Statistics – Page 2 – Byron Cobalt's Lazy Analysis

Patrick Mahomes Just Had The Worst Week of the Fantasy Season So Far – Fantasy Games Won (FGW) Week 7 Update

If I were a bit more liberal with specificity in my headlines, the title would read like this:

Patrick Mahomes Negatively Impacted His Fantasy Owners More Than Any Other Player Has in a Single Week So Far This Season – Fantasy Games Won (FGW) Week 7 Update

Mahomes just scored 8.74 points last week. That might seem like a surprising number to earn “worst week of the year” with. Here’s how it stacks up with the second worst week of the year by FGW standards: Aaron Rodgers’ Week 1.

You Had One Job…and it was to Draft Jalen Hurts – Fantasy Games Won (FGW) Week 6 Update

The above advice is directed at any fantasy managers that used the Late Round Quarterback strategy this year, or fantasy managers that played in leagues with average joes where quarterbacks are just irresistible after that draft bell goes off.

Before explaining this, I’ve decided to start aligning the metric to ADP alongside the usual numbers. It seems like at least 25% of people that have followed this metric this year have come away thinking Fantasy Games Won is already a metric measuring games won vs. ADP. It’s an understandable intuition – after all, the (arguably) main way you win in fantasy is via maximizing value at each draft pick/auction dollar.

The metric isn’t that, though. It’s measuring games won vs. average performance. So the first rounders should have higher FGW scores than the second rounders, and so on.

So I’ve begun calculating Draft-adjusted Fantasy Games Won (dFGW) so that we can not only track player performance, but player value as well.

Picking Dalvin Cook Over Derrick Henry Probably Cost You A Win Already – Fantasy Games Won (FGW) Week 5 Update

I had the 3rd pick in the first Fantasy Football draft I took part in this year. Was pretty excited when #2 took Derrick Henry over Dalvin Cook. Condescendingly excited. Doesn’t this guy know we play half-PPR? The Titans lost their coordinator! What a hype-chaser.

Wasn’t the first time I underrated Derrick Henry.

One of my eyeball metrics for measuring how good a college running back will do in the NFL is how hard they hit the hole. I ended up with a lot of Justin Forsett just before his breakout, having remembered his college tape. I had made the claim during a Bama game that Henry doesn’t hit the hole hard enough. On something like the next play, he picked up the easiest 8 yards up the middle I’ve ever seen; it looked like the defensive line was playing two-hand touch.

It was an optical illusion: Henry doesn’t need to try hard, at all, to slam it up the hole.

Let’s recap Week 5 before I start getting hits from incognito searches. Here is where I detail how the FGW metric works.

Week 5 Winners and Week 5 Losers

Allen Robinson, Captain of the Titanic – Fantasy Games Won (FGW) Week 4 Update

After week 3, the most obviously revelation of the FGW metric was the consistent awesomeness of Cooper Kupp; a player that was relatively unheralded this year compared to his performance. He was consistently great, but not earth-shatteringly so.

On the flipside, after week 4, FGW is confirming the punishing nature of Allen Robinson’s first quarter of 2021. Everyone knows A-Rob has been a lead anchor for fantasy teams so far. No surprise that’s he’s just about fallen to (just about) the bottom of the FGW leaderboard.

Week 4 Winners and Losers

Cooper Kupp Lifts You Up – Fantasy Games Won (FGW) Week 3 Update

Week 3 has seen some quarterbacks get their season on track (Josh Allen, Justin Herbert), some in-game injuries sink some weeks (Christian McCaffrey, AJ Brown), but most notably by FGW measurement…

Cooper Kupp is easily the MVP of Fantasy Football through week 3.

Before getting to that, a look at the Week 3 helped-you-winners and helped-you-losers.

Who won the week?

Week 2 FGW Update: Congrats to all the 2-0 Kyler Murray owners

With week 2 in the books, we now have a Leaderboard to track. But first, let’s break down the week 2 results.

For an explanation on FGW, I wrote that up here: Introducing the Fantasy Game Wins (FGW) Fantasy Football Player Scoring System.

Who won you the week?

Introducing the Fantasy Game Wins (FGW) Fantasy Football Player Scoring System

I’ve always had a problem with using Points Scored as the primary measure of value for players in fantasy football.

This might seem like an odd complaint – after all, the team with the most points wins, right?

But that’s exactly it. The goal of fantasy football is to win, not to score points. And to win, you only need to score more points than your opponent. Playoff tiebreakers notwithstanding, any points you score beyond getting 0.01 more than your opponent are worthless. Same goes for any points scored in a losing effort.

If you’re disagreeing with me so far, you might be thinking: “I know I need to win, but I don’t know what my opponent is going to score in a given week. I’m trying to maximize points scored!”

Almost. You’re trying to maximize the chance that your points scored will be greater than your opponent. Here’s why that’s different.