Here is my attempt at resuscitating this blog. I don't know why I bother. I'm bound to quit again after a short, fervent period of writing.
We conducted an experiment in one of my fantasy football leagues last year. We added one point for every first down for RBs and WRs. I wanted to know what effect, if any, this would have on scoring.
Points for first downs (PFFD) was negligible for WRs and somewhat impactful for RBs. In the charts below, I plotted the point differential (% increase in total fantasy points due to PFFD) for the top 100 rushers and receivers in 2014. I added a loess-smoothed line to each plot to highlight the overall trend.
You can see the trend for WRs remains largely unchanged as you go from high- to low-ranked players, i.e. the percent change is roughly equal across the board. The hump in the middle indicates that mid-tier WRs were helped slightly more than high- or low-tier WRs in terms of scoring capacity.
For RBs, there is an appreciable difference. The bottom-end RBs show an overall 15% increase in value if we add PFFD. The rich stay rich, but the poor get much richer (relative to their non-PFFD-adjusted value). This creates slightly less of a dichotomy between top- and bottom-tier RBs, and widens the pool of potentially draftable players. The RBs at the bottom end are backups and 3rd down backs who get rotated into lineups more frequently than backup and special package WRs.
What I don't have is league game data from last season to show that this had a material difference in any of our matchups. I recall there being some pretty close games, so it would be interesting to see if the change manifested in the overall standings.
So what does this mean overall? Based on the RB data, I'd suggest we get rid of PFFD (at least at the RB position). Having a wider pool of draftable players diminishes the Knowledge Advantage, and the game is random enough as it is without introducing more variables. However, given the extremely casual nature of this particular league (and, I imagine, most fantasy football leagues), I think the difference will be immaterial, so I won't cry if people want to keep it (though I will question their values and reasoning ability).
We conducted an experiment in one of my fantasy football leagues last year. We added one point for every first down for RBs and WRs. I wanted to know what effect, if any, this would have on scoring.
Points for first downs (PFFD) was negligible for WRs and somewhat impactful for RBs. In the charts below, I plotted the point differential (% increase in total fantasy points due to PFFD) for the top 100 rushers and receivers in 2014. I added a loess-smoothed line to each plot to highlight the overall trend.
You can see the trend for WRs remains largely unchanged as you go from high- to low-ranked players, i.e. the percent change is roughly equal across the board. The hump in the middle indicates that mid-tier WRs were helped slightly more than high- or low-tier WRs in terms of scoring capacity.
For RBs, there is an appreciable difference. The bottom-end RBs show an overall 15% increase in value if we add PFFD. The rich stay rich, but the poor get much richer (relative to their non-PFFD-adjusted value). This creates slightly less of a dichotomy between top- and bottom-tier RBs, and widens the pool of potentially draftable players. The RBs at the bottom end are backups and 3rd down backs who get rotated into lineups more frequently than backup and special package WRs.
What I don't have is league game data from last season to show that this had a material difference in any of our matchups. I recall there being some pretty close games, so it would be interesting to see if the change manifested in the overall standings.
So what does this mean overall? Based on the RB data, I'd suggest we get rid of PFFD (at least at the RB position). Having a wider pool of draftable players diminishes the Knowledge Advantage, and the game is random enough as it is without introducing more variables. However, given the extremely casual nature of this particular league (and, I imagine, most fantasy football leagues), I think the difference will be immaterial, so I won't cry if people want to keep it (though I will question their values and reasoning ability).
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