graphic credit: Wyn Experiences
Championship Week | Summaries by Position
QB
QB has some old names back at the top with Cam Newton and Russell Wilson as the top two, with rank and risk both pretty favorable. Tom Brady is a couple points below them and then there are four (Burger, Brees, Rivers and Stafford). I personally am done for the year after Rivers flooded my team with emptiness last week. It is surprising to see so many with a higher risk expectation this week. Not that I’m bitter…but I am (sobby, whiny, cry-baby face here for the millennials). In other news, WordPress doesn’t believe that “sobby” is a word. Interestingly, WordPress also doesn’t think “WordPress” is a word either. Interesting… Upon further review, the “P” must be capitalized. Not surprisingly, WordPress DOES believe “snobby” is a word ;D
A little further down the list finds people like Nick Foles…who I would’ve started this week over Rivers. Not to say I’m bitter…but I am. Blake Bortles has also looked great the past few weeks and I’m a bit puzzled to see him still getting no praise. Burger has been similar…but has been rewarded more appropriately by analysts. While we’re at it, I base these rankings on an average of analyst rankings, along with the standard deviation of those rankings. Thanks goes out to FantasyPros.com for some excellent data.
WR
Antonio Brown would’ve likely led this pack. The only thing to stop that was an injury. Instead, we have Michael Thomas and DeAndre Hopkins leading the pack. Keenan Allen, back from an injury himself, is just a little over a point under the top two. Adam Thielen makes up the last of the four in the upper tier group. Note that the scatter plot has four guys in a bunch in the “sweet spot”, which is the lower-left…that’s them.
Another four follow them in terms of point grouping. You’ll see that Julio Jones, Tyreek Hill, Fitzgerald and Cooks are all within two points of one another. There’s a good bit of parity within this position after that- at least in the WR2/3 realm.
One last thing to point out…don’t forget that risk can go both ways: up or down. This essentially reflects the fact that a lot of analysts were all over the place in ranking that specific player. I’ll point out Sterling Shepard. He’s sitting at a rank of 24ish. That said, he’s just as likely to finish 17th, as he is to be at 31 (roughly speaking). In other words…he has a lot of upside.
RB
You don’t need to be an “analyst” to know what the RB rankings are going to say. I expect that most, who play to this point in the season, would be roughly the same in accuracy as any random “analyst”.
That opinion aside…let’s get a few comments: #1) Le’Veon Bell is earning his paycheck #2) Gurley & Kamara are significant drops below Bell- but still well ahead of the rest of the RB1s…this shows how bloody good Bell is #3) It should be no surprise that there’s a lot of risk around Ezekiel Elliott and Kareem Hunt. They make up the next spots at 4/5. Elliott is coming off a vacation from the field, while Hunt is unpredictable…neither is ideal…but both are obvious starts (as mentioned earlier…you don’t need an “analyst” to tell you that) #4) Only other comment is to pay attention to rankings based on scoring system…you’ll notice that McCaffrey is catch dependent for his spot…he’s much further down in standard scoring
TE
Gronkowski is the man. He did everything he could last week to make up for the underperforming Rivers in my lineup. Despite his best attempts…Rivers was THAT BAD. Still…I’m not bitter. The tight end position rarely offers much of a difference each week…kinda like RB it seems…but to a higher degree. The only “fun” thing here is Anothony Fasano. He’s off the charts in unpredictability. Also, he is ranked out around 50. The “select top x” filter (it’s actually a “parameter”) should’ve cut him out. So something is clearly wrong with my dashboard there. Give me a break for now and enjoy the defect.
K
I just read over what was here last week. The story is EXACTLY the same! Without any edits…here is the story (from last week and this week):
Kicker is saved for the bottom of this list…just like DST. They’re basically what I get to at the bottom because I can just skim over them and not feel bad about it. Why would I feel bad about it? Well, they just are boring to write out. It’s sick to me to see some scoring formats that have K and DST scoring more than tier 1 RBs. C’mon people!
As for kickers, Gostkowski (as always) is the top guy. There is a bit of parity beneath him, as the rest of the players group into some visible bins. That said, don’t forget the go-to rule: Follow the QB (pick the kickers on teams with a good QB/offense).
DST
Have you ever seen the movie Tropic Thunder? There is a great line by Tom Cruise’s character in the film. This will be my first attempt to embed a video…fingers crossed…
This is to help express my feelings for analyst rankings. That said, I am trying to aggregate (basically, that’s geek for take an overall summary of all the data) out there and try to get a “wisdom of the crowd” opinion of it. So what’s my point? I was going to say that the same story from last week was true for this week in the DST spot. Well, that isn’t entirely true. The Ravens are actually the top this week. I feel like I’ve gone back in time. But…the Jags are still odd for my eyes at this point. But there you have it…Ravens, Jags, Chargers (really?!), Bears (at least they have this), followed by the rest.
That said…there is some from last week that I can repeat:
Note my intro comments to kickers…DST mirrors K quite a bit: You have one at the top and then two groups, all of which in those groups are nearly equivalent.
It is similar. But you have the Ravens…then two…then a massive group, where you could essentially flip a coin (or a few coins).
THAT’S IT! Best of luck to everyone this week!
Dashboard below…filter as needed and it should speak for itself!
