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Fantasy Football "Problems" (1 Viewer)

Joe Bryant

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Staff member
I heard something yesterday listening to a podcast: "The companies that win are the companies that best identify the customer's problems".

Of course, it's understood that after identifying the problem, they offer a solution to the problem. 

It's the basis of all business. We exist to solve the customer's problem. Without a problem, he doesn't need us. 

And to be clear, I don't mean a "problem" like his leagues won't synch with the Draft Dominator or he can't log into the site.  

I'm talking bigger picture.

I'm talking problems like he doesn't have time to prepare. Or he doesn't know how to value starting TEs vs starting WRs.
 
That kind of thing:


So I'd throw out the question here.

What problems do our customers have?

And I think it's likely best to break them into three Categories:


1. Problems a DFS Guy has.

2. Problems A Season Long Guy has before his Draft

3. Problems a Season Long Guy has after his Draft.

What do you think?

 
Thanks for feedback there. That's a different topic on what we offer.

What I'm trying to get here is what kinds of things (problems that need solving) all fantasy owners have.
Too much information to gain a competitive advantage, as stated upthread. It truly became about luck around a decade or so ago. There's nothing you can do to fix opportunity and luck, especially when there's perfect information to everybody (media, etc.) but the insiders (coaches, front offices, staff). The only people that really know what's going to go on are those latter entities, and they mean the most to fantasy football.  

 
Also problems: 

Injuries mean scoring done for the game instead of designated subs, which is a longstanding lament leagues have adjusted for. 

Other league-by-league issues address by going off of standard format. like the value of QBs. 

But really, it's the luck factor.  

 
I don’t know of many decent tools for dynasty and keeper leagues for evaluating these things:

-In season or off season trades involving draft picks

-In season or off season trades for keeper leagues when salaries or other keeper players values are involved

-Tools to help decide on keepers for limited keeper leagues when there are salaries/caps/pick costs involved

 
 I think a BIG problem in this industry is lack of interest in the offseason. Or more specifically, we need an offseason product to cut our downtime.

This is a big deal for the serious players, and its also a big deal for the analysts and forces behind the product we all like. (Who wouldn't want the ability to make  EXTRA money during the usual offseason....?  Think about that, seriously.)

If addressed, some solid XFL FANTASY CONTENT could seriously ease a very long dry spell for us as players, and it obviously is a way to make more money in the offseason, by offering a slightly different product/content , but it is similar enough as to where many of us would slowly gravitate towards XFL leagues.  It lasts roughly 2 months beginning right after the Super Bowl.

I imagine the XFL (the average NFL fantasy player doesn't yet know how seriously this is being handled, it is certainly NOT the XFL of old) has plans in place for some type of fantasy product when the time comes.

Even if it is just "very limited content", I can't help but think FBG needs to be on this train from the start. In 2-3 years it may fizzle out completely.....but if it doesn't FBG should be on board.  If it takes off, FBG would be considered one of the leaders of the new fantasy movement.

 DO I THINK AN XFL FANTASY PRODUCT WOULD BE THE NEXT BIG THING AND TAKE OVER NFL FANTASY LEAGUES???  -   Not at all, and I'm sure it never will. But there is no reason to ignore it completely.  There is a big opportunity here, and there are plenty of fantasy players looking to get involved after the current NFL season ends.

I have done a bit of a small "survey" and asked around in every single one of my leagues. Most of the guys in my leagues are a bit more knowledgeable than your average player, (more "hardcore" in that sense if you will) but roughly 20% of the guys I asked have at least SOME interest in XFL fantasy.

When you think about it, thats a pretty big piece of the fantasy pie.

 TZM

 
Good Topic.  A few things, some already mentioned.

1. Too much info.  Having it laid out more simply would solve this.  Not only from many sites, but also within the one site.  There's dozens of people on FBG ranking preseason.  On a week to week basis there's 3, but these rankings change daily.  So from the time someone looks even at just the very basic "MyFBG weekly ranks", between Monday and Friday, they're seeing 10 different sets of rankings.  This also differs from the tier articles that come out, the new myfbg that often is inconsistent, etc.  Love the ranks, but sometimes there's too many different and contradictory ranks being thrown out there daily.

2.  Valuing a trade.  A trade calculator for fantasy would be awesome (non dynasty).  Something that can analyze your roster, use the top 200 going forward into the formula in order to give a yay/nay on a trade, and how this could improve one's team.  Might be too hard to create this but I think "Should I accept this trade?" is an extremely common stress among owners, and one I get friends texting me about daily.

3. Time and ease is always a problem for those who are in many leagues.  Rather than searching your MyFBG weekly rankings every few hours, having something give me a notification on Fridays that computes my line up and says "you are starting baltimore D but we have SF D ranked higher and they are on your wire" would simplify this.  (Sorry, I know you want problems, not solutions)

4. One of the biggest problems I have is finding single week future rankings.  I know rankings don't come out until week of, but often I may have a week 14 bye, not care about week 16, and only want week 15 rankings.  Not many sites have these ranks in advance, unless you just go to the CBS/Yahoo/etc league profile and search for 'week 15 projected scores" and sort players that way.  This is a big issue that sucks, and adjusting the weekly weights on new myfbg to only include said given week, is extremely time consuming.

5. People often also struggle with "who to keep" each offseason.  This would be non dynasty, and be a problem people face BEFORE the next year's rankings come out. 
 

 
A league management site that allows some mechanism for replacing points for injuries off the team’s bench would get all my business.  Plus, it would be one way to address info proliferation (deep-bench stashes are still not covered extensively in the mass media) and reduce the luck factor.

Seems like it would be straightforward to build something that says “Player A got hurt at 3 minutes into the 3rd quarter.  His designated substitute Player B scored 7.4 fantasy points in his game after the third minute of his 3rd quarter.  Add that to the team’s fantasy score.”

This would likely require a real human being or three every week online during games monitoring injuries, recording times departed and returned, and then video-checking their figures with Game Pass leading up to Thursday AM stat corrections.  But that’s exactly the sort of differential value-add that would capture my fantasy dollars away from a competitor.

 
I heard something yesterday listening to a podcast: "The companies that win are the companies that best identify the customer's problems".

Of course, it's understood that after identifying the problem, they offer a solution to the problem. 

It's the basis of all business. We exist to solve the customer's problem. Without a problem, he doesn't need us. 

And to be clear, I don't mean a "problem" like his leagues won't synch with the Draft Dominator or he can't log into the site.  

I'm talking bigger picture.

I'm talking problems like he doesn't have time to prepare. Or he doesn't know how to value starting TEs vs starting WRs.
 
That kind of thing:


So I'd throw out the question here.

What problems do our customers have?

And I think it's likely best to break them into three Categories:


1. Problems a DFS Guy has.

2. Problems A Season Long Guy has before his Draft

3. Problems a Season Long Guy has after his Draft.

What do you think?
Don’t agree with any of this. Identifying “problems” is outdated thinking. It’s more about how can you provide the best user experience. Disruptive. Opportunities vs Problems. 

But, a general problem I have is quickly seeing how defenses rank against position. It’s there but not front and center. I have to find it. Example might be Higbee this week and how Cowboys fare against TE. Compare with Vander Esch/Lee in or out. 

You already solved a huge one in separating daily content for those of us who have zero interest in that. 
 

 
A feature that shows points allowed vs each position by each team would be helpful. I.e Arizona allows most points vs TE and how many. Could include points vs slot receivers, outside receivers, etc

 
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But really, it's the luck factor.  
This. I'm always looking for resources and suggestions on how to mitigate the luck issue as much as possible. For example, tips for league adjustments or rule changes that may bring a heightened level of strategy to the game. Something like, does eliminating kickers add a more strategic element? If so, what do you replace that position with? Another flex? A WR? Or, are there scoring changes that can make a difference and reward a more strategic player? I always find that type of information helpful. 

 
So I'd throw out the question here.

What problems do our customers have?

And I think it's likely best to break them into three Categories:


1. Problems a DFS Guy has.

2. Problems A Season Long Guy has before his Draft

3. Problems a Season Long Guy has after his Draft.

What do you think?
Thanks Joe for asking this.  My thoughts are

1) better evaluation of offensive lines and how they impact fantasy production.  Like the NFL, the game is won up front, and we have seen player like Barkley not be very good due to terrible OL play.  Also, it is imperative to understand if the OL is better at run blocking or pass blocking.

2) Projections by Dodds/Tremblay/Bloom are great.  But they are point estimates.  I would love to see the 1st, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 99th percentiles, to measure upside and downside.  Also, it would be great to understand upside for a pair of players to stack in DFS tourneys, like the popular QB/WR stack. 

3) Better fantasy analysis of impacts in injury scenarios.  Example, if a starting RB goes down, how will the carries be distributed.  I would like this before draft.  If a backup RB won't be a RB2 if the starter goes down, that RB is not really a guy I want to draft.

4) In your FBG rankings, have more explanations for players with wide variances in rankings......I want to know why someone is really high on a player, but someone else is really low on the same player.

 
If we're throwing out ideas for dream products, instead of a hard number, I'd love to see some kind of bell curve. Floor, ceiling, and what shape of probability a player might actually score. I'd also love to get some correlation analysis... how given outcomes are tied, and an allowance for inputting possible scenarios: "what if the Texans/Titans game becomes a high-scoring shootout?" or "What if (insert opponent's QB) has a huge game... what moves could I take to insure against that?"  Maybe something that slides along the bell curve... "if the result of this game is this player is near his floor, what would we expect that means for the other players?" and shows you the effect on your whole team.
Thanks. I like that. Have you played much with the League Dominator tool? It has some pretty interesting things. 

 
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Thanks for feedback there. That's a different topic on what we offer.

What I'm trying to get here is what kinds of things (problems that need solving) all fantasy owners have.
Being here for a while, there was a time that people only talked dynasty in one thread during the season. Either a lot more people play dynasty, a lot of redraft posters have left and not been replaced or both. Maybe they've went to daily leagues as well.

Whatever the case I feel there's a lot more dynasty posters then ever but not a ton of content.

I really don't play much redraft anymore and when I do I find there's so much info for the shallow formats around that I'm not sure what to tell you. 

 
People pay for fantasy football leagues for entertainment and the chance to win prizes. 

People pay for fantasy football subscriptions because they want to win.

That's the customer's problem. They want to win and they want to be entertained. 

Here's your problem.  

Fantasy football subscription services can increase your probability of winning but they can't guarantee a win or playoff spot in any given year.  

That means you sell three things

- a greater probability of winning

- the feeling that you're a winner

- improving the entertainment of their fantasy football leagues

Your customers know they aren't guaranteed to win, but they feel that footballguys gives them a better chance.  I feel like that's the biggest selling point of this site.  

The winning feeling is a big part too.  For dfs that's something you see in your results each week. For season long and dynasty, only one person wins their league but there are a lot of things in this hobby that make people feel like they "won".

- Making the playoffs

- Winning the points title

- Winning a game

- Having a high scoring week

- Making a "good" trade

- Making a trade that ended up being good after the fact

- Getting the guy you wanted on waivers

- Getting the guy you SHOULD have wanted on waivers instead of the guy you originally wanted

- Making the right lineup decision

You sell new customers the ability to win their league, but you retain those customers by providing them enough of those winning feelings.  

Lastly there's the entertainment value.  People read about their hobby because they enjoy it. There's a lot of services out there. You can Google free fantasy football adp five minutes before your draft starts and do ok in your league. You sell the entertainment value of feeling like you know more than other people.  That might mean providing insights that their league mates don't have, it might mean teaching them about the game or about how different coaches and different teams do things, or how different defenses work.  Some of those things translate into wins, but there's a difference between the winning and the entertainment aspect of having something to read when you're in the bathroom or killing time at the dmv. 

I feel like it might help to view your content through that paradigm when you're prioritizing between getting the waiver article out and getting the dfs content out, or choosing between the umpteenth article on who a certain fantasy writer likes, vs an article with observations about offensive and defensive trends at each position. 

I would love to have content that said stuff like "this secondary has a tall corner who is pretty good and a short corner who's really good.  When they face a tall wr1 they have struggled, but they have been able to hang with most wr1s. They rarely double team.  They usually play single high safety.  They blitzed a lot when they played team x and y but not z..."  that's part of the entertainment value for me. 

Other people want a list - preferably one that takes that stuff onto account, but they paid someone to do their reading for them so they can win. 

Both are important, but I suspect that meeting your date/ time commitments for things that contribute to wins is more important than entertainment. 

 
First, great topic. Interesting approach to the subject. 

As a former project manager & current maker of award-winning gourmet food, one constant has been the concept of “failing up”.

it’s ok to fail on a project, either partly or in whole (though the latter should be avoided unless self-employed). Some failure is inevitable. One or multiple factors of scope, budget, timeline may go awry, or somewhere in the details, something gets overlooked.

To ensure that failure is not without value, we embrace the concept of learning from our mistakes, or failing up. We conduct postmortems to evaluate the project’s successes & failures. Even on a project where the perception is that everything was ducky, conducting a postmortem may reveal little nits to be picked. So-and-so didn’t get invited to such-and-such meeting or wasn’t on some call that seemed unimportant, yet caused my phone to ring at 10:00 PM on a Friday for it. That way the next project, (or the next batch of sauce when prototyping, for example) is incrementally or substantially improved.

Applying this concept to FF is something I started doing many years ago, when I started playing IDP & there weren’t a ton of resources available. Weird runs happened and I kept feeling like I was a passenger during the draft instead of driving. It’s an awful feeling & usually results in a poor season. So every year, regardless of whether I won the championship or lost all season long, I’d go back & look at the draft board, and look at my in-draft cheat sheet, and my pre-draft notes to see where I could have done better or worse. 

And I’d compare to the season before that.

And sure...sometimes it’s just bad luck. Players get hurt. Players fail to perform to draft-day value. But sometimes it has to do with where I took a player or position, or where I overlooked a value. 

so I make notes, and then use that to prepare for next season. That way when I’m doing my 2020 draft prep, I’ll have my notes from 2019. 

so in terms of a customer ask, mine would be some sort of tool to conduct said postmortem. I love the FBG “rate my team” application. Some sort of tool like that for after the season that analyzed my draft & spit out suggested improvements to strategy or player value would be a huge help. Might catch things I miss with the naked eye. Sort of like playing cribbage with the app....after the game it shows the hands you played sub-optimally, and shows you what the better play was. That’s the only real way to learn from mistakes.

otherwise we as FF managers are likely to continue repeating them.

/braindump 

 
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Thanks Joe for asking this.  My thoughts are

1) better evaluation of offensive lines and how they impact fantasy production.  Like the NFL, the game is won up front, and we have seen player like Barkley not be very good due to terrible OL play.  Also, it is imperative to understand if the OL is better at run blocking or pass blocking.

2) Projections by Dodds/Tremblay/Bloom are great.  But they are point estimates.  I would love to see the 1st, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 99th percentiles, to measure upside and downside.  Also, it would be great to understand upside for a pair of players to stack in DFS tourneys, like the popular QB/WR stack. 

3) Better fantasy analysis of impacts in injury scenarios.  Example, if a starting RB goes down, how will the carries be distributed.  I would like this before draft.  If a backup RB won't be a RB2 if the starter goes down, that RB is not really a guy I want to draft.

4) In your FBG rankings, have more explanations for players with wide variances in rankings......I want to know why someone is really high on a player, but someone else is really low on the same player.
I really like these.

One of my favorite FBG features is the dialogue box that can be clicked for preseason rankings.  Not everyone has them for each player, but the sampling is great and helps sometimes understand the rationale behind markedly low v. high rankings.  Would love to see that applied to weekly lineup rankings.  No expectation that every player would get this, but if, say, Bloom is rating Golladay a top-5 WR for the week when most others are seeing him as a 10-15 guy, I’d be very curious to know what is catching his attention.

 
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I think one of the biggest problems players have is WDIS. There always seems to be two or three players who seem similar, and figuring out exactly which one to use becomes a study in over-analysis. Plus, it feels like we "always pick the wrong guy," even if that's not the case. 

Bloom does a nice job of trying to handle as much as he can on Sunday morning, but in a perfect world there'd be something where you punch in basic scoring system and you get the preferred guy, with some type of analysis and confidence level over the other guys. Not saying that's feasible, but a lot of issues stem from picking between two or three guys for one spot. Remove that hassle, and I think the experience becomes more fun. 

For me personally, if I feel like I started the "right guys," winning or losing becomes less important. It's more frustrating when I feel like I got in my team's way. 

 
I forget what article it is but it was ultimately the most helpful one week after week for me, the WR matchups. It’s basically Start/Sit but I could use it for QBs and RBs too. I’m not sure that the rankings really do the trick by themselves. I’ve gotten too busy, or lazy, to hunt all over the web for that stuff now, I really just hope it’s in the weekly FBGs content.

 
Lack of IDP insight. Since Jene left the IDP forum, there is way less detailed discussion. Even in the SP injury thread on game day, no one lists any IDP players. Team defense is such a cheesy scoring format, I felt people were gravitating towards IDP, which is the difference between chess & checkers in my opinion. I wish the attention IDP gets would mirror offensive player content.

Norton does a fantastic job on IDP, but anyone else here, or other sites for that matter, just seem to cut and paste from week one. Often players who have changed position, or lost 3 down roles, or even are injured- are still in the ratings. That kills the credibility of that author to me. He goes on ignore in a sense.

 
A feature that shows points allowed vs each position by each team would be helpful. I.e Arizona allows most points vs TE and how many. Could include points vs slot receivers, outside receivers, etc
This is extremely helpful.  If you use MFL, you can throw that chart onto your home screen.  I use it all the time for every league I'm in, and it would be awesome if it was in here as well.  Many sites have "pass defense rank" which is not ever as good as "how many points does this team give up to TE's" for example.  If you don't use MFL, it would be great to have this on FBG.

 
The main gripe I have with FBG is I THINK your rankings help me win more but I have no empiricle evidence to support that.  If you guys would allow your weekly rankings be used at fantasypros  it would go a long way to let us all know how good you really are at this.  Otherwise we are left to wonder if your rankings are very good at all?   

 
People pay for fantasy football leagues for entertainment and the chance to win prizes. 

People pay for fantasy football subscriptions because they want to win.

That's the customer's problem. They want to win and they want to be entertained. 
Nailed it.

Not sure the podcast you listened to, but there's quite a bit of work in this area.  Clayton Christensen's "jobs to be done" stuff is another way of thinking about solving customer problems I find useful. Just FYI if looking for more rabbit holes to go down. The instagram founders had a recent podcast that was pretty interesting from this perspective as well (http://investorfieldguide.com/instagram/

As a deep IDP dynasty player, I can obviously echo asking for more information/articles but I don't think you should focus on people asking for more content here, it sort of misses the point. I'll echo the above

* Cut down on "noise" to make it as easy as possible for people to find the information/articles/projections of interest to them.  League Dominator is awesome at this (and offers some of the feature requests I've seen in the thread) but as an example, I only just realized Bloom's Buy Low / Sell High article started discussing dynasty moves for the offseason a few weeks ago.  My problem was finding that Bloom's article now applied to content I was interested in.  Sometimes this is you competing vs time ("I don't have enough time to go track this down, what are the key things I need to read") and sometimes this is you competing vs information overload.  I still sometimes make a point of pulling up your player info pages to see which articles they've been mentioned in... but it feels clunky.  Maybe an easy addition to league dominator?  I'm sure there are more examples here.

* Increase entertainment value.  You nailed it with subscriber contest, playoff contest, things of that nature.  I assume there is more you could do in these areas, but FBG contests or fun in addition to fantasy football (or "on top of") is likely good for you.  You'll have to check the numbers as I don't know them.

* I think the retrospective idea mentioned earlier might be an interesting need.  I found myself loving the team strength stuff in league dominator, but wishing I could have seen the numbers from the beginning of the season.  Or similarly, despite my hatred of them, ESPN and the like keep pushing "expected win percentage" stuff on NFL games.  I assume they do it because someone is using it.  Maybe a live scoring feature on FBG for fantasy games?  League dominator sort of does this, but you don't emphasis it through the UI.  Wouldn't get much use from me, but who knows

* I agree with the "make customers feel smarter" comment above as well.  Waldman and Harstad get a lot of clicks from me, but I imagine that is likely a certain subset of FBG customers and gets lost in the data when you look at overall popular articles. There might be something there worth segmenting or making easier to find.  

The more I type out, the more I wonder if the answer is simply building your content around league dominator rather than having it be its own stand-alone tool.  From reading the thread, it sure sounds like FBG needs a video tutorial of league dominator and all the features inside. Distributions on forecasts, expecting win percentage, get the IDP matchup spreadsheet and "ARI gives up most points to TE" data in there, etc.  It's a nice system and historically FBG has done a really nice job solving my problems ahead of the competition, so I expect you won't have any trouble continuing to find ideas.  

 
Our fantasy problems revolve around figuring out who will put up good stats and who won't. And well you can break it down as far as you want from there. 

Supposing your main goal was solving this problem, I would say go the route similar to sports the betting handicapper. Where you're not overwhelming us with information like injury updates, and how well a guy did last week; because I don't think we really need you for that - we can get that info from our fantasy hosting site pretty easily. Instead, just tell us what to do. A betting handicap service does this with analytics rather than gut feeling. And I would go with that.

 
Thanks for feedback there. That's a different topic on what we offer.

What I'm trying to get here is what kinds of things (problems that need solving) all fantasy owners have.


I’ll come back for 1 comment, then I’m out again.

You are displaying an exact huge problem companies have.  You ask for feedback, you get it from customers who sincerely want to help you improve your product, and you aren’t interested in hearing it because it’s not what you want to hear.   That’s not a personal jab, it’s business advice.  Learn to listen.

 
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This is extremely helpful.  If you use MFL, you can throw that chart onto your home screen.  I use it all the time for every league I'm in, and it would be awesome if it was in here as well.  Many sites have "pass defense rank" which is not ever as good as "how many points does this team give up to TE's" for example.  If you don't use MFL, it would be great to have this on FBG.
For leagues hosted at Fleaflicker, they have this data too. It’s not necessarily in the best format, but for every player on your team, if you click the defense of the team they’re up against on the roster lineup page, it will pop up a thing showing the defense’s “yards against” average and rank for that position, the average number of TDs and rank for that position, and the overall fantasy defensive rank against that position.

I like that it separates out yards and TDs because I feel like for WRs yardage is a slightly better signifier than for RBs and QBs.

 
People pay for fantasy football leagues for entertainment and the chance to win prizes. 

People pay for fantasy football subscriptions because they want to win.

That's the customer's problem. They want to win and they want to be entertained. 

Here's your problem.  

Fantasy football subscription services can increase your probability of winning but they can't guarantee a win or playoff spot in any given year.  

That means you sell three things

- a greater probability of winning

- the feeling that you're a winner

- improving the entertainment of their fantasy football leagues

Your customers know they aren't guaranteed to win, but they feel that footballguys gives them a better chance.  I feel like that's the biggest selling point of this site. 
Really  you nailed it here. There's so much more to it than just solving our problem of winning. Honestly, footballguys could make money from subscriptions without even helping at all, diet pills kind of thing. People just want to "feel" like they're helping their chances and nobody will put in the effort to test the theory.

 
There really is only so much you can do in FF.  Other than last second injury updates there is always going to be a Winston throwing for 460 and 4TDs, and a Drake having a career day out of the blue to derail even the best teams.  It just happens.

I know..I had them both.  :bag:

 
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I’ll come back for 1 comment, then I’m out again.

You are displaying an exact huge problem companies have.  You ask for feedback, you get it from customers who sincerely want to help you improve your product, and you aren’t interested in hearing it because it’s not what you want to hear.   That’s not a personal jab, it’s business advice.  Learn to listen.
I wish you would stay buddy.

Though, Johnny B. Goode complaining about the dynasty content here did not answer the question Joe asked. Seems to me Joe wanted a broader philosophical discussion about the purpose of a fantasy sports website, rather than specifics for FBG to improve.

 
Our fantasy problems revolve around figuring out who will put up good stats and who won't. And well you can break it down as far as you want from there. 

Supposing your main goal was solving this problem, I would say go the route similar to sports the betting handicapper. Where you're not overwhelming us with information like injury updates, and how well a guy did last week; because I don't think we really need you for that - we can get that info from our fantasy hosting site pretty easily. Instead, just tell us what to do. A betting handicap service does this with analytics rather than gut feeling. And I would go with that.
:goodposting:

The problem is that good stats are influenced by a host of factors

  • Game flow
  • Performance of teammates
  • Quality of the opponent
  • Defensive strategy
  • Offensive philosophy
  • Officiating
  • Weather
So anyone can "throw a dart" and project a QB like Dak to throw for 280 yds and 2 TDs against LA.  I would like to know more about the thought process behind Dodds/Bloom and Tremblay's projections, along with the distribution of a player's stats.   I would assume Dodds can use his "Game Predictor" (which I love) and show the distribution of how the games could flow.  So many fantasy players complain....."hey, FBG projected this player for 11 pts but he only 4 pts....FBG sucks in projecting players!"......this is totally not true.  For most players, a 11 pt projection likely has a 15th percentile of 4 pts, so that  this player is going to score 4 or less points 1 out of every 6 times.

So, as I mentioned, understanding volatility and how to use it to the fantasy owner's advantages, whether it's in season long or in DFS is something that would be so invaluable.  What would be great is......for tougher lineup decisions, see how the decision actually impacts the volatility.  When I am a favorite, I want LESS volatilty and want to protect my advantage.  When I am dog I want MORE volatilty. This actually means that you may want to start a player (in a tough lineup decision) that is expected to score slightly less.  If I am a favorite, give me the WR that will score 10 points with low volatility vs the WR that is expected to score 11 points but has very high volatility.  If am the dog, give me the WR that is expected to score 10 but could explode for 25+, vs the WR expected to score 11 but is more consistent.  

Understanding volatility will really help the DFS guy.  Consistent guys are needed for 50-50 cash games, but you need to embrace a lot of volatility if you want to cash in tournaments.

 
My biggest issue is that projection accuracy seems to have fallen off dramatically this year.  Especially Bloom, I worry that perhaps he is stretched too thin.  Projections are the #1 reason I subscribe to the site and this is the worst year for Dodds/Bloom by a very wide margin since I started tracking your accuracy in 2012.  I don't even bother tracking Tremblay but that's another issue entirely

 
A league management site that allows some mechanism for replacing points for injuries off the team’s bench would get all my business.  Plus, it would be one way to address info proliferation (deep-bench stashes are still not covered extensively in the mass media) and reduce the luck factor.

Seems like it would be straightforward to build something that says “Player A got hurt at 3 minutes into the 3rd quarter.  His designated substitute Player B scored 7.4 fantasy points in his game after the third minute of his 3rd quarter.  Add that to the team’s fantasy score.”

This would likely require a real human being or three every week online during games monitoring injuries, recording times departed and returned, and then video-checking their figures with Game Pass leading up to Thursday AM stat corrections.  But that’s exactly the sort of differential value-add that would capture my fantasy dollars away from a competitor.
Why not just use best ball scoring then? There already are league management sites that offer this. It would automatically count the team’s highest scoring roster each week. Or do you like having to submit a lineup every week?

 
A feature that shows points allowed vs each position by each team would be helpful. I.e Arizona allows most points vs TE and how many. Could include points vs slot receivers, outside receivers, etc
MFL already has this, just not as fleshed out as you describe. They listed average fantasy points allowed by position by NFL team. I have also see sites that report on specific receivers (ie WR1, WR2, WR3 on NFL teams) but can’t remember what sites they’re on.

 
Another idea that occurred to me: Incentivize the assistant coach forum. 

I’m not sure how - I’ll leave that up to the galaxy-brains at Footballguys…

but it would certainly make that forum more useful. Right now it’s a hot mess. You’ve got people giving brief snippets in reply & leaving a link to get one for themselves. It’s not very active or useful as a forum.

Sportsline has created an mini app on their league page for WSIS where you click one player or the other - and you can put up your own “WSIS” & track answers - something like that would be far more useful, but without the current format which allows back & forth discussion or insight. 

the problem is that not enough folks offer discussion or insight.

I’ve spent time on the AC forum helping without leaving links - I know a few others do as well, but that’s the exception & not the rule.

surely there must be some way to make it worth people’s time to help others. 

AC is a good idea in concept, but a bit poor in execution. I’d love to see that forum get a makeover to make it more functional for everyone. How to do that is a much deeper dive.  :shrug:

 
MFL does a great job retweeting these questions. twitter is by far the best (and fastest) resource for this rather than the AC. It is a hot mess over there. Useless even
That’s great - so that validates why it’s an area of improvement to target here.

Think about casinos. They don’t have clocks & they design them like a maze so customers don’t leave.

wouldn't FBG want to keep their members here rather than sending them to Twitter or MFL to get WSIS or “is this a good trade” questions answered? 

A bare-bones discussion forum isn’t the best tool for that, but FBG could build some apps that could help with this, and/or reward members who actively participate in helping others. 

Like I said. I’ll leave it to FBG to figure out “how” but it’s definitely a “what” in terms of site needs. 

 
That’s great - so that validates why it’s an area of improvement to target here.

Think about casinos. They don’t have clocks & they design them like a maze so customers don’t leave.

wouldn't FBG want to keep their members here rather than sending them to Twitter or MFL to get WSIS or “is this a good trade” questions answered? 

A bare-bones discussion forum isn’t the best tool for that, but FBG could build some apps that could help with this, and/or reward members who actively participate in helping others. 

Like I said. I’ll leave it to FBG to figure out “how” but it’s definitely a “what” in terms of site needs. 
The FF reddit sub only lets you ask questions after you've answered 3 or so.

 
The FF reddit sub only lets you ask questions after you've answered 3 or so.
That wouldn’t be a bad addition here. Solid. 

but seeing as how slick the “rate my team” app is, I’d think FBG could come up with something way more interesting for the AC stuff.   :shrug:

 
Why not just use best ball scoring then? There already are league management sites that offer this. It would automatically count the team’s highest scoring roster each week. Or do you like having to submit a lineup every week?
 Best ball doesnt quite do this.  Back when Cook got 10 pts, left with an injury, and Mattison got another 10 in the second half, my “process” of starting them should net a 20-pt. game, not a pair of 10smtaking up two starting slots if they beat out whatever midtier WRs I had available.

Best ball takes out the variance I like and want to keep in FF...that of players performing differently by matchup, conditions, etc. and incentivizes dart throws,  Nkthing wrong with that but the strategy is entirely different from what I’m suggesting.

 
Another idea that occurred to me: Incentivize the assistant coach forum. 

I’m not sure how - I’ll leave that up to the galaxy-brains at Footballguys…

but it would certainly make that forum more useful. Right now it’s a hot mess. You’ve got people giving brief snippets in reply & leaving a link to get one for themselves. It’s not very active or useful as a forum.

Sportsline has created an mini app on their league page for WSIS where you click one player or the other - and you can put up your own “WSIS” & track answers - something like that would be far more useful, but without the current format which allows back & forth discussion or insight. 

the problem is that not enough folks offer discussion or insight.

I’ve spent time on the AC forum helping without leaving links - I know a few others do as well, but that’s the exception & not the rule.

surely there must be some way to make it worth people’s time to help others. 

AC is a good idea in concept, but a bit poor in execution. I’d love to see that forum get a makeover to make it more functional for everyone. How to do that is a much deeper dive.  :shrug:
FBG used to run a predictive contest where they would hit you with 10-20 WDIS questions each week, and track the community’s response.  A small prize pool for the most accurate incentivizes serious answers, and likely gets the kind of response volume A/C can only dream of.

Of course it doesn’t help with Sunday morning acrambles, but a real-time version miht work if enough of us were on and felt like playing Sunday morning.

 
 Best ball doesnt quite do this.  Back when Cook got 10 pts, left with an injury, and Mattison got another 10 in the second half, my “process” of starting them should net a 20-pt. game, not a pair of 10smtaking up two starting slots if they beat out whatever midtier WRs I had available.

Best ball takes out the variance I like and want to keep in FF...that of players performing differently by matchup, conditions, etc. and incentivizes dart throws,  Nkthing wrong with that but the strategy is entirely different from what I’m suggesting.
Seems way too complex for what I perceive to be minimal gain.

 
Thursday night games are FF problem.

Nothing you can solve but a problem , imo

Friday waivers simplified the experience for everyone.  Now you probably need to log in at least 4-5 times a week for a basic weekly league

 
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FBG used to run a predictive contest where they would hit you with 10-20 WDIS questions each week, and track the community’s response.  A small prize pool for the most accurate incentivizes serious answers, and likely gets the kind of response volume A/C can only dream of.

Of course it doesn’t help with Sunday morning acrambles, but a real-time version miht work if enough of us were on and felt like playing Sunday morning.
This discussion reminded me of that contest as well - it was called Wisdom of the Crowd IIRC.  Liked that contest too.

 
FBG used to run a predictive contest where they would hit you with 10-20 WDIS questions each week, and track the community’s response.  A small prize pool for the most accurate incentivizes serious answers, and likely gets the kind of response volume A/C can only dream of.

Of course it doesn’t help with Sunday morning acrambles, but a real-time version miht work if enough of us were on and felt like playing Sunday morning.
I like that idea. 

 
Not being able to talk to coaches and get them to either showcase or pull players is a problem. That ability would be worth a premium subscription.
LOL.  I could have told Sean McVeigh that you're getting your a## kicked 44-15.  You don't need to keep Cooper Kupp in there to get 11 points in garbage time for my opponent to beat me by 3.   :hot:

 
I'm a lurker here and infrequent poster, and was actually searching for something like this.  I've been a subscriber to footballguys for a number of years now, and I like the product.  I don't know if the intent of the topic is to discover new content that FBG could create or comments on the existing content, it's a little unclear to me.

MyFBG is a helpful tool that I look at weekly.  The League Dominator is a staple.  Rest of Season rankings are always interesting and fun, although a little more explanation of how those rankings occur might be useful.  For example, why was Darren Waller at one point ranked in the top 30 overall in my league?  Sure, it's 16 teams and we start one TE, but top 30?  

Sometimes I feel that content isn't delivered quick enough.  Rent a Kicker and Rent a Defense I feel used to come out earlier in the day.  It's almost 3 pm eastern and those articles aren't posted, yet many of our leagues have waivers that lock tonight.  Lots of us do our analysis during the work day (cough cough) and don't have time to look again and ponder after we get home to our families.

Some of the other major sites have in-depth game by game analysis and start-sits.  You can tease some of the suggestions from the DFS articles, but it's not as clear.  

The positional tiers could use some more development.  Yes, listing who is Elite, Strong, What the heck Flex is good and all, but at least a little blurb on each player might be more interesting and useful.

 

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