Fantasy Football Cafe Forum

by **Metroid** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 10:39 am

jdogg_ffc wrote:Yeah I allready grabbed KC for this wk. and would suggest others do the same if poss.
You can always drop them later in the wk if needed.

Isn't that borderline churning? :-b

by **Metropolitans** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 10:53 am

jdogg_ffc wrote:Yeah I allready grabbed KC for this wk. and would suggest others do the same if poss.
You can always drop them later in the wk if needed.

I'd Definitely Grab Kansas City @ Home vs a QB-less Jacksonville Jaguars Team and then Hold onto them for Next-Week again @ Home vs the Buffalo Bills... Those are 2 consecutive Weeks with 2 AWESOME Matchups for KC... @ Home vs 2 AWFUL Football Teams!!!! ;-D

by **jdogg_ffc** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 9:32 pm

Metroid wrote:
jdogg_ffc wrote:Yeah I allready grabbed KC for this wk. and would suggest others do the same if poss.
You can always drop them later in the wk if needed.

Isn't that borderline churning?

No its making a quick move which may be retracted later after more info comes in.
Churning would be like grabbing each free agent D. tonight then dropping each after one min. so they all are on waivers untill Wed. morn. This is def. a no no in my book.
PS for the record im still going with KC this wk.

by **jdogg_ffc** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 10:24 pm

Biju I really appreciate your doing this keep up the good work!!!!!

I really like the Seattle call and think they may do well I just feel a little better about KC. Now the Pats at 3 I kind of question. Oh well we will find out tomorrow.
I just go with a slightly def process to pick a D
1. Pick a team playing Buffalo if poss. (I think they are the worst this yr) So I would have put Balt. at 1 Not much of a chance of them being on waivers.
2. Pick a team playing at home (they seem to play better there, see Seattle)
3. Stay away from the Sunday and Monday night game. (these players are really just big kids and kids play better when more people watch them)
4. A team playing against a rookie or new QB can be nice. (Seattle,KC come to mind)
5. Ck. the rankings here and at NFL.com and Roto etc then make your choice cross your fingers and hope for the best.

by **Payne Dailey** » Sun Oct 24, 2010 9:47 am

Nice job biju, thanks for your work.

by **biju** » Mon Oct 25, 2010 2:04 pm

biju wrote:In looking over the projections I want to officially say, this is more difficult than I imagined. There are a lot of variables I didn't account for previously and many I still need to figure a way to add.

This week is an interesting one: time of possession.

[...]

Because we have 4 games in which the 8 teams are used to either quite a bit more, or quite a bit less TOP than they will receive this Sunday:

SF vs. CAR (combined average TOP = 55:49) - The Panthers are only averaging about 26 minutes and the 49ers just under the 30 minute mark. Obviously they will divvy up the remaining 4 minutes, but the interesting point is who will benefit the most? It turns out, the teams (according to the numbers) aren't expected to gain much from the extra TOP, as one might expect from two rather boring offenses, but with the extra ~2 minutes the 49ers should squeak out a win.

This turned out to be very different than I expected to see. First, it's safe to say that the 49ers established some run game, although that was merely because they were so inept on passing the ball. To complicate things for SF, Alex Smith was hurt at the beginning of the 3rd quarter. This did have an effect on the TOP which I believe was the difference maker in the game for Carolina. Before Alex Smith was injured, the Panthers were winning the TOP battle 17:17 to 13:56 (the first 3Q drive consisted of 1:13 added to the SF TOP, so they went into halftime with a 17:17 to 12:43 advantage).

After Smith left the game the Panthers won the TOP battle 18:48 to 9:59 (the second half totals were 18:48 to 11:12). Alex Smith was more effective at sustaining drives than David Carr, but not by as much as one might expect.

I'm still of the opinion that if Alex Smith wasn't injured the 49ers would have squeaked out a win, but this shows the state of the 49er organization when you lose to that Panthers team.

biju wrote:CIN vs. ATL (combined average TOP = 65:44) - Both above the average of 30 minutes by 2 minutes or more, the Falcons tends to do more with their allotted minutes than the Bengals do. The extra minutes off the Cincinnati game will hurt them quite a bit more than it will the Falcons.

The TOP battles remained very, very close with a finish of 30:22 to 29:38 with the slight advantage going to the Bengals. As predicted, the Bengals were hurt just a bit more than the Falcons with the extra time off their clock and were beaten in a game that was closer than some may have expected.

biju wrote:ARI vs. SEA (combined average TOP = 53:30) - This is an interesting game also because one of these teams is about to get a sharp uptick in TOP. The Seahawks, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, are one of the best in the league at converting TOP to points (although they--and no other team--are as good as the Titans. If the Titans can find a way to keep the ball out of their opponent's hands, they will destroy any team they face). Given neither team is necessarily a quick scoring offense I believe the team which can establish the run effectively will gain the TOP advantage. Based on this (and really not any homerism) I think the Seahawks will beat the Cardinals.

For as commanding a TOP the Seahawks had, they should have put a lot more points on the board. They won the TOP battle 37:17 to 22:43, but only put up 22 points. Big props should go to the Cardinals defense for forcing 5 field goals and keeping the Seahawks to one TD in 7 red zone trips. (The Seahawks could have had another FG late in the game but decided to go for it on 4th down to "pin" the Cards deep in their turf with little time left on the clock and needing two TDs to overcome the deficit. As a matter of fact, the FG would have done nothing to change that difference, with the exception of needed two TDs and a two point conversion to tie the game up.)

In fact, thinking about that extra FG might have put them closer to what I would have expected them to score in 37 minutes of possession (just over 24 points would have been accurate). The Seahawks are not a high scoring offense, but given their defense (which doesn't receive enough credit) they will force low scoring games when they win the TOP. They have a big task against Oakland who destroyed a Broncos team that beat them in week 2.

I'm still very excited about tonight's game. I think Dallas is going to win the TOP battle slightly, but this will still result in a NYG win. Dallas will need to significantly win the TOP battle to be in the game with them.

by **biju** » Wed Oct 27, 2010 10:42 am

Well, I don't think anyone can say that Dallas/Giants game wasn't slightly interesting. :-D

Obviously it is impossible to say what the outcome would have been if Romo was not injured, but the Cowboys' offense is very strong. Jon Kitna got them pretty close, even if the Giants Defense was playing prevent a little early. At the same time, a solid combination of Giants offense suck and Cowboys defense good gave Dallas a lot of fantasy points, even if they were burned for a ton of yardage and a ton of points.

At any rate, here is the "defense accountability post" and what I learned:

- 13 teams were within 6 places of where they were predicted (20% tolerance)
- 10 teams were between 7 places and 12 places of where they were predicted (20-40% tolerance)
- 5 teams were greater than 12 places off

My concept for adjusting the defense formula is to take a look into the last category and adjust, essentially trying to pick the low hanging fruit and get us down to the final 20% or so.

These are the five teams that were in that final category:
Oakland (Predicted: 26; Actual: 3): A healthy Darren McFadden is clearly more dangerous than a healthy Michael Bush. He tore through the Denver rush defense and gave the defense opportunities until the Denver players finally gave up. I think it would have been tough to predict this outcome.

Pittsburgh (Predicted: 2; Actual: 24): I hate to go this route again, but the Dolphins outplayed what their offense has been giving up to defenses, and the Steelers underperformed by all accounts. In their previous 5 games, Pittsburgh had only given up more than 13 points on their single loss to Baltimore (17 points). This performance would have been difficult to predict as well.

Cleveland (Predicted: 21; Actual: 1): Ok, nobody expected this. Period.

Atlanta (Predicted: 5; Actual: 20): The resurgence (or maybe resurrection?) of Carson Palmer and a good Bengal time of possession might be the culprit here. It's also worth noting there was a higher possibility of of DST TD for Atlanta that might have caused them to be higher than they should have been.

New Orleans (Predicted: 11; Actual: 26): This is the outcome of Cleveland dominating. The Saints seem to have let the national attention get in their heads and now they are pressing too hard. Losing to the Browns might be that wake up call though.

What I learned in Week 7 of 2010:
I learned that I was putting too much emphasis on points. This is the result of trying to pin a pure function on scoring instead of "brackets" like most defensive scoring does. I've made big changes to the way I calculated the scoring for Week 8.

Stay tuned. The predictions are up next...

by **biju** » Wed Oct 27, 2010 11:06 am

Here are the normalized (see below for details) projections for Week 8.

Code: Select all: Tennessee Titans 89.32 New England Patriots 84.95 St. Louis Rams 82.04 Pittsburgh Steelers 79.94 Seattle Seahawks 71.44 Arizona Cardinals 70.79 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 67.96 Dallas Cowboys 67.23 Detroit Lions 65.53 Washington Redskins 63.83 Kansas City Chiefs 61.73 Miami Dolphins 60.60 New York Jets 60.60 Cincinnatti Bengals 60.03 Green Bay Packers 58.01 San Francisco 49ers 57.77 Carolina Panthers 57.69 Denver Broncos 51.94 San Diego Chargers 51.94 Oakland Raiders 51.13 Minnesota Vikings 46.44 Indianapolis Colts 45.87 New Orleans Saints 45.63 Jacksonville Jaguars 43.20 Buffalo Bills 31.15 Houston Texans 27.18

(1) - Normalized projections are derived by taking the highest possible scoring defensive matchup (best DST matchup between two teams) and the lowest possible scoring defensive matchup, creating a scale of 0-100 and assigning value to each matchup score to give an overall rating so you can make relevance decisions instead of simply trading up to get higher on the chart.

These are the DSTs that I would consider "traps" due to their numbers, how they achieved them, and who they are facing this week:
Seattle Seahawks: With the exception of the Chicago game the Seahawks have played poorly on the road. They will try to control the time of possession by running on the Raiders. If they cannot get that going *OR* the Raiders stake an early lead Seattle will be forced to throw to win which will mean a lot of 3 and outs and more running from Oakland. Also of note is the absence of Brandon Mebane, who turns a middle-of-the-road run defense into the #2 ranked rush defense we currently see.

Arizona Cardinals: Helped greatly by good secondary coverage and Seattle's poor execution in the red zone the Cards didn't have as many points hung on them as they should have. By all accounts they could have easily had 7 more points put up on them, and possibly 11. They have also been greatly helped by abberations in sacks and DST TDs the past two weeks. They aren't this good.

Dallas Cowboys: They roughed up the Giants offense and have performed well this year, but it is difficult to see how Romo's injury will affect them. They lost the time of possession battle handily on Monday night and as expected they were exposed with yards and points. They face an inept Jacksonville offense so they could offset being tired with opportunity, but I'm still unsure on this one. They might be worth the gamble if you don't have better options.