To help you prepare for your fantasy football draft this year, I could suggest you take Antonio Brown over Adrian Peterson. I could tell you Justin Forsett in the 2nd is idiotic. I could predict OBJ has a sophomore slump worse than The Matrix Reloaded. I could pull different stats from various sources to prove my points. And you could take this knowledge and run with it or pass it onto your friends like a game of telephone. But I don’t want to just be one of your data points. I want to help change your approach and teach you how to collect data for your fantasy football draft.
After reading my suggestions, you’d probably have some questions about my credibility, where I got my stats, how did I interpret those stats, what kind of beer I drink on NFL Sundays. Who am I to tell you who to draft? Everyone thinks they’re good at fantasy football – I don’t need another arrogant-so-called-expert-because-he-writes-articles telling me what to do. So I won’t. Instead, I’ll try to steer you in the right direction.
See, as fantasy football managers, we are simply data collectors. Some of us watch the analysts move their lips on fantasy pregame shows every Sunday morning. Some ask their friends, their spouses, their co-workers. Some get hopped up on Adderall and Mountain Dew at 2AM, scavenging Reddit, ESPN Insider, online polls and this very site. All of these sources of data become individual data points that each of us store in our mental football databases in an attempt to make better decisions about who to draft, who to start, etc.
The Proper Way to Collect Data for Fantasy Football Drafts
We all have access to the same data. The trick to becoming a better fantasy football manager is knowing which data to collect and how to analyze it. Now, I don’t have a magic solution that will guarantee you a shot at the Shiva, but I’ll give you four things to consider:
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Start with the data, not your opinion.
I mentioned earlier that I could pull different stats from various sources to prove my points. But isn’t that backwards? I can find anything on the internet as evidence to my opinions, it doesn’t mean they’re right. If I shaped my opinions based on the data, then we’re cooking with peanut oil.
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Ensure the data relates to your league’s settings.
The single most important thing every fantasy manager must do before their draft is become familiar with their league’s settings. For example, when you’re mock drafting, you better be drafting in a mock league with those exact settings, or else you’ll get a different ADP flow. On the ADP (average draft position) page of FantasyFootballCalculator, you’ll notice that in a standard league with 12 teams, Julian Edelman goes at 5.08. In a comparable league with PPR/Flex, he goes at 4.04.
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Find credible sources.
Scrolling through Reddit feeds started by strangers could result in you collecting data from a 14 year old kid in Jacksonville who drafts all Jaguars players. You also have to realize that a lot of the fantasy football shows are driven by ratings, which could skew data. Two “experts” on said shows could be assigned scripts to create tension. Collect from sources with proven track records, like this site.
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Cumulative data > a few data points.
Texting one friend on a whim before the draft is a single data point. Listening to one fantasy podcast at work is a single data point. Reading one article on NFL.com is a single data point. The more data you collect, the better. You can start to find trends and similarities across your multiple data points. This is absolutely necessary for the analytics you need to run on the data after you’ve collected it, which I’ll talk about in a future article. Now, I understand not all of us has the time to collect a lot of different data points. If that’s the case then find one reliable source as stated above, like Fantasy Couch.
Well, there you have it – now you’re a data collection expert. Hopefully this article helps with your approach, opposed to just telling you who to draft and where. Good luck finding that winning combination of players.