Fantasy Team Power Rankings
Have you ever wondered just how good your team was? Or looked atthe three teams locked at 6-3 in
your league and wondered if one of them really was better than
the others? Maybe you're just looking for
a way other than the win-loss column to find out which team is
really the best in your league? Well look
no farther, because here come the Fantasy Team Power Rankings
that will provide you with the answers
you've been seeking.
First of all, let me say that I am not the originator of this
ranking system. A very kind soul posted it to a
message board that I frequent last year and I thought it worth
passing on this year. Unfortunately, I
wasn't wise enough to keep this person's name or where the system
originally came from so that I could
properly credit them. That's what I get for getting all caught up
in this fantasy football frenzy.
What I'll do here is tell you what numbers to collect, why those
particular numbers are useful, and then
what to do with them when you have them all. What we're trying to
do is to measure the overall Power of
one team as it compares to all the other teams in the league. As
such, we're going to use five separate
criteria to generate the overall Power Ranking. Each of these
criteria needs to be collected each week to
develop an accurate Power Ranking for each team. The further into
the season you get, the more accurate
the Power Ranking becomes.
Starters Points: The total number of points scored by a team's
starters each week. This will be used to
determine the strength of the starting players for a team.
Bench Points: The total number of points scored by a team's bench
each week.
This will be used to determine the strength of a teams bench.
Number of Possible Wins Each Week: This is the number of other
teams in a league that a team could
have beaten during that week. It is used in conjunction with the
League Wins to determine the strength
of a team within the league.
Number of League Wins: Total number of League Wins to date. Used
with Number of Possible Wins
Each Week to determine the strength of a team within the league.
Number of Division Wins: Total number of wins within the Division
to date.
This is used to determine the strength of a team within the
division.
Ok, now that we know what to collect, let's see how to put it all
together.
Step1: The first thing we want to do is to get an idea of how
strong the scoring is for each of the starters.
This is done by adding together the starters points for each week
of the season so far. This number is
divided by the number of starters to give you an average number
of points per starter. This number is
then divided by the number of weeks you have data for to give you
an average number of points per
week per starter.
Huh?
Ok, I'll give you an example. Let's say you're in week 3 of your
season. So far, your team's starters have
scored 58, 72, 88 points. Your league starts 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1
TE, 1 K, 1 D. You now have all the info
you need to calculate the average number of points per week per
starter. The formula is:
n = current week
((points week 1 + points week 2 + ... points week n) / number of
starters) / n
((58 + 72 + 88)/ 8)/3 = 9.08
Step 2: Repeat the above process for your bench players to
determine the average number of points per
week per bench player. Make sure to divide by the number of bench
players and not the number of
starters.
Ex: n = current week
((points week 1 + points week 2 + ... points week n) / number of
bench players) / n
((42 + 15 + 27)/ 8)/3 = 3.5
Step 3: Generate the number of possible wins for each team per
week. This is done by ordering the teams
according to the total number of points scored by both the
starters and the bench then taking the number
of teams that team would have beaten as it's "score" for this
round.
For example: Say a four team league scored a total of points as
follows:
Team A:66
Team B:72
Team C:51
Team D:88
They would be ranked as follows:
Team D:88
Team B:72
Team A:66
Team C:51
Team D would then get 3 points because it would have beaten three
teams that week. Team B 2 points,
etc.
Add these numbers and divide by the number of weeks you have data
for to get the average number of
possible wins per week.
In the above example, if you're working on the score for team D,
team D would have 3 points this week, 2
points from the week before, and 0 points for week 1. Therefore
the equation would be:
x = number of possible wins
n = number of weeks
(week 1 x + week 2 x + ... week n x)/ n
(0 + 2 + 3)/3 = 1.67
Step 4: Now it gets a little easier. This is the total number of
wins in the league. For those of you that
have been following this you'll probably recognize this as the
number in the win column for the team. For
our example we'll use 2.
Step 5: Finally is the number of wins in the Division. This is
also pretty easy to figure out as it the number
of wins versus a division opponent. For our example we'll use 1.
Step 6: This final step is to take and add together the numbers
in the above five steps.
Step1 + Step2 + Step3 + Step4 + Step5 = Power Ranking
9.08 + 3.5 + 1.67 + 2 + 1 = 17.25
This Power Ranking can be used to compare the teams in the league
against each other. Besides being
used to determine the strongest teams, the individual pieces of
the above steps can be compared to
determine the strongest group of starters or benches (perhaps to
plan your next trading raid?). I have
found that this formula is pretty accurate in determining the
strength of the different teams in a league.
