For many sports fans, Fantasy Football provides a great way to further immerse themselves into the world of sports, by drafting some of their favorite players and competing against their friends to see who can compile the best team of players for a given year. Over the years however, the methods in which people have decided to construct their teams has differed, given how every individual Fantasy Football "Team Manager" has their own individualized drafting strategy that they believe is "the best". Some stick to the basics and take running backs in the first round, while others get risky and opt for a wide reciever, such as Cooper Kupp, or a tight end, such as Travis Kelce. In this past season, those who picked Travis Kelce instead of opting for a more basic draft strategy gave themselves a massive advantage, given how Kelce scored 100 more points than the next closest tight end, Mark Andrews.
Here is a link to a strategy provided by a Fantasy Football "Counselor", who gives his two cents on how HE thinks people should draft. Although he claims that this is the best and only way to go about drafting, there are infinite different ways to draft a team, leaving each of the millions of different teams created every year with different types roster construction in terms of its players.
https://thefantasyfootballcounselor.com/fantasy-football-draft-strategy/
In turn, this made me curious if the common methodology of opting for a running back in the first round is the best overall option for fantasy managers, or if opting for a more rare and 'risky' method is better in terms of finding success in Fantasy Football. Additionally, there is often debate as to when the right time to take positions of less scarcity or importance, such as QB, Defense, and Kicker. While many oftentimes take defenses and kickers in the final 2 rounds given how they are the most expendable 'players' on your roster, some people still opt to take the better options before then, a strategy which gives them a slight positional advantage but loses them overall depth at other positions. The main debate,however lies upon when to take quarterbacks, with some opting to take the top options, like Josh Allen, as early as the third round, although the top rated quarterback from this past year, Jalen Hurts, was taken in the 8th round on average. While this position is not as scarce and there are many good options at the position to be had, the question still remains: is it worth it to take the top QB, or is it best to wait on a mid-tier guy who will still net you solid value? In order to do so, I will be analyzing the following dataset, which looks at the fantasy point output from each player in the 2022 season.
In order to do so, I am using 3 datasets containing the top fantasy performers from each season, from the years 2020,2021 and 2022, in order to determine once and for all what the best drafting strategy is. Using these data sets, which are shown below with links and through the use of pandas, I will run various scenarios for each dataset, using each of the available/feasible draft strategies in order to determine for each year, which one is best. From there, I will, hopefully, be able to reach a conclusion as to which is best given these results.
In each of the datasets, we will observe the following:
Player
Bye Week
Pts Total
Attempted Passes
Pass Completions
Yards Passing
Passing TD(TD stands for Touchdown)
Interceptions
2Pt Passing
Attempts Rushing
Rushing Yds TD.1
2Pt Converstions: Rushing
Receiving Yards
TD receiving
2Pt receiving
Fumbles Lost
TD Miscellaneous
import pandas as pd
df_2022 = pd.read_excel('/Users/willanastasopoulos/Downloads/2022_fantasy_stats.xlsx')
df_2022
df_2021 = pd.read_excel('/Users/willanastasopoulos/Downloads/2021_fantasy_stats.xlsx')
df_2021
df_2020 = pd.read_excel('/Users/willanastasopoulos/Downloads/2020_stats.xlsx')
df_2020
In each of the datasets, which I have turned into dataframes above, there are various stats that help to show who the top performers were in each of the past 3 fantasy football seasons in terms of total points scored. In doing so, we will be able to use these datasets to see how certain positions fared in each given year, how that relates to certain draft strategies in each given year, and in turn, how that impacted the fantasy teams in that particular year.
By using these datasets, my hope is to discover the best possible drafting strategy for fantasy football, in terms of what positions are best to take in various stages/rounds of the draft, in which people can use to find continued success in such a random and unpredictable hobby that millions of people across America partake in each Fall.
Some issues that this dataset may present is the inability to reflect random variables, such as injuries and poor weather impacting player or positional performance. Every year, players that are drafted highly end up getting hurt, but in the datasets they are oftentimes towards the bottom due to their lack of playing time. In order to bypass this, a list of ADP(Average Draft Position) could be imported for each year, which in turn will create a more accurate simulation of a draft that will account for injuries.