Drafting Principles and Tactics
by Greg Alan

Gang, as you may know, I really love football. Studying the game, researching and analyzing everything I can find to unearth applied insights. Sometimes, the statistician in me comes out. Below is the Football Analyst side of my brain talking to the old Statistician within. Whatever you call it, this essay is intended to help you find an edge on draft day.  

Targeting Valuable Starters
I'll briefly overview TVS - Targeting Valuable Starters. The TVS Principles outlined below are widely applicable to both auction and non-auction league draft formats.

Unlike other popular drafting methods, TVS fully integrates five vital elements and delivers the results via a parsimonious Power Rating. 

In a nutshell, the TVS process determines a player's draft day worth by:

1) Evaluating a player's ability to generate Fantasy Points relative to your competitor's players at that same position

2) Evaluating a player's ability to generate Fantasy Points relative to "easily obtainable" players via the waiver wire (free agent pool).

3) Evaluating a player's overall ability to generate Fantasy Points (via his talent, durability, job security, consistency level, offensive system and workload).

4) Evaluating a player's Strategic Value (example: key backup to a stud RB).

5) In addition, TVS considers the number of effective Fantasy Starts a player will likely give you! This is a key and unique element used in the TVS Power Rating computation.

Fortunately, most of your competitors won't consider all these factors when they evaluate and draft players. As such, by utilizing the TVS Power Rating, you'll have a competitive advantage.

Some Fantasy Football team owners utilize a mechanical drafting technique called Value Based Drafting to select players. In the process, they attempt to utilize projected season statistics to evaluate whom to draft. Projected stats help determine the degree to which a given player will outscore other players at that position. In addition, projected stats can help you evaluate potential draft picks across different positions. Value Based methods are logical and often result in a decent selection. In fact, TVS leverages the Value Based principle in computing the TVS Power Rating.

However, value-based methods only give you part of the picture. TVS leverages the good things about Value Based Drafting, avoids the problems and ultimately delivers a more robust solution. TVS takes it to the next level!

A more insightful way to determine a player's worth on draft day can be had by considering:

1) How many Fantasy Starts you'll likely obtain from that player

2) When you start a player, how much he'll outscore (or be outscored by) your opponent's starting players at the same position.

Strictly speaking, a good Fantasy Draft consists of more than just obtaining a number of high scoring studs. Rather, a good draft allows you to field an outstanding starting lineup week-in and week-out. In addition, a successful Fantasy Draft must yield a starting lineup that will consistently outscore your opponent's starting lineup.

QUESTION: Assuming your league starts two RBs each week and all the RBs stay healthy, which backfield would you like to own? (see Table I and II)
 

Using projected season statistics, Team-B's forecast could earn you more Value Based points on draft day. And in total, Team-B could generate more Yards and TDs.

So, which team would you like to own? A or B?

If you said 'Team-A' you're halfway home to understanding TVS. Clearly in a league that starts two RBs each week, Team-A is highly preferred over Team-B.

Why? Plain and simple, Team-A should deliver more valuable starts than Team-B.

The take is simple! The better job you can do at targeting and drafting valuable starters, the better your draft. TVS helps you do just this.

So where do you find TVS values? Online, 4for4.com will post pre-calculated, sortable TVS values. In addition, if you're not afraid of some data manipulation, you can certainly compute TVS values on your own. Regardless of if you use 4for4.com's TVS values on-line, compute your own TVS data or simply leverage the concepts (without the data), you'll be better off than your TVS-lacking competitors.

Before we get into more specifics on TVS, it's time for another example.

Let's pretend you own a crystal ball. For arguments sake, lets say it can perfectly forecast yearly NFL player statistics.

You asked and your amazing crystal ball tells you which WR will generate 228 Fantasy Points by gaining 1,500 yards receiving and scoring 13 TDs this season. In addition, the crystal ball tells you which WR will generate 125 Fantasy Points (via 950 yards receiving and 5 TDs).

The top WR generates about double the stats as the lower tier player. Given that, is the #1 WR worth about twice as much? Of course not, he's worth more!!! 

Hummm... So what do projected stats really tell us about relative Fantasy worth?

As it turns outs, TVS analysis shows the #1 WR is worth about 10x the lesser one.

Intuitively, this makes good sense. Everything else being equal, whom would you rather have on your roster - an elite stud (taking up one roster spot) or two journeymen taking up two roster spots? 

Perhaps you already realized this at a gut level. That's great. But now, TVS gives you a way to quantify the result and precisely operationalize it into your drafting! In addition, TVS allows you to objectively and consistently examine situations that aren't as obvious.

Where did that 10x ratio come from? Good question! However, if math isn't your cup of tea, you may not enjoy the answer. What follows in the next few paragraphs is not casual reading. Hang in. After the math, we'll turn back to English. Okay, you've been warned.

Before the TVS calculation is performed, several key metrics must be available. You'll need Individual Player Power Ratings. In addition, you'll need to compute how many Fantasy starts the Nth best player at a position will typically provide you during the season.

Individual Power Ratings are computed for each NFL player. At a minimum, Individual Player Power Ratings can be computed using Projected Player Stats. But, to go beyond that, a good power rating should consider more. For example, the 4for4.com Individual Player Power Rating is derived from a number of variables including a player's durability, consistency, job security, past performance, estimated future workload and his projected statistics.

To determine how many starts the Nth best player will typically provide, one must go back and examine a number of prior drafts and week-to-week starting lineups. From this, you need to form normative data. For example, the NFL's #1 Fantasy WR typically gets 15.95 Fantasy starts per year. The 35^th best WR typically makes 8.0 Fantasy starts per year. This process is continued for all positions and goes as deep as your league's starting lineup dictates.

With Individual Power Ratings and Typical Start data in hand, it's time to compute a Player's TVS Power Rating.

For NFL Player(I), playing Position(J), the TVS Power Rating is computed as follows:

The above formula makes use of benchmark values. These benchmarks act as a guidepost to facilitate player comparisons within a position. The benchmark value is strategically selected. For each position, the benchmark gets its value from several of the best players not likely to be drafted (using their Individual Power Rating). This choice is strategic because it measures scoring power relative to a top prospect that's readily available via your league's free agent pool.

While the formula may look incredibly complex to some and rather basic to others, the collective result satisfies a number of important conditions (see Table III). 

 
TVS is computed for all NFL players likely to get drafted. The calculation favors NFL players that greatly distance themselves from other drafted players at that position.

The TVS Rating also considers the magnitude by which a drafted player distances himself from his peers available on the waiver wire.

In addition, the TVS formula leverages historical norms and estimates the number of Fantasy Starts a player with a given Fantasy value will typically offer you.

Bottom Line? The more often a player can effectively start and help you win, the higher his TVS Rating.


Excluding extremes, while the number of draftable players varies from league to league, this does not significantly impact the TVS Rating because it's a relative-comparison measure. Likewise, the number of starters allowed per league varies. Again, since this is a relative calculation, this does not greatly skew TVS values.

For some, the TVS approach to player evaluation is new. As such, take some time to think about the underlying principles herein. It's a step up from basic drafting methods.  

Please don't disregard the concepts because it's not what you've done in the past or because they sound complex. Keep an open mind. If you do, I'm confident you'll see the benefits and gain a competitive advantage.

The Power and Pitfalls of Projected Yearly Data
Statistician's talk about 'expected' value. Flip a fair coin 10,000,000 times and you'd expect to get 50% heads and 50% tails.

'Expected value' data can be invaluable in many situations. In the long run, actual values often mirror the expected or predicted value. Good player stat projections fall into the realm of expected value data.