Player (T) – Players with three or less productive seasons remaining. These players are buy candidates for contending teams or sell candidates for rebuilding teams.
Foundation Player (F) – Players with three or more productive seasons remaining that are the core of your team.

These rankings are based on PPR scoring formats. Read the rest of this entry »

Updated: February 6, 2012

These dynasty rankings are geared towards rebuilding dynasty teams and owners looking to build a true dynasty over the next three-plus fantasy seasons. Youth and potential upside are valued highly and players with few remaining high-level seasons ranking lower on the positional lists. Unless a player is a clear difference-maker at a position in terms of fantasy points per game, they have limited long-term value because of their age. Every season new crop of rookies will quickly pass them in terms of production and trade value with their youth and upside. Read the rest of this entry »

With the regular season in the books it’s time to look back at the some of the advanced data we collect at Pro Football Focus with an eye to finding some IDP sleepers for next season, as well as players who may be vulnerable to seeing a decline in their fantasy value. Firstly we’ll cast our gaze to the Defensive Ends who, as the NFL becomes even more pass-happy, are getting more opportunities to take over a game with their big plays.

Over-Achievers

We’ll start by identifying players who may see their fantasy significance fall in 2011. Defensive Ends who recorded 7 or more sacks, but had the least amount of pressures (combined hits and hurries) are players who were productive but also somewhat fortuitous. Calais Campbell was a top 5 DE this year as he had a career high 9 sacks, but he only generated 38 pressures, 8^th worst. Although you would expect the former Miami Hurricane to be an improving player in his 4^th year, the 47 QBIs (QB interruptions – combined sacks, hits and hurries) he recorded from 567 pass-rush snaps means he disrupted the play on only 8.29% of his blitzes, 4^th worst. Read the rest of this entry »