I've hardly made time for this contest the past two years, but my schedule freed up after the deadline this year. Excellent contest, ridiculously fun. Thanks FBGs. Some thoughts, rooster first, general observations second.
My rooster:
Russell Wilson/4 $15
Jay Cutler/9 $12
I've always been a large rooster guy, usually in the 23-25 range. I felt going in this year that people (especially those following these threads) would skew heavier to small rosters. I ended up going bigger than ever. Mid-value QBs just seemed ridiculously cheap this year, as many have mentioned. I obviously like these two, almost added a third. I've long preferred the earlier bye weeks. Thoughts on that later.
DeMarco Murray/11 $27
Ryan Mathews/10 $20
Ray Rice/11 $18
LeGarrette Blount/12 $6
Shonn Greene/9 $6
Isaiah Crowell/4 $4
Benny Cunningham/4 $3
In past years, I'll usually make it to the final 500 or 1000, but never the money 250. RB has always been my downfall as I've taken too few, too cheaply. Thus, this make up. In retrospect (and 5000 iterations later...) the late bye weeks are obviously not ideal, and I likely overspent on the <$10 backups which would have been better allocated to a better WR.
Emmanuel Sanders/4 $18
Greg Jennings/10 $9
Justin Hunter/9 $9
Kenny Britt/4 $8
Steve Smith/11 $7
Cody Latimer/4 $6
Kelvin Benjamin/12 $5
John Brown/4 $3
Likely way too cheap here. But oh, the value these guys represent. Steal $10 of RBs, some D and K, and get a second mid-tier WR would be ideal. Obviously lots of week 4 byes, but without stressing too much this year about it, I did manage to keep RB byes (11), WR byes (4), TE byes (6) separated and thus available for another position to fill a flex spot lacking from one of these other slots.
Jimmy Graham/6 $30
Heath Miller/12 $10
Travis Kelce/6 $8
Think it was really hard not to take Graham this year. I've always gone low priced here before, so nice to have a stud. Miller great value, and as KC homer, Kelce has to show up this year.
Greg Zuerlein/4 $3
Nate Freese/9 $3
Shayne Graham/6 $3
Blair Walsh/10 $3
I haven't done the statistical analysis here, but I think there's more to K and DEF than the typical "blah blah blah, they're K and DEF" comments posted. Granted, it's probably a crapshoot on the individual choices, but I do think the numbers matter. See below for more thoughts.
Houston Texans/10 $4
New Orleans Saints/6 $4
Detroit Lions/9 $3
New York Jets/11 $3
Various DEF I felt good about. Honestly only meant to have 3, but forgot at deadline. Obviously a lot of money locked up here on K and DEF. As above, I'd rather take $10 from RB, and $3-7 from K/DEF to buy another WR. But we'll see. I think there's an interesting thought here on score diversification - it's pretty clear that avg score and survival rate goes up as you go from 2 to 3 K or DEF. That analysis has been great, but are we overly hurting ourselves when byes come and we move from 3 to 2 K or D? With three K or D, we're building in 3 weeks where we suffer from only 2 contributors. In those weeks (say week 9 when K Freese on bye) is the incremental value of having a third live kicker worth the $3 you could have spent on another end-of-roster WR/RB? I have a hunch that outside of $3 Bortles going off, the odds are probably better for the $3 K to contribute to your survival. Still, just a thought, no proof.
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So I started playing with Iggy's tool. That came out wrong... But thanks Iggy, you're awesome.
Will donate when you give the go-ahead.
QB - 2 - $27
RB - 7 - $84
WR - 8 - $65
TE - 3 - $48
K - 4 - $12
DEF - 4 - $14
All in all, not a great team. But some interesting observations. First, I'm focused more on survival at this point, not having made the final 250 before. So yes, the stats below have little to do with a team's ability to win outright. I mostly just wanted to see how badly I screwed myself with the low WR allocation
* Thought 1: teams posted here seem to typically land in the $70-$80 range for RB and WR budgets. Over $80 and you "overweighted" the category, under $70 and you're probably "weak." So, does balancing the two positions matter?
RB:
Survival by RB Budget, any size team, $40-$70 (putting $40 as a floor on "reasonable" entry; arbitrary)
- 2011: 3.47% survived to final 250
- 2012: 2.21% survived
- 2013: 1.47% survived
$70-80 budget ("average" allocation)
- 2011: 2.61% survived
- 2012: 2.42% survived
- 2013: 1.67% survived
$80-$110 budget:
- 2011: 2.06% survived
- 2012: 1.53% survived
- 2013: 1.86% survived
I was honestly shocked that
overweighting RB seems to hurt your chances of survival. This could honestly be an artifact of smaller rosters (disproportionately large share) spending >$80 on average, but that's conjecture. I think 2013 represents a significant effort by FBG to make pricing of RBs harder, but it may indicate that massive studs or depth at RB simply isn't a great advantage as far as budget allocation goes.
WR:
Same idea as above.
$40-$70 budget
- 2011: 2.42% survived
- 2012: 0.75% survived
- 2013: 1.66% survived
$70-$80 budget
- 2011: 2.36% survived
- 2012: 1.81% survived
- 2013: 1.86% survived
$80-$110 budget
- 2011: 2.37% survived
- 2012: 2.25% survived
- 2013: 1.74% survived
While clearly not conclusive (of perhaps anything), it does seem that it pays slightly better to overweight WR than RB as far as survival rates go. This honestly likely plays in to how that money is allocated across other positions, but by this point I got lazy.
* Thought 2: the ever present 2 vs 3 QB, 2 vs 3 (vs 4) K and DEF
Just thought I'd paste this here:
2011Qb_ct Count Alive Survival Rate1 223 4 1.8%2 6517 167 2.6%3 3440 70 2.0%2012Qb_ct Count Alive Survival Rate1 270 1 0.4%2 7459 131 1.8%3 4451 106 2.4%2013Qb_ct Count Alive Survival Rate1 282 3 1.1%2 7060 134 1.9%3 5695 99 1.7% In 2013 we saw harder pricing from FBG, and the survival rates for 4-DEF and 4-PK teams fell off a cliff compared to 2011-2012. Not so with 3-QB teams. Just something I thought was interesting. Obviously didn't affect my rooster.
Good luck all.
