Fantasy Football Projections and Uncertainty
0In our previous article, we explored how value over replacement (VOR) and drop off can guide your draft decisions by assessing player value relative to replacements and identifying significant drop offs between players. As a final piece to complete your value-based draft strategy, we’ll introduce the concept of uncertainty. This metric addresses the risk and variability in player projections and expert rankings, helping you navigate the unpredictability of fantasy football. In this article, we’ll delve into what uncertainty is, why it’s important, and how to incorporate it into your draft strategy.
Understanding Uncertainty
Uncertainty in fantasy football represents the variability and risk associated with player projections. Our uncertainty metric captures two key elements: the variance in projected points across various sources and the variance in expert consensus rankings. High variance in projections indicates a wider range of potential outcomes for a player, suggesting greater unpredictability in their performance. Similarly, discrepancies in expert rankings can indicate differing opinions on a player’s value, adding to the overall uncertainty. These two elements are then averaged and scaled on a 1 to 99 scale, where 1 indicates very little uncertainty and general agreement between projections and experts, and 99 indicates a large degree of uncertainty and more variable between projections and experts.
Why Uncertainty Matters
Adding uncertainty into your draft strategy is important for managing risk and finding potential sleepers with high upside. Players with high uncertainty may offer significant upside but come with greater risk, making them ideal for later rounds when you can afford to take calculated risks. On the other hand, players with low uncertainty are more likely to provide consistent performance, which is key for building the foundation of your roster. Understanding uncertainty helps you balance risk and reward, ensuring that you’re not over-relying on highly volatile players while still finding high-upside opportunities.
Integrating Uncertainty into a Value-Based Draft Strategy
To effectively use uncertainty in your value-based drafting approach, consider it alongside VOR and drop off. By integrating uncertainty, you can make more nuanced decisions about when to draft high-upside players versus those offering consistent performance. When building a draft strategy, it can be a good idea to differ your strategy based on the round of the draft you’re in. Early in the draft, it is important to build a solid foundation made up of players with low uncertainty. At this point in the draft, you want to pick players who not only have high VOR, but also low risk. On the other hand, in the middle and especially late rounds, using uncertainty can help you find players with a wide range of outcomes and potentially league winning upside. Once you’ve filled out your rosters with starters, it can be advantageous to seek out players who can out-perform their average draft position and give you early round production for late round prices.
Balancing these factors ensures that your draft strategy accounts for both the potential for high rewards and the need for a reliable core. In, a complete value-based draft strategy may look something like this: use VOR to find the highest value players regardless of position, examine those players and the drop offs to the players immediately below them, and finally depending on if you’re in the early or late portion of the draft, use uncertainty to decide whether you should select a relatively safe option or try to hit on the high upside pick.
Keep in mind, for the season projections, this is the uncertainty for the player over the entire season and is based on projections prior to the start of the season. This metric does not account for the variance in production on a game-to-game basis. For example, uncertainty does not measure how boom or bust a player is game to game, but instead captures of consensus of expert ranks and the variance in player projections.
Uncertainty for Sit/Start Strategy
Once your draft is complete and the season begins, the uncertainty metric remains a valuable tool for your weekly sit/start decisions. When determining the optimal combination of players for your lineup, it is important to understand the range of possible outcomes for each player. By incorporating uncertainty, you can make more informed choices based on each player’s potential variability, helping you craft the best lineup for different situations.
When setting your weekly lineup, consider the level of uncertainty each player carries. If you’re faced with a tough start/sit decision, it’s important to consider the rest of your lineup. If you already have a strong core of high-floor, reliable starters, it might be worth taking a risk and starting a high-uncertainty player with more boom-or-bust potential. Conversely, if your lineup already includes some riskier options, it could be in your best interest to opt for players with lower uncertainty and more consistent production to balance out the unpredictability.
You can also factor in your opponent when making sit/start decisions. If you’re heavily favored to win, perhaps because your opponent is dealing with injuries or has tough matchups, it might make more sense to play it safe and start the low-uncertainty, more consistent players. On the other hand, if you’re the underdog, it can pay off to start the high-uncertainty players with greater upside. In these situations, you’re looking for players who can outperform their projections and give you the chance to pull off an upset.
By factoring uncertainty into your sit/start decisions, you can adjust your strategy dynamically based on your weekly matchup, allowing for a more risk reward approach as the season progresses.
Uncertainty Analysis
Let’s examine the top 15 RBs by 2024 projections. Looking at these players there is a good mix of relatively safe picks and players with more uncertainty around their 2024 outlook. Isiah Pacheco has the lowest uncertainty (3) of these players. You can see higher floor and relatively low ceiling. On the other hand, Saquon Barkley has the most uncertainty (75). He has a low floor, especially for being the fifth ranked player, but he’s got a high ceiling, that if he reaches this projection, would likely put him in the top three RBs at the end of the season.
Now let’s look at some of the mid to late round WRs. These are players in the 30 to 50 range by position rank. Once again, there is a mix of low and high uncertainty, however, higher ranked players will likely come with more uncertainty. Using uncertainty can be effective for finding potential sleepers, or players who could outperform their draft position. When looking at the plot, a few players jump out. First is Keenan Allen, with an 82 uncertainty. He has a wide range of outcomes, but his ceiling is almost the highest of this group players. In contrast, Courtland Sutton has an uncertainty of 17. This suggests that Sutton may be a relatively safe pick for the 43rd WR. However, where he is being picked in the draft, it may be more beneficial to select a player with more uncertainty and potentially higher upside.
Overall, uncertainty can help you develop a draft strategy that provides a mix of relatively safe selections and more high-risk high reward picks.
Final Thoughts
Incorporating uncertainty into your fantasy football drafting strategy completes the picture of a well-rounded approach. By understanding and applying this metric alongside VOR and drop off, you can make more informed decisions, manage risk, and enhance your team’s overall potential. Our website’s tools are designed to help you leverage these insights, giving you a competitive edge in your fantasy league.
