Ok. It didn't read that way to me. When you say you are having trouble finding 3 or 13 you feel will be as productive as Jennings that reads more to me like you are looking for diamonds in the rough to outproduce Jennings. So, we're on the same page.I don't think it requires "dumb-lucking" into the right recipe, though. Luck? Sure, but luck that comes from seeing guys like Decker and Antonio Brown and realizing they have a pretty good opportunity to get some targets, and then having those guys hit.
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***Official*** 2011 FBG Subscriber Contest Thread (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Ignoratio Elenchi
- Start date
SeniorVBDStudent
Footballguy
It will likely drive up scoring by the Patriots defense. Nicks is dinged as well, so a Giants fan would be puting their hopes on Manning/Cruz/Manningham. Ungood.Jacobs 11/52/0Manning 19-34/2/2Faulk/GreenEllis/Woodhead/Etc 23/164/2Brady 19-26/3/1NE TEs 9/145/2Welker 6/87/135-17 Pats(Not a twinkletoes fan, lol)
Ignoratio Elenchi
Footballguy
Sure, you have to account for byes. But despite the myriad "junk" entries that we all like to laugh at at the beginning of the year, I think most entrants take bye weeks into account (and even many of those who don't could easily end up with evenly distributed byes anyway) so just planning for byes isn't going to give you an enormous advantage on the field. In addition to byes, players frequently get dinged and miss a game or two, or worse. Of those who manage to stay healthy all year, very very few players perform up to expectations every single week. Few as in, one every couple of years. When you only have 18 available players, and then the bye weeks reduce that to 15 or so, and you have to start 10 of them every week, you really can't afford to suffer any injuries or bad performances. Of course, some 18-man rosters will make it through the bye week gauntlet, simply because there were thousands of 18-man rosters to begin with. But it's almost certainly the least optimal strategy for surviving the first 13 weeks. Even if you believe your 18-man roster has a better chance of surviving the byes than the "average" 18-man roster, it still has a worse chance of surviving the bye weeks than the average larger roster. In the handful of years we've had varying roster sizes, this has shown to be the case, and understandably so. There's little margin for error when you go in with that few players - and over the course of the season, there's always going to be some error.You say you have just 1 player on bye this week. If we assumed everyone else on your roster is healthy and active this week, you have 17 available players to draw 10 startes from. I have 3 players on bye this week, but I have 25 available players to draw my 10 starters from. There are no byes next week for anyone, so you don't have an advantage there. You're drawing from 18 players, I'm drawing from 28.You have three byes in week 11. That leaves you just 15 players to draw ten starters from. I have 5 players on bye, leaving me 23 players to draw my 10 starters from. This is why, even if you do all your due diligence and plan out your bye weeks optimally, the 18-man rosters still get beat up during the byes. No matter how well you plan them, you still have fewer active players than most of the larger rosters you're competing against.
That's what everyone does, though. I have a larger roster, and I also tried to buy the tickets I thought had the best chance to succeed, and controlled as many things as I could. As it turns out, my team has also been beat up by the Hightower/Bush/Beanie combo at RB and other underperforming players, and while I'm still alive I expect to be eliminated any week now. But there are larger rosters out there that have been far more fortunate than I have, and they will be very hard to deal with later in the season. People frequently make the mistake of thinking that small rosters have more "studs" than large rosters. If we define "studs" as "the players who cost the most money in August" then that's probably true. But in reality, "studs" are the guys who score the most points, and as the season wears on the pool of "studs" changes. Guys who were studs at the beginning of the year get hurt, or their production falls off. Guys who were cheap backups in the beginning of the year move into starting roles and excel. In August, no one knows exactly who the studs will be by the time we get to the final 250, but I guarantee that by the time we get there, everyone is going to have good players on their roster. So as I said, you're taking a known disadvantage for 13 weeks for a theorized but unproven advantage in the final 3 weeks. To me, that's not a winning strategy, but our differing strategies are what makes this contest so much fun.
BassNBrew
Footballguy
Just curious how you could not like that combo more?During money time last year Jennings would have netted 9/13/21 while the combo Nelson/Jones would have gotten 6/21/22. Looking at the playoff games as an indicator, 18/21/22 for Jennings, 22/11/29 for Jones/Nelson. Driver didn't add anything during these six games. Not only do you get better scoring with Nelson/Jones, you get an 3 extra double digit scores of 14, 18, and 10 that could be used by your team.
Out of curiosity, 5 of 11 surviving that went the Driver/Nelson/Jones route. None of them look too strong, but this one is interesting http://subscribers.footballguys.com/contest/2011/109733.php
apalmer
Footballguy
Do we congratulate you or give you condolences? I'm not sure.I am officially the last Hasselbeck/Benson owner
-QG
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
BassNBrew,
Jennings was one of the few guys I targeted in all of my leagues. I have a long-standing obsession with targets when it comes to WRs. Jennings' targets were 9-8-7-8-5-10-9 the last 7 weeks of the season last year. Jones wasn't bad for that stretch (5-8-4-4-8-7-2), but Driver was busy getting 7-3-8-9-6-5-5 -- more targets than Jones. Nelson was getting too few to matter. I figured Nelson's would increase. I also figured Finley would get his share of targets as well. My belief was that those increased targets for Nelson and Finley would come from Driver and Jones primarily, because Rodgers clearly has a very good rapport with Jennings. I briefly considered Jennings+Jones, but that made no sense fiscally.
FWIW, I have come around to the belief that RBs do not win fantasy football titles anymore -- WRs do, at least in leagues that start 3 or more WRs. I invested heavily in WRs in this contest as more of an experiment than anything else.
Ignoratio,
"You say you have just 1 player on bye this week. If we assumed everyone else on your roster is healthy and active this week, you have 17 available players to draw 10 startes from. I have 3 players on bye this week, but I have 25 available players to draw my 10 starters from."
But that's just it: I like my 17 better than your 25, at least when I had to submit my roster. If I just assume that your predictive ability at picking $2 and $3 players is as good as mine at picking $15-$20 players, then there really isn't much of a point in me playing this game in the 1st place.
Jennings was one of the few guys I targeted in all of my leagues. I have a long-standing obsession with targets when it comes to WRs. Jennings' targets were 9-8-7-8-5-10-9 the last 7 weeks of the season last year. Jones wasn't bad for that stretch (5-8-4-4-8-7-2), but Driver was busy getting 7-3-8-9-6-5-5 -- more targets than Jones. Nelson was getting too few to matter. I figured Nelson's would increase. I also figured Finley would get his share of targets as well. My belief was that those increased targets for Nelson and Finley would come from Driver and Jones primarily, because Rodgers clearly has a very good rapport with Jennings. I briefly considered Jennings+Jones, but that made no sense fiscally.
FWIW, I have come around to the belief that RBs do not win fantasy football titles anymore -- WRs do, at least in leagues that start 3 or more WRs. I invested heavily in WRs in this contest as more of an experiment than anything else.
Ignoratio,
"You say you have just 1 player on bye this week. If we assumed everyone else on your roster is healthy and active this week, you have 17 available players to draw 10 startes from. I have 3 players on bye this week, but I have 25 available players to draw my 10 starters from."
But that's just it: I like my 17 better than your 25, at least when I had to submit my roster. If I just assume that your predictive ability at picking $2 and $3 players is as good as mine at picking $15-$20 players, then there really isn't much of a point in me playing this game in the 1st place.
Touchdown There
Footballguy
So you are saying "my strategy is the best or I would not play the game". It will be easier on you to understand the above points when your short roster has a bad week.
Ignoratio Elenchi
Footballguy
I don't claim to have any special predictive ability. I'm just harnessing the power of quantity in the best ball format. I don't think you have any special predictive ability, either, for that matter. That's sort of the point. The fact is that as much as we like to pretend that we can forecast fantasy football stats, in reality we can't with any meaningful accuracy. Now, the fact that the prices are set in early August and the rosters aren't locked until early September does mean that there usually are some easily identifiable "bargains" in the player pool, e.g. players who were backups but won starting roles in the preseason. That doesn't mean they're guaranteed to outperform their price, but it does mean I can make some reasonably educated selections. I think I said last year that the key to winning this contest is to end up with players who outperform their price. When you pay the big bucks for a "stud" and everything goes right (they stay healthy all year and actually lead the league in stats, neither of which is a sure thing) then you're pretty much getting exactly what you paid for. There's not a whole lot of upside or value there. And they're still going to have a bye week and a handful of down weeks that your short bench will have to deal with. With a larger number of cheaper players, I know that probably none of them, individually, will put up stats comparable to what we project a guy like Jennings to do. But I don't need any of them, individually, to do so. I just need them to occasionally have a week with a bunch of catches to be worth the little money I spent on them. And there's always the chance that one of them actually does perform well above expectations and outproduces their price.Now, if I had to submit a starting lineup each week, I'd certainly be more comfortable slotting in Jennings as my WR1 than a less expensive WR, but that's a different question. In this contest I'm not ever faced with that dilemma. And it's not like my roster is full of nothing but $2-3 players. My top 3 WRs all cost $19+. I just added 6 more less expensive WRs to go with them. I've had a minimum of three double-digit scores from my WR corps every single week so far except week 5, when I had two double-digit scores. And my team's not even that good! I certainly didn't go a good job predicting which players would be good this year. I'm sure there are other 28-player rosters out there that are killing it right now because they happened upon some better players than I did.If a small number of expensive WRs reliably outproduced a larger number of cheaper WRs over the course of the season then maybe a smaller roster would make sense, but I don't think there's any evidence that they do.In the end, the evidence is pretty clear that the small rosters do much worse than the large rosters over the course of the first thirteen weeks. You may like your 17 players better than my 25 this week - I'm sure that's what every small-roster owner would say - but in general the teams with 25 players do much better than the teams with 17 players. The argument is simply whether or not the handful of small rosters that actually do make the finals have an advantage over the larger rosters that make it to the finals. I suppose it's possible that they do but I'm not convinced yet.
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
Not exactly. Obviously I think (or at the very least thought when I submitted my roster) my roster afforded me the best opportunity to win. Who doesn't think that when he submits his roster? But I've said all along that I don't pretend to have some inside track on this. I enjoy the discussion about it very much because I believe that's helpful in thinking about things differently and identifying what I can change next year.I completely understand the notion that some guy with a 30 man roster has a better chance of ringing the bell at a particular slot in a particular week. Heck, I even thought about slapping together 30 relatively cheap guys and hoping for the best -- that's pretty much what I did in past years with little thought or analysis (usually because I was trying to do it 30 minutes before the deadline because I forgot about it). But what I'm hearing from some is that because SOMEONE with a 30 man roster is more likely to ring that bell, I will maximize my chances by having a 30 man roster. One does not necessarily follow the other though. The question I asked myself was: What combination of players can I put together that will give me the best chance to (a) score enough week-to-week to survive to the final 250 and then (b) score the most points in weeks 14-16? The players that help with the former may not necessarily help with the latter and vice versa, which was the best argument I could formulate for going with a large roster. I thought (and still hope) that the overpriced LT would be helpful for the 2nd prong but not necessarily the 1st because I don't think Shonnnnnnnn is the answer over the long haul. And I paid dearly for LT, as he was Morris, Ringer, Barber, and McCluster before I made the switch to him, so I completely understand the concept of spreading dollars. And I don't need anyone to run the numbers for me on those guys vs. LT to this point.
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I just wanted to say that this is a perfect summary of the way I perceive the issue. Very well said, bravo!Sure, you have to account for byes. But despite the myriad "junk" entries that we all like to laugh at at the beginning of the year, I think most entrants take bye weeks into account (and even many of those who don't could easily end up with evenly distributed byes anyway) so just planning for byes isn't going to give you an enormous advantage on the field. In addition to byes, players frequently get dinged and miss a game or two, or worse. Of those who manage to stay healthy all year, very very few players perform up to expectations every single week. Few as in, one every couple of years. When you only have 18 available players, and then the bye weeks reduce that to 15 or so, and you have to start 10 of them every week, you really can't afford to suffer any injuries or bad performances. Of course, some 18-man rosters will make it through the bye week gauntlet, simply because there were thousands of 18-man rosters to begin with. But it's almost certainly the least optimal strategy for surviving the first 13 weeks. Even if you believe your 18-man roster has a better chance of surviving the byes than the "average" 18-man roster, it still has a worse chance of surviving the bye weeks than the average larger roster. In the handful of years we've had varying roster sizes, this has shown to be the case, and understandably so. There's little margin for error when you go in with that few players - and over the course of the season, there's always going to be some error.You say you have just 1 player on bye this week. If we assumed everyone else on your roster is healthy and active this week, you have 17 available players to draw 10 startes from. I have 3 players on bye this week, but I have 25 available players to draw my 10 starters from. There are no byes next week for anyone, so you don't have an advantage there. You're drawing from 18 players, I'm drawing from 28.You have three byes in week 11. That leaves you just 15 players to draw ten starters from. I have 5 players on bye, leaving me 23 players to draw my 10 starters from. This is why, even if you do all your due diligence and plan out your bye weeks optimally, the 18-man rosters still get beat up during the byes. No matter how well you plan them, you still have fewer active players than most of the larger rosters you're competing against.That's what everyone does, though. I have a larger roster, and I also tried to buy the tickets I thought had the best chance to succeed, and controlled as many things as I could. As it turns out, my team has also been beat up by the Hightower/Bush/Beanie combo at RB and other underperforming players, and while I'm still alive I expect to be eliminated any week now. But there are larger rosters out there that have been far more fortunate than I have, and they will be very hard to deal with later in the season. People frequently make the mistake of thinking that small rosters have more "studs" than large rosters. If we define "studs" as "the players who cost the most money in August" then that's probably true. But in reality, "studs" are the guys who score the most points, and as the season wears on the pool of "studs" changes. Guys who were studs at the beginning of the year get hurt, or their production falls off. Guys who were cheap backups in the beginning of the year move into starting roles and excel. In August, no one knows exactly who the studs will be by the time we get to the final 250, but I guarantee that by the time we get there, everyone is going to have good players on their roster. So as I said, you're taking a known disadvantage for 13 weeks for a theorized but unproven advantage in the final 3 weeks. To me, that's not a winning strategy, but our differing strategies are what makes this contest so much fun.
CalBear
Footballguy
It comes down to this; if you take your $27 Greg Jennings, and then look at all the $2-$4 WRs, eliminate the ones who obviously lack value as of the close of the contest, and spend the rest of your money by choosing from the rest completely randomly, you'll have a WR corps which will beat Greg Jennings on a week-to-week and a cumulative basis. Someone else may have a better set of cheap WRs, but the guy with only $27 Greg Jennings will not.
CalBear
Footballguy
I'm going to demonstrate this another way. Let's look at the entire WR corps. Let's say you decided to go with three solid WRs led by Jennings. I'll give you the two most-owned WRs around that level, Vincent Jackson and Mike Wallace. So you've got $75 spent on WRs. But on the last day of the contest, you have a premonition that Mike Wallace will be a bust and Vincent Jackson will be a stud, so you take Wallace's $23 and decide to spend it on cheap-### WRs. My hypothesis is that, even when you monumentally screw up your player selection like that, you'll still win with the scrubs.And, here are the results; totals are the weekly scores for the top three WRs:
3 studs 28.7 59.3 38.7 40.8 32.6 21.8 40.0 11.9 273.82 studs+9 scrubs 33.9 63.8 34.5 44.6 33.5 20.9 48.0 29.3 308.5So, even if you made the boneheaded move of throwing out a guy who's been one of the best players in the league so far--and who hasn't even had his bye week yet--you still improved your lineup in this contest considerably. You won six of eight weeks, bumped up your low score by 9 points (critical in an elimination contest), and scored 35 points more over the first eight weeks. If you'd thrown out Jennings or Jackson, you'd have done even better.
This really is a closed case.
(Edit to fix stats: I had understated the scrubs' score for week 2, and overstated it for week 6. Overall analysis does not change.)
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For the record, which 9 scrubs did you use?
Edit: Nevermind, I see there really aren't that many $2 and $3 Wr's to choose from.
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CalBear
Footballguy
The nine most-owned $3 and $2 WRs:Antonio BrownDenarius MooreRandall CobbDarrius Heyward-BeyDexter McClusterJosh CribbsPatrick CraytonRoscoe ParrishMichael Jenkins (Cost was actually $22 instead of $23).
Ignoratio Elenchi
Footballguy
Right, but at this point we're pretty sure that larger rosters are better for (a) and we don't know the answer to (b) although the theory is that smaller rosters, by virtue of their greater variance, are better for that.
Sure it does, and ironically that's precisely the argument that people use in favor of small rosters. On average, large rosters score more points than small rosters, but small rosters exhibit greater variance; therefore, because SOMEONE with an 18-man roster is more likely to be the top scorer, you will maximize your chances by having an 18 man roster. The question is one of balance. Assuming there really is an advantage to having a small roster in the finals, it's a tradeoff. Does the advantage of large rosters in weeks 1-13 outweigh the advantage of small rosters in weeks 14-16, or vice versa? It's impossible to quantify which is why the question won't ever be answered definitively. But for me personally, I'm not even convinced that small rosters have an advantage in the finals, let alone one that outweighs the advantage of large rosters in the regular season. I don't have the actual numbers handy and don't have time to dig them up, but I think large rosters were something like 4 times as likely to survive to the finals than small rosters (I don't remember if that's actually what it was, and don't even remember if I'm thinking of last year or two years ago). I don't see any reason to believe that small rosters are more than four times as likely to put up big scores in the finals than large rosters, which they would have to do for me to think that small rosters were a winning strategy.
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
OK, now this is good stuff and is making me do a little more homework than I intended today. I removed Jennings from my roster and inserted the above players. Based upon my specific roster, my WR corps would have had the following contributions week-to-week (including the flex position in any week that either scenario would have included a WR as the flex position):With Jennings: 44.8 - 72.8 - 63.0 - 72.7 - 76.6 - 61.8 - 68.7 - 59.8W/o Jennings: 42.0 - 87.7 - 59.9 - 65.8 - 82.9 - 61.8 - 65.5 - 69.5So, it would have helped me 3 weeks (one being Jennings' bye obviously), been a push 1 week, and hurt me 4 weeks. The average "help" would have been fairly large (10.3) whereas the average "hurt" would have been smaller (4.0). Obviously Jennings (as opposed to Wallace) being removed would have given me $4 more to spend elsewhere.
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
On this we absolutely disagree. Just because the collective of 30 man rosters may be more likely to win does not mean that is the best course of action for an individual to take to maximize his chances of winning. This is what I was referring to in my admittedly poorly worded reference to the variation of the "gambler's fallacy" I see this as: "30 man rosters tend to do better than 18 man rosters, therefore I must submit a 30 man roster to have the best chance of winning". All other things amongst all other competitors being completely equal that may be a true statement. But let's be honest, not one of the folks taking the time to discuss this on this board truly believes everything is completely equal amongst all competitors. Most of us, I assume, can provide an explanation for every person included on his roster. It isn't random. Thought went in to each pick. Doesn't mean each pick is right of course, but we all think that our own analysis has some impact on the outcome. Statistically, the best range to be in last year looked to be 22-25.
Ignoratio Elenchi
Footballguy
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. IF we were to determine (by some objective means) that 30 man rosters have the highest probability of winning the contest, then submitting a 30 man roster is the best course of action for an individual to take to maximize his chances of winning. I'm not saying that we have determined that 30-man rosters have the highest win probability, but if we did then that would be the optimal strategy. The fact that 30 man rosters tend to do better than 18 man rosters doesn't depend on any assumption of randomness, or all else being equal, or anything like that. In fact, we know that some people put very little thought into their entries, and others put a lot of thought into their entries. We know that some players are going to be more heavily rostered than others. It's true that everyone who's here in this thread to discuss the contest probably put a lot of thought into their team and can provide an explanation for their picks. I don't see what that has to do with what we're talking about here. There is probably some optimal roster size/configuration for surviving weeks 1-13. This doesn't necessarily require a high score, but instead requires a consistently high floor. You don't need to be the top scorer on any given week, you just have to avoid being one of the lowest.Let's face it - whoever wins out of the 10,000+ entries is going to be extremely lucky. No amount of skill or analysis can lead you to selecting players that will both keep you afloat all season long and then blow up for big scores at the end of the season. It's impossible to predict Week 1 performances, let alone Week 16 performances. That's why I think specific player selection, while it seems like the most important component, is actually secondary when we're talking about contest theory. Your first job when building a roster in August is not to determine which players you want, it's to determine what kind of roster you want. Once you decide on a 2-4-6-2-2-2 roster or a 3-6-7-3-3-3 roster or a 1-2-3-1-22-1 roster, then you fill it in with the players you think will score the most points. To me, I'm not super interested in why someone picked, say, Greg Jennings over Mike Wallace (except perhaps as it pertains to a theoretically optimal distribution of bye weeks or something). I'm more interested in why someone picked a $24 WR over two $12 WRs or 4 $6 WRs.There is probably some optimal roster size/configuration for winning in weeks 14-16. This doesn't require a consistently high floor but does require the potential for a high ceiling. It's worth the risk of a very low score for the potential reward of a very high score.We don't actually know what those optimal roster configurations are. We generally suspect (and the brief history of this contest has shown) that larger rosters are better for the first part. Some people theorize that small rosters are better for the second part, although it hasn't quite worked out that way the past couple of years.
I don't have last year's numbers handy, but I do recall that it seemed like the "optimal" size was around 25-26, depending on how you want to define that. Surely at some point adding additional players results in negative marginal utility. Just to be clear, my argument isn't specifically that 30 is optimal, just that larger rosters are better than smaller rosters. We sometimes use 30 vs 18 as shorthand for larger vs smaller.
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
Ignoratio,
I think you have a fallacy in logic by reasoning that because a 30 man roster has the highest percentage chance of winning, MY best chances of winning are to have a 30 man roster. When you select YOUR roster, you are trying to maximize YOUR chances of winning. At the end of the day, if you could isolate roster size as the only variable, then the results from year-to-year would matter in analyzing the impact of roster size on results, and your logic would be sound. There is no way to do that though, because things like player selection, player distribution, and salary distribution can't be removed from the calculus.
I agree that luck plays a huge component in this contest. It's not different in fantasy football in general -- make the playoffs and hope you get hot and/or don't run into a buzzsaw. That said, you don't for one second truly believe that skill doesn't play some role. If you did, you would just pick a random roster each year. The question of the amount of the relative importance of luck and skill is certainly debatable, but I don't believe that anyone can realistically argue that skill has nothing to do with it.
I don't think that the degree of skill that matters is particularly apparent between most of the folks who care enough about this contest to study and analyze their rosters. I do, however, think that out of the thousands of rosters submitted a huge percentage of them were doomed from the start. Be it because of comical reasons some have identified on this thread, or more mundane reasons. Mine was one of those doomed rosters more than once in the past. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that those doomed rosters occur at a higher rate in smaller rosters.
No, I don't have any empirical evidence to support that, but it seems intuitive to me -- it just takes less effort to pick a smaller roster than a larger roster. Additionally, having knowledge of the role/skill/ability of lower-dollar players is not commonplace. Indeed, I readily acknowledge that some on this thread almost certainly have a higher skill level than me with regard to identifying those lower-dollar players worth rostering.
After that verbose narrative, I had to select my roster based upon my skills. I had little confidence in my ability to reach deep down into the player pool. I felt that I had a significantly higher probability of selecting a competitive roster comprised of 18-21 or so players. If I put together a 28-30 man roster, I would simply be shrugging my shoulders at the start of the season and simply hoping to get lucky. I'm still hoping to get lucky, but I feel that the amount of luck I need is less than it would have been if I had a bunch of players who were little more than random guesses on my part.
That's certainly not to say that you, or anyone else, don't have a higher skill level at choosing those cheaper players than me. The fact that you have that skill does not mean that I would fare better by matching your roster size. The "pick random cheap guys and they'll always beat your expense alternative" arguments are what I'm interested in exploring, because if that's true then I simply need to pick 1 or 2 high-dollar player(s) next year and replace them with 6-12 cheap alternatives.
I think you have a fallacy in logic by reasoning that because a 30 man roster has the highest percentage chance of winning, MY best chances of winning are to have a 30 man roster. When you select YOUR roster, you are trying to maximize YOUR chances of winning. At the end of the day, if you could isolate roster size as the only variable, then the results from year-to-year would matter in analyzing the impact of roster size on results, and your logic would be sound. There is no way to do that though, because things like player selection, player distribution, and salary distribution can't be removed from the calculus.
I agree that luck plays a huge component in this contest. It's not different in fantasy football in general -- make the playoffs and hope you get hot and/or don't run into a buzzsaw. That said, you don't for one second truly believe that skill doesn't play some role. If you did, you would just pick a random roster each year. The question of the amount of the relative importance of luck and skill is certainly debatable, but I don't believe that anyone can realistically argue that skill has nothing to do with it.
I don't think that the degree of skill that matters is particularly apparent between most of the folks who care enough about this contest to study and analyze their rosters. I do, however, think that out of the thousands of rosters submitted a huge percentage of them were doomed from the start. Be it because of comical reasons some have identified on this thread, or more mundane reasons. Mine was one of those doomed rosters more than once in the past. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that those doomed rosters occur at a higher rate in smaller rosters.
No, I don't have any empirical evidence to support that, but it seems intuitive to me -- it just takes less effort to pick a smaller roster than a larger roster. Additionally, having knowledge of the role/skill/ability of lower-dollar players is not commonplace. Indeed, I readily acknowledge that some on this thread almost certainly have a higher skill level than me with regard to identifying those lower-dollar players worth rostering.
After that verbose narrative, I had to select my roster based upon my skills. I had little confidence in my ability to reach deep down into the player pool. I felt that I had a significantly higher probability of selecting a competitive roster comprised of 18-21 or so players. If I put together a 28-30 man roster, I would simply be shrugging my shoulders at the start of the season and simply hoping to get lucky. I'm still hoping to get lucky, but I feel that the amount of luck I need is less than it would have been if I had a bunch of players who were little more than random guesses on my part.
That's certainly not to say that you, or anyone else, don't have a higher skill level at choosing those cheaper players than me. The fact that you have that skill does not mean that I would fare better by matching your roster size. The "pick random cheap guys and they'll always beat your expense alternative" arguments are what I'm interested in exploring, because if that's true then I simply need to pick 1 or 2 high-dollar player(s) next year and replace them with 6-12 cheap alternatives.
inyoutees
Footballguy
This (bolded) is interesting. I suppose I'd always thought that the preponderance of small rosters was partially due to name recognition, but this is the first time I believe I've read it expressed in this way and logically, it makes sense. I was surprised this year at the distribution of roster sizes after previous threads (why no movement toward more larger rosters?), and for better or worse, I believe Tennessee_ATO has expressed a completely sound rationale for that distribution. Not that this logic makes small rosters more likely to succeed or fail, but it certainly helps to explain the decision making process behind those choices. We are, after all, FBG subscribers because we don't have the time to do all of our own research and I would imagine a large number of us also don't have time or the need to extend our reading list particularly far down the depth chart in August - we have weekly pickup lists for the "cheap players" who have "come from nowhere" to be potential studs as the season develops.
YoUnG GuNz
Footballguy
Peyton Hillis is single handedly holding my team back from being phenomenal....
SeniorVBDStudent
Footballguy
It may be a testament to how shallow I am, but I've already grown tired of the "incessant" big roster versus small roster debate, which I view kinda like discussions of politics and religion. Nobody's right, cuz everyone's wrong as CSN&Y would say...This is the time of year when the thread gets good.
-QG
Saint
Footballguy
Everyone is going to believe what they want to blieve around large vs small rosters. But these are the facts:
[*]Large rosters have a higher % of survival in weeks 1-13 then small rosters. If you don't believe it, read back a few pages and look at survival rates.
[*]The last two years, there has been a higher % of large rosters in the Top 5 standings. Read my earlier posts.
[*]What was the average finish spot of large vs small rosters last couple of years. No idea. I don't have a database. We can figure it out this year, but my bet would be smaller rosters will not win out.
[*]MSW is a loser and cost me $11 for jack ####.
[*]Large rosters have a higher % of survival in weeks 1-13 then small rosters. If you don't believe it, read back a few pages and look at survival rates.
[*]The last two years, there has been a higher % of large rosters in the Top 5 standings. Read my earlier posts.
[*]What was the average finish spot of large vs small rosters last couple of years. No idea. I don't have a database. We can figure it out this year, but my bet would be smaller rosters will not win out.
[*]MSW is a loser and cost me $11 for jack ####.
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The Man With No Name
Footballguy
Cantonese32
Footballguy
To me, this thread is not nearly as interesting as in the past due to Doug not posting the weekly projections.This is the time of year when the thread gets good.
QuizGuy66
Footballguy
To me, this thread is not nearly as interesting as in the past due to Doug not posting the weekly projections.This is the time of year when the thread gets good.
-QG
Ignoratio Elenchi
Footballguy
When I discuss roster size selections, I'm sort of assuming relatively normal player and salary distributions. I think 30-man rosters are better than 18-man rosters, but I wouldn't say that a 30-man roster with 22 defenses was better than a well-constructed 18-man roster.As I've said re: player selection, I think that is an overrated component, which I'll discuss more below.
I think there is definitely some element of skill in fantasy football, although it's not nearly as much as most people like to think. The "skill" people claim to exhibit is typically just a combination of randomness and memory biases. If anyone could reliably predict fantasy performance, they should start a website and make a fortune, because none of the experts I'm aware of in the current market have a record that indicates they're much better than anyone else.Besides, knowing when to draft which positions, who to start each week, when to cut ties with a player and how much to spend on his replacement in blind bidding, knowing how and when to make trades, etc., those are the kinds of things that a "skilled" owner will do better than a relatively unskilled owner. None of that, however, comes into play in this contest. In normal fantasy football, you don't pick a roster in August and hope they score a bunch of points in weeks 14-16, and surely you don't think that anyone actually has the skill to do so accurately.
I agree. We've attempted to look at this in the past, and it does seem that there are proportionately more "junk" entries among the small rosters than there are among the large rosters. But that has nothing to do with skill in player selection, that just has to do with skill in roster construction.
I don't claim that anyone has a higher skill level at choosing cheaper players. Now, the reason cheaper players emerge with value is because their prices are set in early August but the rosters aren't due until September. Due to this, cheaper players are often perceived to be underpriced (2010 Arian Foster is the most obvious example of this phenomenon). But it doesn't require any special "skill" to identify those players. I mentioned early in the thread that due to real life getting in the way, I spent very little time doing my own research, and pretty much just selected all the guys that were getting hyped by FBGs. It's not like you have to research deep on your cheatsheet to figure out who the gems are if you don't want to; if you're doing the basic level of fantasy preparation, you're probably going to know who all these "sleepers" are because everyone's talking about them.The thing is, it's not that you're bad at picking cheap players. It's that you're overestimating your ability to select expensive players relative to your ability to select cheaper players. You think you're better at picking expensive players than you are at picking cheaper players. I disagree. We've all heard the stats - 50% of first round fantasy picks are busts, etc. Again, it's mostly confirmatory memory biases that make people think they're good at fantasy football. Like I said, if any of us were actually good at figuring out which expensive players would perform as expected and which wouldn't (instead of just thinking we're good at it), we could make a lot of money with that skill.
Now, more importantly, even if you are more skilled at picking expensive players, that's only based on season-total projections. You do not have the skill to project which WR2 will score the most points in week 7 when your WR1 is on bye. You do not have the skill to forecast that your RB corps will score less than average in week 9 and subsequently choose a TE flex that will make up the difference that week. No one does. The flaw with small rosters is that, even if you pick a bunch of great players, they're still going to have normal up and down weeks and those normal down weeks are too great a risk when you have all your eggs in so few baskets. That's why larger rosters are better than smaller rosters. I don't dispute that the average quality of players on smaller rosters is probably better than the quality of players on large rosters, but small rosters just lack depth. No matter how good your players are, that's a fundamental flaw in roster construction.
My argument actually is that if you replaced 1-2 expensive players with 6-12 cheap alternative you'd improve your team. Precisely because you can't predict weekly performance (whether you choose expensive players or cheaper players) you need to use quantity to your advantage in the best ball format. I don't advocate choosing those 6-12 cheap players completely randomly, but it doesn't require any more skill to figure out who to pick from - when I was picking my roster, I didn't know who most of the cheap players even were. I picked the ones that I did know because everyone was talking about them. If you want to do more or less research than that, that's fine - since I don't think we're really that skilled in projecting fantasy performance, I don't think it makes much of a difference.
Irish Chaos
Footballguy
fasano and moore should keep me in it by themselves lol.... 
Irish Chaos
Footballguy
fasano/moore/r bush/tate/dez/dawson. havnt been this confident about moving on at any point this season 
kylechoffman
Footballguy
Vjax, Julio, tolbert, reggie, l moore - still have wallace, brown, rice to go. Tamme is contributing for the first time ever this season. Not sure that holds at 3 pts though..
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
All I know is that I'm going to need a REALLY small cut line this week. Here's to hoping that the NE-NYG game stays defensive. I have none on either team, so that should help supress scores. My lack of performance has been in other games.
And regardless of your roster size, Rivers is killing you if you have him (I do). How can the guy be so different this year than the last several?
And regardless of your roster size, Rivers is killing you if you have him (I do). How can the guy be so different this year than the last several?
FUBAR
Footballguy
107 with only Forte, Brown, Sanders and a few currently playing but not doing much...Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
You're in better shape than me. I have a whopping 91.35. Yippee. I have Jennings playing, but the best GB offense is to wait for Rivers to throw a pass. And I have Rivers and Beanie playing, at least nominally. Rivers does have 3 TD passes, but only 1 for his team. Unfortunately Jennings' 5, Rivers' 10.35, and Wells' 1.7 are all counting. Hopefully I can wipe all 3 of those off the board with Cutler (sigh), Wallace, and Celek.Buh-bye.
smarchit
Footballguy
I just realized that the injury/bye combo has left me without a QB for this week. (Stafford/Kolb owner) I'll take comfort that there are about 100 or so other teams still alive with that same combination and no other starter this week. But at only 133.7 with Welker, Decker, and Josh Brown still in progress, and the Steelers D (guaranteed points) and Antonio Brown/Earl Bennett (-13.2 at the moment) left to go, I'm looking for a good sturdy couch to hide behind. <--Hopefully this one does the trick!
<--Hopefully this one does the trick!
radiohead417
Footballguy
2 safeties for the Rams D! Live scoring app has them at 155 right now. I'm sure it'll stay there... right?
smarchit
Footballguy
It's only a 149 point swing from where they should really be at. Sounds pretty close. Might as well just let it ride
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Organized Chaos
Footballguy
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
Mr. Rivers, I apologize for my earlier rant.
Organized Chaos
Footballguy
Found and fixed.oops, I will see what the heck is up with that, thanks!
Organized Chaos
Footballguy
I fixed the Ram's D... What are you seeing/not seeing? I had to make a couple of changes this morning, but it looks like everything should be running correctly. Do you have any specific players scores that are off?
Das Boot
Footballguy
It hasn't updated P. Rivers for a while.
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
OC, Rivers hasn't updated in a while (still showing 20.95 -- he has more than that on TD passes alone). Jennings is still @ 15.5, should be 16.6 I think. Looks like it stopped updating about 30-40 minutes ago or so.
BassNBrew
Footballguy
Pretty much everyone as mentioned above.
