Sports & Fantasy Sports Blog

Author: Billy Jones Introduction Hey fantasy football fam, welcome back to my blog! In our previous discussion, we dove deep into the world of running backs production from Best Ball Mania II and III, discussing the pieces of what made up an optimal draft strategy. Now in this part of the study, inspired by an intriguing article penned by Hayden Winks of Underdog Fantasy , I switch to investigating wide receiver production under different lights and varying levels of granularity. Armed with thought-provoking visualizations, I aim to shed light on what might be the optimal draft strategies in Best Ball Mania IV. If you're a fellow best ball data nerd, eagerly seeking the keys to victory in BBMIV, join me in this data-driven exploration. BBM Basics For those who may be less familiar with Best Ball Mania (BBM) by Underdog, it’s a unique and immensely popular fantasy football tournament. Best ball is a fantasy football format where participants draft a team and then have no in-season m...

Author: Bill Jones Introduction Hey football analytics fam, welcome back to my blog! Today, I want to share another one of my studies. I recently saw on twitter a scout visual showcasing the statistic drop percentage for quarterbacks, but I have always considered drops to be a garbage figure, so this caught my attention. Intrigued by this being shown and my preconceived notion being incorrect, I embarked on a quest to uncover the truth through using some basic data science techniques. Together, we'll peel back the layers of this statistical onion and uncover the hidden truths that lie within the realm of drops. Let's kick off this study and get into the data. Ground Rules Before we jump back into the analytics, I would like to let the readers know the ground rules I will be playing with. The data used for this analysis was obtained from Pro-Football-Reference for 2018 through 2022. Additionally, for any quarterback to be included in the analysis they must have had 200 passing a...

Author: Bill Jones Introduction Hey fantasy football analytics fam, welcome back to my blog! With the NFL draft finished, many of us are eagerly anticipating the influx of new talent that will soon hit the league. For those of us that play dynasty fantasy football, it’s important to start thinking about how we can evaluate these rookies, if you haven’t already, and formulate an opinion about their potential impact on your fantasy teams.  Over the past few weeks, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading many of my colleagues’ models and ranking systems that have been published leading up to the draft. In doing this research I had one recurring frustration in most analysts ranking processes. This frustration was that almost all of them (which were transparent about their process) included projected draft capital as a data point for their prediction. To me the inclusion of this data point felt a bit odd as the NFL draft capital is essentially already a ranking that bakes in all the other dat...

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: 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...