Sports & Fantasy Sports Blog

Author: Billy Jones Introduction Hey football analytics fam, I am back with another 2023 NFL Draft reaction blog. In this blog I will be commenting on my hometown Atlanta Falcons first round selection of star running back Bijan Robinson with the #8 overall pick. On ESPN I saw videos of Falcons fans rejoicing at local bars after the pick, but  I had a different reaction. My reaction was filled with four letter expletives, and I even threw up a tweet about how the Falcons needed to get their shit together or I’ll have to switch my allegiances to my fiancée’s hometown team (fortunately she is from Philadelphia and the Eagles could be a fun bandwagon to jump on). My frustration with the pick is not that the Falcons drafted the best running back prospect in recent memory but around the concept of continued poor roster construction by Terry Fontenot. This pick completely ignored the concept of positional value/cost and Fontenot has now selected 2 non-premium position players in the last 3 dr

Author: Billy Jones Introduction Last night's draft was crazy. I flew to Denver for a business trip and landed about 15 minutes before the draft started. I wasn’t able to watch the first five picks live on television, but I was kept up to date through twitter and a couple different group chats I had going with my buddies. The top of the draft started with a bang within the first 3 picks and the wildness continued throughout the night as we saw multiple trades as well as players go way earlier and later than expected and some weren’t even picked at all. There is so much to unpack from what went down and therefore I wanted to do a couple quick blog posts on some of the shenanigans of the night (and what will inevitably ensue this weekend). Logically the place to start is at the beginning so in this first post I am going to unpack my thoughts on the Houston Texans trade up to pick #3 to select Will Anderson from Alabama. Trade Details Houston Texans Acquire 2023 #3 pick 2023 #105 Ariz

Author: Bill Jones Introduction Welcome to the second part of my blog series where I perform an analytical review for tight end fantasy performance from 2022. In this blog, we will be continuing our review of the tight end in the 2022 season through the lenses of a few classic statistical measures. To better understand the performance of tight ends, we will be utilizing the simple statistics of average and standard deviation to further understand 2022 player production. By doing so, we will hope to uncover trends and patterns in the data and gain insights into tight end fantasy production. So, whether you're a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to the world of fantasy football, this blog will provide valuable insights into the performance of tight ends in the 2022 season, so let’s get started! Statistics 101 As we continue our analytical review, we are going to use specific data science concepts as tools to help us gain insights. As referenced in the intro, this blog will be using aver

Author: Billy Jones Introduction Hey football analytics fam, welcome back to my blog where I write about my football analytics studies! As we march towards the NFL draft, I'm excited to continue diving into NFL athletic testing data. Last week, I explored Los Angeles Chargers' GM Tom Telesco's preference for drafting bigger wide receivers. In this week’s blog I am taking a different perspective and performing some analytics on wide receivers drafted in recent memory (or projected to be drafted for the 2023 class) at a more macro level. This was a fun study, and I am excited to share my results so let's get started! Ground Rules Before we jump into the analytics, I would like to remind the readers of the ground rules we will be playing with. The data used for this analysis was obtained from draft and combine data from Pro-Football-Reference for 2011 through 2022, filtered to wide receivers in rounds 1 through 5. However, not all drafted players attend the combine, so to

Author: Bill Jones Introduction  Welcome to the first part of my series where I perform an analytical review for tight end fantasy performance from 2022. As a fantasy football enthusiast, I have always been fascinated by the intersection of data analytics and football. However, I have come to realize that sometimes data analytics can get a little over complicated, and the vast amount of information available can be overwhelming when looking for easy actionable insights. That's what this series is all about, clean and simple analytics to help fantasy football fans heading into the 2023 season. I will be using basic data analysis techniques to uncover trends and patterns in the performance of tight ends in the 2022 season and provide insights for fellow fantasy football enthusiasts. Whether you are a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to the world of fantasy football, I believe that this series will provide valuable insights and help you make informed decisions when it comes to your fant

Author: Billy Jones Inspiration: Paul Sabin (@SabinAnalytics/SumerSports) Introduction Hey football analytics fam, I'm excited to be back with another football analytics blog! Today's blog is another part in my Justin Fields series. In the first part of the series, I claimed that Justin Fields was a 'scrambling man' as his rushing production was highly driven by scrambles and his scrambling rates were much higher than those of his peers. Additionally, his sack rates were really high, which is concerning about his ability to read the defense pre-snap (there have been many studies about how sacks are a quarterback stat). In this blog I take a look into Justin Fields sack and scramble rates to see how he compares against the quarterback population as a whole, and not just his elite rushing quarterback peers. I am excited to see if the ‘scrambling man’ name will hold for Justin Fields as we expand the population so let's delve into data and see what insights can be unea

Author: Billy Jones Inspiration: Arjun Menon (@arjunmenon100) Introduction Hey football analytics fam, welcome back to my blog! I’m excited to share another fun topic with you all today. Recently I got in a short twitter discourse with Arjun Menon, an up-and-coming superstar in the football analytics world who works for PFF, over a data point he presented. I never really questioned his overall assertion that “Tom Telesco, Chargers GM, has a love for bigger body receivers” but I didn’t think the analysis he was presenting was very good at showing that. I thought this was an opportunity for a bit of intelligent back and forth with someone I thought highly of, so I jumped in there with some comments, but I quickly got hit with the classic “I did the work for you…” line in a matter of two tweets. Worrying about things on twitter will never be productive so I tried to move on, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the interaction. This wasn’t because I was salty or mad but because I was fasci

Author: Bill Jones Introduction Welcome to the fourth part of my blog series where I perform an analytical review for running backs fantasy performance from 2022. In this blog, we will be wrapping up our initial review of the running back in the 2022 season through the lenses of a few classic statistical measures. Just like part 2 of this series, we will be using average and standard deviation to review the consistency of performers but instead today we will be looking at attempts and yardage (touchdowns are just too low volume – the results look very wonky). So, whether you're a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to the world of fantasy football, this blog will provide valuable insights into the performance of quarterbacks in the 2022 season, so let’s get started! Statistics 101 (skip section if you read part 2 of this series) As we continue down our analytical review, we are going to use specific data science concepts as tools to help us gain insights. As referenced in the intro, thi