Daily Fantasy Football Quarterback Rundown Week 14
Brief Intro:
Before I get to my quarterbacks I figured it'd be a good idea to highlight why I think I'm qualified to discuss quarterback options for Daily Fantasy Sports players, seeing how I have never posted my picks on Steemit before.
I was a military analyst who fell prey to a counterintelligence polygraph while contracting as a civilian. I have never had anything to hide, but have been diagnosed with some anxiety issues stemming from many things but a tour in "Rocket City" (FOB Shank), Afghanistan certainly didn't help. Long story short, that was a requirement for my job at the time and right now I'm utilizing the GI Bill to go to school so I'm ok! In between homework I do fantasy football analysis to itch my analytical scratch, if you will. I love analysis, I love figuring out problems, and making sense of seemingly meaningless numbers. I'll provide a little bit about how I came to the following QB list afterwards but some of it comes from algorithms I created that I've backtested and improved the strength of my ranks and actual finishes correlation to 0.516.
Week 14 Quarterbacks Sorted by My Custom Projections
The Top Three
Alex Smith appears to be in another smash spot. It may feel like chasing points but I don't think he has less than 20 points this week against FootballOutsiders.com's worst ranked pass defense. Tyreek Hill should eat and so should Travis Kelce.
Carson Wentz is the future of NFL quarterbacks in my opinion. This man does everything right and he has the weapons and team surrounding him to contend for the Superbowl (despite what people will have you believe because of their somewhat weak schedule so far). If Zach Ertz is out, that could hurt but only slightly as Trey Burton has been a very good fill-in when needed.
The most surprising result to me was Russell Wilson at #3 but I'm not going to go against the numbers. This guy has been playing at an MVP calibre level and can go ahead and change his middle name to "Consistent Fantasy Producer" if allowed. I know they're on the road, I know they're going against the #1 pass defense, and I know they're o-line hasn't been good in protection but I don't care. He's Russell Wilson and he will scramble away from the pass rushers, and find someone... somewhere... or he'll do it himself and hit 100 yards rushing. It is worth mentioning that the Jaguars are near the bottom in the league against TE's so Jimmy Graham wouldn't be a bad stack, but Wilson alone isn't a bad approach either.
How I came up with the numbers that I did
I like to use a combination of Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. I have a Mac so I have to look to Google Sheets for the IMPORTHMTL function. I have several free sites that I use to curate data but I put a premium on the trailing 5 games, trailing 3 games, and home/away splits. Once I get some averages on what the quarterback has done (passes, completions, yards, etc), I look at what the opponent has allowed for all of the same categories. Lastly, I take the numbers I came up with and break it all the way down to a "fantasy points per minute" metric. Once I have that metric I do all the same stuff I do for quarterbacks for the actual team in terms of their time of possession and pace. I then take the fantasy points per minute and multiply it by the projected minutes I expect the quarterback to have the ball.
Thursday night game of Atlanta Falcons vs. New Orleans Saints
As you can see in my chart, I had Drew Brees projected for 16.6 and he finished with 18.04 on Fanduel and DraftKings. Matt Ryan, however, I had projected at 15 points and he finished with 9.84. This isn't a projection to be proud of but 3 interceptions really deflated his score and the yardage totals I produced were much closer. Close enough in fact that I was comfortable taking the under on their yardage with some $5 bets on 5dimes sportsbook site (see results below). And trust me, if I had a better source of income I would have bet more. I was confident Brees would finish with more yards, and both would go under their implied total. Consequently, I didn't have it projected as a high scoring game at all (46 points) - in fact, I had it as my biggest difference when comparing to most sportsbooks over/under where it closed around 52.
Please, ask questions... I nerd out on all this stuff.