Fact or Fiction? Testing Fantasy Football Draft Strategies Using "Teams In A Vacuum" Concept

August 9, 2023

Glenn analyzes fantasy football draft strategies and theories, using "Teams in a Vacuum" (TIAV) concept. Should you grab a QB early? Does draft position matter?

What can we learn from history? I mean -- the important history -- fantasy football history.

Suppose you took season results from the past several years and snake-drafted teams backward to make “perfect leagues.”  Or you had years of the most trusted draft rankings and used them to draft “expected leagues.” Starting from the best player, you assign players to teams in a snake draft order to make both 12-team and 10-team points leagues.

Created in the controlled environment of history, these Teams In A Vacuum (TIAV) can be used to prove or disprove all of the fantasy football draft theories -- “Load up on running backs first,” “Wait on tight ends,” “Draft based on value rather than position,” “Only pick players with the last names Smith, Jones, and Johnson so you can name your team like a law firm,” etc.

Overview of Teams In A Vacuum (TIAV)

Drafting from the past rather than the uncertainty of the future, TIAV can make theories into guidelines. The first two theories TIAV will analyze are:

• Don’t draft a quarterback first -- in spite of QBs scoring the most points in every league format, the fantasy experts tell you to wait for several rounds before drafting one.
• Early draft positions are better than later ones -- every commissioner has heard the demand, “I’m not going to be in your league if I don’t get an early draft pick.”

Don’t Draft A Quarterback First - Fantasy Football Theory

Did you ever look at the season results from your league and notice the majority of the top-scoring players are QBs? Counterintuitively, every preseason podcast you listen to says “Don’t draft a QB before the fifth round. QBs score ‘around’ the same number of points so there are plenty to choose from.”

Table 1 -- 2022 Final Results

The experts say the justification for waiting to draft a QB is based on two computations. The first is a statistical concept we are taught in sixth-grade math. Standard deviation is a calculation that shows how a data set relates to the average (mean). The smaller the standard deviation, the closer together the values are. In terms of fantasy football, a small standard deviation for a position indicates you can wait on drafting that position because several players will score nearly the same number of points.  Conversely, a large standard deviation means you should draft one of the better players for that position.

Table 2 -- 2013-2022 Season Averages For 12-Team Leagues

Comparing the standard deviations of the positions has to take into account that more than one running back and more than one wide receiver will be started. The most definitive statistic in a 10-year average is RBs have the largest standard deviation in all league formats. This supports the strategy of drafting an RB first.

The evidence for drafting a wide receiver before a QB is not as strong. Only in Point-Per-Reception (PPR) leagues do WRs have a larger span of values than QBs. Only in PPR leagues is there also evidence to support the theory that “all QBs score around the same number of points.”  In non-PPR leagues, elite QBs should be drafted before starting on the wide receiver pool.

The last row shows the 10-year averages for QBs in a 2QB league. Since high-scoring QBs can sit on benches and in free agent pools, your league may have another position for a second QB or a "Superflex” position to play any offensive positions. Due to similar standard deviations, RBs and QBs should be alternating draft picks in the first few rounds for 2QB, Superflex, and Six-Point Passing Touchdown leagues.

The experts would say the second reason for waiting to draft a QB comes from a statistical method introduced in fantasy baseball in the late 1990s called Value-Based Drafting (VBD). The idea is to rank players within their position and then combine the rankings with the other positions using a weighted value based on how many players are on the starting roster for each position. Almost all published draft rankings say they are based on VBD. Sometimes called Position Scarcity Theory, VBD will assign higher rankings if a position has few elite players.

No one would argue that the tight end position is “scarce” after Travis Kelce is drafted. Kelce has finished an average of 21^st overall in PPR, but VBD ranks him in the first round. This is appropriate since the second-highest-scoring TE has not been the same player in the past five years and the second TE scores 20-30 points less than Kelce.

Table 3 -- 2022 Fantasy Pro Draft Rankings

There are some drawbacks to Value-Based Drafting. The first drawback is the rank of the positions does not adhere to the first computation. In standard league scoring, WRs are ranked higher than QBs despite having a smaller standard deviation. The second drawback to VBD is the fuzzy math applied to quantify the difference between the elite and mid-level players. For example, D’Andre Swift was ranked ninth in the 2022 PPR rankings but he has never finished within the top 60 overall or the top 15 RBs in any league. Draft rankings based on VBD seem “exaggerated.”

The baseline set of TIAV comes from the season results snake-drafted backward from the years 2004 to 2022. Because season results are limited to 300 players and will not include enough defenses and kickers, TIAV will contain:

• 1 – QBs
• 2 – RBs
• 2 – WRs
• 1 – TEs
• 1 – FLEX -- best available RB, WR, or TE when other positions are filled

The same season results are used to draft 12-team and 10-team leagues. When all teams are drafted, add the fantasy points together to figure out which team won.

Table 4 -- 2022 Teams In A Vacuum Baseline Winning Teams -- 12-Team Leagues

Although fantasy football is generally head-to-head matchups, there are still lessons to be learned from our first results.  Winning teams in Standard and Six-Point Passing Touchdown leagues are dominated by the top QB. No WR was the top player on a winning team in the Standard and Six-Point Touchdown leagues.

Table 5 -- For winning teams, the number of times the position was the best player

As reflected in the standard deviations, PPR is the most diverse style of league with the best player distribution spread between RBs, WRs, and QBs. The obvious observation from the baseline set of TIAV is that QBs are the best player in non-PPR leagues. But you could argue that the baseline set of TIAV is just another way of showing that QBs score the most points rather than where to draft a QB.

The second set of TIAV is snake-drafted from the Fantasy Pro Draft Rankings from the years 2011 to 2022. Each draft pick selects the next available player in the rankings sequence. Fantasy points from the corresponding season results are assigned to the players and points are totaled to produce the winning teams.

Table 6 -- 2022 Teams In A Vacuum Second Set Winning Teams -- 12-Team Leagues

The second set of TIAV is the “best-expected leagues.” Unfortunately, the Fantasy Pro Draft Rankings are an average of VBD rankings so QBs are drafted after RBs and WRs. For this investigation, we will give QBs some assistance. For the third set of TIAV, the first team will draft the QB that finished with the most points as its first pick and the draft will proceed from the second team in rankings order.

Table 7 -- 2022 Teams In A Vacuum Third Set Winning Teams -- 12-Team Leagues

Drafting the highest-scoring QB as the first pick yielded disappointing results. In standard leagues, the teams with the highest-scoring QB only won 32% of the time. In PPR leagues, the winning percentage went down to 18%. The obvious conclusion is fantasy experts are correct that position scarcity is more important than drafting the highest-scoring player. To emphasize this oxymoron of drafting -- you should wait on a QB but you need an elite one -- Table 8 shows most winning teams waited to draft a QB but their QB is the highest-scoring player.

Table 8 -- For winning teams, the number of times the position was the best player

Draft Position Matters - Fantasy Football Theory

The most interesting observation from the second set of TIAV definitively addresses the draft position myth. When Fantasy Pros rankings are followed explicitly, the draft position of the winning team is random. Graph 1 shows no trend favoring a particular draft position or even a set of positions that give an advantage.

Graph 1 -- Second Set of Teams In A Vacuum Winning Teams Draft Position

In conclusion, we look at history to educate us about the future. Using the computer to draft three sets of TIAV can be used to analyze fantasy football theories. The third set of TIAV verifies the paradox that despite QBs scoring the most points, they should not be drafted first. Although individual rankings can be exaggerated, the Value-Based Drafting concept of position scarcity is valid.

The best tight end or the top running backs should be drafted in front of the quarterbacks. More importantly, TIAV validates standard deviation and should be used as a guideline for the order positions that should be drafted. RBs should be drafted first in all leagues. QBs can be picked as late as the third round in standard leagues and the sixth round in PPR leagues but an elite one is mandatory.

Above all, know your league settings and correlate the order in which the positions should be drafted based on the standard deviations (Table 2). The second set of Teams In A Vacuum proved that there is no advantage to a particular draft position. For the commissioners reading this investigation, please use Graph 1 when a manager complains about their draft position. Happy drafting!

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