We're just past the halfway point of the season, and standings are continuing to solidify as we head toward playoffs. No team is officially out of the playoffs yet (and Yahoo may not fully agree till things are well past any point reasonable people would agree), but if we count a negative record as out of playoffs and a positive record as in, we're getting really close to determinations for some teams.
One team, Dak's Track Attack would need to win out to get an even record and a chance at playoffs, but even then, being the only team still in the 700s for points this season, they'd also have a huge hill to climb when breaking ties for that last spot. Another team, Lamarathon Runners would now need to lose out to miss playoffs this season, and if they lose out, they would almost definitely miss since they are only 30 points above 6th PF and would probably not gain many points losing all those games. Even if they do lose out, with the 3rd highest point total (a position taken now after last week's breakout) they may still have a chance at playoffs. Just one more win should basically clinch playoffs for this team, and a bye week to start looks probable with a 2 win lead over the next challenger.
Second through Eighth still has quite a bit of room for movement, with more than half the league within one game of each other. Among the 5-3 teams, Purdy Good Olympics and Yusuf DiKelce have padded their point totals enough to retain a good shot at playoffs, with the rest likely being in flux for a few more weeks.
There are many ways each of these teams can have gotten these records, with some teams starting out strong then fizzling out, while others may have come back from a rocky early season and are carrying some momentum into the second half. Some players have recently come back from injuries or been traded, while others have had recent season-ending ones. Even with similar records, maybe we can predict how these teams will fare going forward. Are you one of the rising teams who has some strength going into the second half of the season, or are you hoping to coast off of your early wins and eek your way into a playoff spot (or more likely, do you need to make some moves if you want any hope of staying in the race).
Let's make some power rankings! To make things easy, Yahoo does have their own set of power rankings. These are given as a flat projection of points among starting lineups for the rest of the season. Let's take a look at those first.
A quick reminder of the current standings before we look at the power rankings:
1. Lamarathon Runners
2. Purdy Good Olympics
3. Yusuf DiKelce
4. Rachaad White & Blue
5. Pole Vaulter's Chubb
6. Darnold QB1
7. Pukaing Up Seine Water
8. Ja'Marr SteepleChase
9. City of Love
10. Wushu Waddle
11. The 49ers Gold Medal Miners
12. Dak's Track Attack
Yahoo's Power Rankings:
1. Purdy Good Olympics
2. Pukaing Up Seine Water
3. Yusuf DiKelce
4. Lamarathon Runners
5. Rachaad White & Blue
6. Darnold QB1
7. The 49ers Gold Medal Miners
8. Wushu Waddle
9. City of Love
10. Pole Vaulter's Chubb
11. Ja'Marr SteepleChase
12. Dak's Track Attack
Looking at this list, it's pretty obvious why Purdy Good Olympics and Yusuf DiKelce are two of the top 3. These two teams are the only ones topping 1000 points for so far, and it seems Yahoo thinks they will keep going strong. Pukaing Up Seine Water makes a surprising second place here, but looking closer at their team, the return of Puka Nacua may be a big factor. After last week's performance, it's not a huge surprise to see Lamarathon Runners coming next. While their first half relied on a lot of luck, it seems the team has also gotten stronger, cementing its place near the top and starting to earn some of its record. Rachaad White & Blue and Darnold QB1 both looked to have strong teams last week when I assessed both to have playoff worthy teams.
Getting into the bottom half of the standings, The 49ers Gold Medal Miners don't seem to have a good enough team to dig themselves out of their hole, but this placement shows their bad fortune isn't completely deserved. That said, the points projected from Christian McCaffrey's return are definitely part of the discrepancy here between power ranking and current placement.Wushu Waddle is another case of having a bit more power on the team than current placement would assume, but again, probably not enough to dig out of the negative record hole they're in. City of Love has been losing ground in the power rankings, which isn't great with their negative record as well. Just a few weeks ago, Ja'Marr SteepleChase was atop the standings, but has dropped substantially with a couple of losses and not many points overall. Their 4-4 record has been considered lucky by the apps through the season here, and it seems luck is starting to catch up with them. While Pole Vaulter's Chubb still has a positive record, their luck has started to fade as well, and their two loss streak may continue with their lowly 10th place power ranking. As expected, Dak's Track Attack is well in last. The team doesn't really seem to have much going for it this year, and I'm sure they're already looking forward to start over in the next one.
With that analysis of one set of power rankings out of the way, I'm going to move on to my favorite activity, scripting solutions to play with data. I have my own set of power rankings, this time based on "expert consensus". We all know that the Yahoo projected points can be iffy, so maybe we can turn to those who study the "sport". The "expert consensus ranking" from fantasy pros consolidates rankings from many sources and puts them together in a nice list of rest of season rankings. Even better, these overall rankings compare multiple positions at once.
My script figures out the best set of starters based on these overall rankings and adds all their ranking numbers up to one sum. This means the lower the sum, the better the overall rankings of the starting members of your teams. Here are the numbers I got:
248: Darnold QB1
260: Purdy Good Olympics
264: Lamarathon Runners
290: Pukaing Up Seine Water
314: Rachaad White & Blue
322: Ja'Marr SteepleChase
341: Wushu Waddle
352: Pole Vaulter's Chubb
381: Yusuf DiKelce
395: The 49ers Gold Medal Miners
401: City of Love
462: Dak's Track Attack
Some interesting changes compared to the Yahoo list are how much Darnold QB1 rises here. Looking a the team, I think some things like relatively low projected numbers for players like Brian Thomas Jr. and George Pickens compared to their fairly high ecr rankings. The next four match up pretty well with Yahoo's take, but then we get to Ja'Marr SteepleChase, who also has a much higher ranking here than from Yahoo. I think some of this can definitely be attributed to players like Najee Harris, who has an ecr of 59, but projected just 9 points a game going forward along with muted projections for DeVonta Smith. The final wild departure I see is Yusuf DiKelce, who ranks 3rd in Yahoo's but just 9th here. The flex spot really hurts here, while high projections for players like Travis Kelce also probably give a boost in Yahoo's rankings compared to his modest 51 ranking in ecr. This team was paper thin, and with Chris Godwin out for the season, that flex spot may be hard to fill going forward. I think my power rankings take this into consideration better than Yahoo, so I'll call that a win for my model.
Another thing to note with my model is the slowness with which injured players are introduced back to their expected ranks. Puka Nacua just made it back to 19th overall projected in time to make my team look good, but Christian McCaffrey is "only" back up to 25th. I'd say that over the next week, that's another 24 points to knock off The 49ers Gold Medal Miners golf score here.
I'm planning to continue developing this script, maybe even getting things like scores per position, so we can really see where people are weak or strong. I'd also like to take a look at bench depth in more detail. I may work on this script more and reintroduce the updated power rankings at the end of the regular season, just in time to attempt to predict playoffs. For now, hopefully this is some interesting insight into not just the league's current standings, but some reason for optimism / motivation going forward.
Comments
Post a Comment