The perfect cheatsheet (1 Viewer)

[Billymac24]

I am a big proponent of VBD, but also use strength of schedule, total points (and to a lesser extent injury concerns, consistency) in my rankings. Each year, I put together my cheatsheet sort it by VBD and have little notes and highlighted colors to signify consistency, injury or strength of schedule. This year, I thought I would try to combine all that together into one cheatsheet to see what it would look like before the draft.

Goal is to create a good cheatsheet by incorporating (SOS, VBD, and total Pts).

What I did:

I did all my projections, compared them to 2006, and the experts...so I feel pretty good about them.

Calculated my VBD (#12 QB, #28 RB, #24 WR) This can be argued, but this is about right for my league (2RB, 2WR/TE, 1 QB, 1 Flex)

Took the strength of schedule and calculated a weekly score for all projected players.

Calculated points for weeks 1-6, and weeks 14-16.

Lastly, and this is not scientific, but I would like your thoughts.

I took (VBD * 70%) + (Weeks 1-6 * 25%) + (total points * .5).

Notes:

I heavily weighted weeks 1-6 because to me it is always important to get the points while you can, you can always trade throughout the season...and what better way than to SELL HIGH.

I could also take injury and consistency rating and throw them into the calculation, but I choose not to, as injury is really a shot in the dark and consistency rating to me is overrated...

Please share your thoughts.

 

[einstein2u]

sounds good. can i get a copy.

 

[taco breath]

what does vbd stand for?

 

[by_the_sea_wannabe]

what does vbd stand for?

 

[LionsFan78]

Notes: I heavily weighted weeks 1-6 because to me it is always important to get the points while you can, you can always trade throughout the season...and what better way than to SELL HIGH.

Everything sounds great man. I especially like this factor as well. I've actually got certain guys ranked higher than some, for that exact same purpose.

 

[omahabrad]

value based draft

google" the principles of a value based draft" if want to read a pretty good article explaining it.

 

[Conqu'ering_Heroes]

sounds good. can i get a copy.

Yeah, can we review the spreadsheet???Please....

 

[Dirty Weasel]

I like how you've put some thought into making it your own. The question becomes, does your cheatsheet seem to somewhat mirror ADP's from the sites that you find are pretty accurate? Or does your cheatsheet tend to overvalue certain positions? I won't ask you to post your cheatsheet, because that's your hard work and should be your own, unless you care to share. But, for example, if your cheatsheet is telling you to draft a defense in the 3rd round, you may want to recalculate. Also, I noticed your formula calls for 70% VBD, 25% weeks 1 thru 6, and 5% for projected total points. Just wondering - why didn't you add in a percentage for your playoff weeks? Do you plan on major trading on or around week 6? Be cautious about weighing weeks 1-6 too heavily, because unless your league has owners who like to trade, you may end up with a squad of players who start off with a bang, then fizzle out. It's nice to see FF'ers getting creative, versus just drafting using their favorite website's cheatsheet. Good on ya.

 

[Jayrod]

This seems like some good stuff and I've never thought about the early season - sell high concept in my cheatsheets.

I'm doing something similar for an upcoming inagural dynasty auction. I basically have to do a lot of adjusting, but my idea is to come up with a single list with a max $$ amount for each player that encompasses all of my thoughts and ideas/concepts.

I started with general projections (losely based on the experts at FBG's ) and the resulting scoring totals. Then I made adjustments for consistancy over the last two years (the idea being to pick players who are in a more stable situation). Then I made adjustments for age and experience (mostly because of dynasty, but to also downgrade players whose production could be on the decline). Next I included an adjustment for potential upside and then finally an adjustment for injury risk. Most of this was fairly arbitrary and based upon my knowledge of the players and gut feelings, but that is what I usually end up doing on draft day anyway.

I did these adjustments as % changes to the projected scoring total coming up with a new "scoring total" that I then applied the VBD concept to. It is very interesting how some of the rankings were shaken up by what generally amounted to no more than a 2% change (some players on extreme ends of the spectrum had larger adjustments, but most fell in a +/- 2% range). I'm fairly pleased with they results as they represent what I feel is a good representation of what I really think of the players.

This is my first auction, however, so I just hope I don't panic and screw the whole thing up since I've put in this much work so far (I'm still not done with my IDP's).

 

[immadimwitty]

 

[remote controller]

VB drafting is simply making up stats to cover your gut instincts on players. You control all the variables, and can build whatever rankings you want. JMHO

 

[Billymac24]

Thanks for the comments.

That was a good point about playoff weeks. You could easily make an arguement for having those in there as well as a weight, and probably a good idea.

Unfortunately this year, I am drafting at the end of the first round and it is a 1 player keeper league, and my keeper WAS Chester Taylor before Peterson was drafted. So, I have no keeper worth anything and a low pick, so my strategy this year is going to have to lean heavily on weeks 1-6 and hope to SELL high to get good playoff matchups.

As for the comment about if I have too many QB's or WR's high, that can easily be tweaked by the baseline when calculating the "value" of a player. This has huge implications on your cheatsheet as most people know.

What my strategy really did for me, is it broke the ties for me. You know when you have 2-3 players ranked similarly, and it is your turn to draft. You look at SOS, injury concerns, OL upgrades and whatever to come up with who you will draft. I wanted to take that work out of draft day if possible.

I would be happy to send my projections out, but it will be a slimmed down version out of respect to some of the websites I have subscribed to. Just send me a PM.

Billy

 

[Jayrod]

VB drafting is simply making up stats to cover your gut instincts on players. You control all the variables, and can build whatever rankings you want. JMHO

I don't think that "making up" is an accurate phrase to apply to VBD.I primarily leaned upon the experts here at FBG's so as to try and take my own opinions out of the equation.

As an accountant, I equate pre-season stat projections to budgeting financial statements. You have a prior history of numbers that you can use as a basis for future expectations and then you apply knowledge about any changes to the situation for the upcoming year to create the most accurate, educated guess of what should occur in the upcoming year. It is not an exact science, but is really more of an art form and can be improved with practice, but never perfected.

That said, I think that the FBG staff has a great combination of experience as well as up to date information. I trust them to be objective in their analysis.

In the end you still have to go with what you feel is right, so remote controller is somewhat right, but it isn't exactly throwing a dart at some numbers and just building whatever rankings you want.

 

[giantdogs92]

I would love to see this sheet, sounds great. I also love the sell high factor but never put it into my cheatsheets. I won my league last year by selling high on Muhsin and TJones for TO after a big week from Muhsin.

 

[TheLastDispatch]

maybe you could incorporate adp in there too. some guy made an application a while ago and posted it on here. it took VBD and ADP and crossed them to produce a cheatsheet. you could see ADP, VBD, and then the crossed list. the cool thing is you could adjust how much influence ADP and VBD each had.

maybe you could do something similar (adjusting % of influence on final cheatsheet)

 

[remote controller]

VB drafting is simply making up stats to cover your gut instincts on players. You control all the variables, and can build whatever rankings you want. JMHO

I don't think that "making up" is an accurate phrase to apply to VBD.I primarily leaned upon the experts here at FBG's so as to try and take my own opinions out of the equation.

As an accountant, I equate pre-season stat projections to budgeting financial statements. You have a prior history of numbers that you can use as a basis for future expectations and then you apply knowledge about any changes to the situation for the upcoming year to create the most accurate, educated guess of what should occur in the upcoming year. It is not an exact science, but is really more of an art form and can be improved with practice, but never perfected.

That said, I think that the FBG staff has a great combination of experience as well as up to date information. I trust them to be objective in their analysis.

In the end you still have to go with what you feel is right, so remote controller is somewhat right, but it isn't exactly throwing a dart at some numbers and just building whatever rankings you want.

I do understand it's purpose, and I also see how it could help answer the question Driver/Evans. I like the way you explained the way you did it. My concern is, human nature steps in, and you can kind of build what you want to see, since you control all the inputed variables. I see it as over kill, and or possible over manipulation.

 

[Mungo Burrows]

VB drafting is simply making up stats to cover your gut instincts on players. You control all the variables, and can build whatever rankings you want. JMHO

I don't think that "making up" is an accurate phrase to apply to VBD.I primarily leaned upon the experts here at FBG's so as to try and take my own opinions out of the equation.

As an accountant, I equate pre-season stat projections to budgeting financial statements. You have a prior history of numbers that you can use as a basis for future expectations and then you apply knowledge about any changes to the situation for the upcoming year to create the most accurate, educated guess of what should occur in the upcoming year. It is not an exact science, but is really more of an art form and can be improved with practice, but never perfected.

That said, I think that the FBG staff has a great combination of experience as well as up to date information. I trust them to be objective in their analysis.

In the end you still have to go with what you feel is right, so remote controller is somewhat right, but it isn't exactly throwing a dart at some numbers and just building whatever rankings you want.

I do understand it's purpose, and I also see how it could help answer the question Driver/Evans. I like the way you explained the way you did it. My concern is, human nature steps in, and you can kind of build what you want to see, since you control all the inputed variables. I see it as over kill, and or possible over manipulation.

So...worst case is you manipulate the projections to end up with rankings that mirror your gut. Alternatively, the process of assembling the projections (either on your own, from a 3rd party source like FBG or some combination) gives you some better insight into how realistic your gut rankings might be and provokes thought into how players might perform relative to one another? Also, the real insight of VBD is the ability to perform cross-position comparisons. I guess you could say it's not worth the time and effort, but with the tools and projections available, it's not even that hard to do. There are plenty arguments about the shortcomings of VBD, but it doesn't seem like you're even hitting on those. True, it's only as good as the projections, and we might manipulate those projections to match preconceived notions, but how is that worse than simply acting on those preconceived notions?