In fantasy football, there's a fine line between looking like a genius and an idiot. My goal is get things right two-thirds of the time on hard calls ("Should I start Justin Forsett or Bernard Pierce?") and 80% of the time on the easier ones (Should I bench Matt Stafford for Jake Locker?").
A lot of fantasy prognosticating is using predictive analytics to assess probabilities for varying degrees of player performance. But let's face it: some of it is luck.
This week I responded to about a dozen tweets concerning Forsett. Some folks sounded committed to starting him, and simply wanted confirmation. When they were deciding between Forsett and Pierce, I consistently warned that while Forsett should be a better option this week, Pierce remains the better long-term play. Others wanted my opinion on Forsett vs. Joique Bell or other high-end RB2s, to which I made clear that if it were my team, I'd start Bell without hesitation, predicting no more than 5-8 points / 12-14 touches for the Ravens journeyman.
But lost in the statistics is how close I came to getting this prediction completely wrong. In the 4th quarter, Forsett came inches away from scoring on a 41-yard scamper. On the next play, he got a chance to punch it in, but the mediocre Steelers defense held him back.
12 fantasy points is a lot different from 6 in standard-scoring leagues. So while the result aligned with my prediction, I needed luck to make it hold.
Hundreds (thousands?) of decisions comprise a fantasy season. Luck might make us look smart on 5-10% of them. But the rest is purely up to us.
A lot of fantasy prognosticating is using predictive analytics to assess probabilities for varying degrees of player performance. But let's face it: some of it is luck.
This week I responded to about a dozen tweets concerning Forsett. Some folks sounded committed to starting him, and simply wanted confirmation. When they were deciding between Forsett and Pierce, I consistently warned that while Forsett should be a better option this week, Pierce remains the better long-term play. Others wanted my opinion on Forsett vs. Joique Bell or other high-end RB2s, to which I made clear that if it were my team, I'd start Bell without hesitation, predicting no more than 5-8 points / 12-14 touches for the Ravens journeyman.
- https://twitter.com/bjrudell/status/510171964083019776
- https://twitter.com/bjrudell/status/510129508444549120
But lost in the statistics is how close I came to getting this prediction completely wrong. In the 4th quarter, Forsett came inches away from scoring on a 41-yard scamper. On the next play, he got a chance to punch it in, but the mediocre Steelers defense held him back.
12 fantasy points is a lot different from 6 in standard-scoring leagues. So while the result aligned with my prediction, I needed luck to make it hold.
Hundreds (thousands?) of decisions comprise a fantasy season. Luck might make us look smart on 5-10% of them. But the rest is purely up to us.