Category: Stat Attacks

Historical Chatterbowl Dominance Report

Chatterbowl Stat Attacks No Comments

For the longest time I have been searching for a way to measure relative performance across the entire league, and for season against season. Fantasy football performance can’t be directly compared year one year because the source of the point scoring, the NFL, has so much variance. League trends mean points scoring, both in real life and in fantasy leagues, can vary significantly from one year to the next. One season an average team may score a century every other week, the next season an average team scores one only every 6 weeks. A team in the second of those two seasons may totally dominate the league, but their numbers look very ordinary compared to teams in the first season, so how do you compare them and determine the best?

Finally, I think I have a reliable system to compare teams year on year. Let me explain the maths…

In any given week there are 16 scores produced by the teams in the Chatterbowl. These obviously vary, sometimes hugely. The first step of this methodology is to calculate the standard deviation of this collection of 16 scores. Thanks to Microsoft Excel, this is as simple as using the formula =stdev([range of scores]). This will give you a figure which, typically over the past 6 seasons of the Chatterbowl, comes in somewhere between 15 and 25, but occasionally outside this range. The higher the number, the more variability there is across the 16 scores.

To explain, one standard deviation (what is calculated above), is the range above and below the mean that you would expect 68.2% of all scores within that range to fit into. Two standard deviations is used for a lot of statistical models because it equates to approximately 95% of a range, but we don’t need to do that for our purposes. Instead, we go onto step two…

Step two is to take the score of an individual team, subtract the average score that week from it, and then divide the result by the Standard Deviation calculated in step one, above.

This step essentially calculates how many standard deviations away from the mean the given team’s score was that week. If the standard deviation were exactly 20 and a team scored 20 more than the mean then the score calculated would be 1.00. However, if another team scored 10 below the mean, the score calculated would be -0.50. And so on.

In fact, here’s a real world example. In week 1 of the 2017 season the average score was 74.44, while the standard deviation was 20.97. Chris Hill scored lowest, with 43 points, which is 31.44 below the mean, so gives a score of -1.50, while the top score was by Steve Smith at 117. This is 42.56 above the mean and gives a score of 2.03.

Step three is to do this for every week of the season and then take an average of all the weeks. Finally, take the square root of this average and you have a final score or rating. Now, full disclosure here – I do not now recall the reason for doing this, though I am sure someone more statistically sound than I will be able to tell you where this element of the methodology comes from. Honestly though, there is a proper reason for doing this.

I have done this in three different ways – for the regular season, for the playoffs, and for the entire season as a whole, and have done this for each season the Chatterbowl has been running, since 2012. From this there are some interesting scores that have come out. In total there have been 92 seasons completed so far, and the top ten regular season scores are as follows:

 Rank GM & Year Regular Season Score
1 Chris Braithwaite 2014 1.036
2 Mat Ward 2017 0.827
3 Neil Hawke 2017 0.824
4 David Slater 2013 0.821
5 Chris Braithwaite 2013 0.811
6 Ben Hendy 2017 0.809
7 David Slater 2015 0.795
8 Jamie Blair 2015 0.735
9 Chris Braithwaite 2012 0.716
10 Dan Smith 2013 0.685

Some interesting things here:

  • Chris Braithwaite’s 2014 season was astonishingly consistent – during the regular season he was never below zero in his score. However, he truly shat the bed in the playoffs, scoring -0.73 in the first round.
  • None of these teams won the Chatterbowl
  • Three of the top 6 teams came from 2017 which was by far the worst scoring season so far. The average weekly score in 2017 was 78.85 – the previous worst was 83.08 in 2016 while the highest was 86.26 in 2012 (the single 12 team season, which would be expected to have a higher average points total)

The table below gives you the regular season performance of each Chatterbowl winner:

 Rank GM & Year Regular Season Score
11 C – Ben Hendy 2014 0.675
18 C – Max Cubberley 2012 0.614
31 C – David Slater 2016 0.364
36 C – James Goodson 2017 0.348
38 C – Pete Conaghan 2013 0.295
49 C – Ben Hendy 2015 -0.191

The playoffs, unsurprisingly, tend to show slightly better performance from the eventual champions and, with them only having to take 3 games into account, are liable to higher scores overall.

 Rank GM & Year Playoffs Score
1 C – Ben Hendy 2015 1.360
2 C – Ben Hendy 2014 1.300
3 Chris Braithwaite 2012 1.215
4 Dan Smith 2013 1.210
5 Max Cubberley 2015 1.171
6 Jay Kelly 2014 1.021
7 C – David Slater 2016 1.012
8 Jay Kelly 2017 0.947
9 Dan Sayles 2013 0.926
10 Mat Ward 2017 0.924

Of those seasons, only Ben Hendy 2015 and Jay Kelly 2014 had regular season performance worse than zero. The full list of champions is below.

 Rank GM & Year Playoffs Score
1 C – Ben Hendy 2015 1.360
2 C – Ben Hendy 2014 1.300
7 C – David Slater 2016 1.012
11 C – Pete Conaghan 2013 0.923
12 C – Max Cubberley 2012 0.920
22 C – James Goodson 2017 0.681

Next, overall performance for the full season – regular and playoff (including the split):

Rank GM & Year Regular Playoffs Full
1 Chris Braithwaite 2014 1.036 -0.026 0.934
2 Mat Ward 2017 0.827 0.924 0.848
3 David Slater 2013 0.821 0.914 0.839
4 Chris Braithwaite 2012 0.716 1.215 0.832
5 C – Ben Hendy 2014 0.675 1.300 0.829
6 Neil Hawke 2017 0.824 0.816 0.822
7 Dan Smith 2013 0.685 1.210 0.810
8 David Slater 2015 0.795 0.638 0.768
9 Jamie Blair 2015 0.735 0.709 0.730
10 Chris Braithwaite 2013 0.811 -0.346 0.715

And for the Champions alone:

Rank GM & Year Regular Playoffs Full
5 C – Ben Hendy 2014 0.675 1.300 0.829
12 C – Max Cubberley 2012 0.614 0.920 0.681
19 C – Ben Hendy 2015 -0.191 1.360 0.563
23 C – David Slater 2016 0.364 1.012 0.548
28 C – Pete Conaghan 2013 0.295 0.923 0.480
33 C – James Goodson 2017 0.348 0.681 0.430

And finally, while I don’t want to dwell on it, I know you’ll all want to know about the 10 worst seasons ever (2013 was not a good year), so without comment, here they are:

Rank GM & Year Regular Playoffs Full
83 Jay Kelly 2016 -0.775 0.118 -0.697
84 Neil Hawke 2015 -0.733 -0.541 -0.701
85 Jay Kelly 2013 -0.684 -0.970 -0.746
86 Chris Hill 2015 -0.801 -0.624 -0.771
87 Max Cubberley 2016 -0.672 -1.184 -0.794
88 Geoffrey Manboob 2013 -0.916 -0.538 -0.858
89 Philip Malcolm 2013 -0.824 -1.033 -0.867
90 Ben Hendy 2013 -0.850 -1.024 -0.885
91 Philip Malcolm 2014 -0.929 -0.959 -0.935
92 Jamie Blair 2017 -0.940 -1.286 -1.014

Oh, and this data is available here:Chatterbowl Database Download

MAX’S STAT BLATS! Week 6

League Business Max Stat Blats Stat Attacks No Comments

Better late than never!  Or maybe not.  I’ll leave that up to you.  In week 4 I took a look at every team’s offensive performance so far in 2016 and compared it to their 2015 performance to look for improvement and decline.  This week I’ll be doing the same with the defense.  To the stats!

2016 Week 1-6 Average vs 2015 Average
Dungeoneers Brees T2 Sadness Losers Champions Firebirds Kelkowski Hard Bombermen
DT/DE -6.31 4.90 -8.94 1.80 -3.83 4.10 1.40 7.85 -5.02 -2.05
LB -0.29 8.69 3.39 -3.05 7.57 -4.63 3.14 -6.71 -1.17 3.46
CB/S 4.13 2.63 3.08 -9.36 -3.03 -9.20 5.86 -3.58 7.45 -1.51
DEF -2.46 16.22 -2.47 -10.61 0.71 -9.73 10.39 -2.44 1.26 -0.10

Defensive Line

Winners: Kelkowski are crushing it on the D-line this year!  Nearly 8 points up on 2015!  Look a bit deeper though and it has, perhaps, some of the qualities of a mirage.  Firstly, JPP and friends are averaging 22.67 points per game, slightly above average for the D-line.  It’s an improvement but it’s a movement from bottom of the pile to mid-table obscurity.  Secondly, that average is propped up by a massive 63 points in week 3 when the ghost of Malik Jackson briefly turned up to spook Ebeneezer Kelkowski.  Across the other 5 weeks they average 14.6 points, a number better only than Pete’s damp paper bag of a D-line.  Despite losing Aaron Donald, the Brees are functioning better than last season too.  Part of this is due to replacing the best DT in fantasy football with the second best in Fletcher Cox but Michael Bennett and Cameron Jordan are both solid producers too.

Losers: Oh T2, we knew thee well.  After triumphing in the “underwhelming running back” stakes last time out, Goody and Mat show us that they can disappoint on both sides of the ball.  Some of this decline is due to missing pieces (Gerald McCoy and Chandler Jones have been absent much or all of the year) but I think we see an impact of the scoring changes here.  T2 hit big on Kawann Short and Gerald McCoy last season and DTs are probably the group to take the biggest hit from the downgrading of big plays.  Both have scored very well but those 40 point games should be gone now for the most part.  A lot of last year’s big DT scorers have done worse through the start of 2016.  The Dungeoneers d-line is also down 6 points but I don’t think I can kick Pete anymore so let’s leave it at that.

Linebackers

Winners: There are two clear winners in this category, the Brees and the Losers.  Both units were very poor last season so, like Kelkowski’s D-Line, this improvement puts them in the middle of the pack rather than raising them to the top of the charts.  Slatz invested in the position in free agency and the draft with Paul Posluszny and Markus Golden delivering and Deion Jones and Leonard Floyd looking strong through the start of their rookie seasons.  The Brees, meanwhile, seem to have gone for the “2015 Josh Norman” effect and just picked up a player from waivers having a monster season in Lorenzo Alexander.  51 of the 99 points they’ve scored at LB in the last three weeks have been from him.  Improved play from Will Compton and Shaq Barrett is helping but to maintain this improvement they need Alexander to continue playing out of his skin.

Losers: What would Max Cubberley say if you asked him about the decline of his linebackers (4.5 points down on last season).  He’d tell you that they’re still scoring more than anybody else’s linebackers so you can go fuck yourself.  He’d probably also whinge on about injuries and players moving position but lets not give him a platform.  Kelkowski’s overall defensive decline continues here with their linebackers regressing the most out of all the teams (6.7 points down on last season).  Their situation is the reverse of the Losers’ and the Brees’.  Kelkowski’s LBs were among the best in the business last season and this year they’re just… average.  D’Qwell Jackson and Brandon Marshall are the main culprits here and Stephone Anthony’s reduced playing time at strong side LB for the Saints leaves them short a little bit of depth.  Zach Orr is a good wire pickup though who should be able to compensate for that.

Defensive Backs

Winners: Yuk.  Defensive back analysis.  Well, Dyna Hard and the firebirds are both doing better this season than last.  Rodney McLeod was a great pick-up for Chris and Aqib Talib’s 3 INTs so far this year certainly don’t hurt.  Chris’ DBs are comfortably the highest scoring in the league so far this season and his main problem now is the potential for PLOBbage.  With 43 cornerbacks to choose from on any given week, it’s no wonder that Neil is doing well but the PLOBbage is real here.  Trying to predict S and (particularly) CB scoring week on week is far from easy and although Neil has done a good job it must be frustrating to look at your bench every week and see the road not taken.

Losers: The Sadness and the Champions both show an equal decline at the DB spot.  For Cubberley the situation is similar to his LBs.  Despite losing 9 points a game on 2015 the Champions still have the third highest scoring set of DBs in the league so this decline is as much a result of an outlying season of success as anything else.  With Reshad Jones gone for the season now though Maxxxxxx will have to look deep into the waiver wire to try to maintain the pace.  The Sadness, on the other hand, are, by nearly 6 points per game, the worst secondary in the Dbowl.  Their decline is from mediocrity to abject failure.  Looking at the scores of his players for the year to date though you wouldn’t think you were looking at a secondary so adrift from the rest of the field.  To be honest, they’ve scored from disappointing to average every week rather than terribly and this slump is really a result of having no big weeks so far.  A couple of INTs this week could see them pick up and return closer to the average.  DBs, eh?  It’s a funny old game.

Defence

Winners: Although his DB improvement is the best, Neil has improved across the board on defence this season, scoring over 10 points more than last year per game.  At 86.20 points per game, his group is the best in the Dbowl at the moment but the week on week stats show a sharp decline.  In weeks 1-3 the Birds averaged 108 points per game on D.  In weeks 4-6 that number fell to 64 points per game.  He’s had big pieces on bye in each of those weeks but it’s something to keep an eye on.  If I was Neil I would be moving to address the obvious gap at DE in his roster.  Maybe drop a CB or two to make ro… who am I kidding, he’s never going to drop any CBs.  If you think improving by 10 points is impressive, though, look at the Brees!  A 16 point increase!  That takes them to averaging 76 points per game which is… wait… it’s bang average.  Putting aside Pete’s crepe paper D (sorry Pete) the Brees were about that far adrift of everyone else last season.  Really, it would have been more impressive to be so bad two seasons in a row.

Losers: Let’s just check in with Max Cubberley on what he thinks about his defence averaging 10 points fewer than last season.  “Go fuck yourself!”  Thought so.  The Champions are still the second best scoring defence but last week was a low outing from them and this week’s lineup has a few too many waiver wire pickups for my liking.  We’re not too far off a week where Cubberley starts 4 Texans’ linebackers and that can’t be good for anyone.  The Sadness are the other team to have lost 10 points off their average.  Most of that is their secondary, as discussed, though and there is some cause for optimism that those numbers could improve over the season.  Despite Linval Joseph’s monster season so far the Sadness only show a 2 point improvement on the D-Line though and there is room for improvement here.  Mangboob’s DEs are not inspiring and a little trade magic could really help him to improve those numbers and make a playoff push in Peter.

Overall

Winners: It will come as no surprise to anyone that the Bombermen are the big improvement on last season, averaging 24 points more per game than last season’s disappointing results.  You’ll have seen that they were conspicuous by their absence in today’s report and, indeed, their defence is operating at a 0.1 loss on last year.  All of this is offensive improvement and it looks like it has the legs to go all season.  The Sadness are the other big improvement, nearly 15 points up on last year.  This is despite giving 10 points away per game from their receivers and it shows the difference that a certified stud like Zeke Elliot can make.

Losers: Last season’s hot ticket, the Champions of the Sun, are back scrapping with everyone else this year, down 10 points on defence and 6 points on offence.  Despite all of this they’re still scoring well but some thinness at RB and secondary is coming home to roost and they’re now in a position of relying on Trevor Siemian week on week for production.  After them, Tamworth Two are having a ‘mare this season, giving away 8 points a game.  LeSean McCoy is keeping their running game above water on his own and it’s really just the D-line and special teams (!) that account for the decline.

Weekly Stats

TABLES!

Don't Look Blat In Anger
Don’t Look Blat In Anger

Peter vs. Tim Watch

Week 1: Peter (average) 179.68 vs Tim (average) 192.14.  Tim wins.  1-0 to Tim (victory margin 12.46)
Week 2: Peter (average) 184.04 vs Tim (average) 200.91.  Tim wins.  2-0 to Tim (victory margin 16.87)
Week 3: Peter (average) 192.11 vs Tim (average) 212.54  Tim wins.  3-0 to Tim (victory margin 20.43)
Week 4: Peter (average) 175.27 vs Tim (average) 198.18  Tim wins.  4-0 to Tim (victory margin 22.91)
Week 5: Peter (average) 177.50 vs Tim (average) 176.66  PETER WINS.  4-1 to Tim (victory margin 0.84)
Week 6: Peter (average) 170.47 vs Tim (average) 174.70  Sanity is restored, Tim wins.  5-1 to Tim (victory margin 4.23)

Season to Date: Peter (average) 179.85 vs Tim (average) 192.52. Tim leads (margin 12.68)

MAX’S STAT BLATS! Week 4

League Business Max Stat Blats Stat Attacks No Comments

Well thank Christ for that.  Week 4 is in the books and finally we have some data that is actually starting to mean something.  This feels like the first point in the season, for me, that we can really look at our teams’ performances and start to draw meaningful conclusions.  Over the next two weeks I’m going to take a look at each team’s average score by position group so far this season and compare it to their average from weeks 1 – 16 of last season.  This week: offence.  To the data!

2016 Week 1-4 Average vs 2015 Season 2015 Average
Dungeoneers Brees T2 Sadness Losers Champions Firebirds Kelkowski Hard Bombermen
QB -1.06 -1.08 2.49 5.96 -0.36 4.09 -5.23 -2.22 -6.23 -0.73
RB -3.84 -4.36 -6.44 14.34 4.54 0.84 3.13 9.75 -2.29 13.61
WR/TE -3.59 5.26 2.18 -12.68 6.34 0.42 -9.69 -5.67 -0.41 10.71
SPEC 2.09 0.95 -2.59 -2.10 -0.09 -2.29 -1.11 2.79 -1.22 0.91
OFF -6.41 0.77 -4.37 5.52 10.43 3.06 -12.90 4.65 -10.14 24.49

Yuk.  It looks much prettier in my spreadsheet, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Quarterback

Winners: So far MANGBOOB has resisted the urge to fiddle about switching Drew Brees in and out with whatever no mark he has down the depth chart and it’s paying dividends with an increase of nearly 6 points on average at the position.  I mean, last season’s performance was a low bar to clear (less than 15 points a week) but a win’s a win.  The Champions are showing an improvement of over 4 points too with Roethlisberger, Eagles aside, going to town so far in 2016.

Losers: So far through 4 weeks, a QB has been in Dyna Hard’s top 10 scorers of the week only once, in week 1 (for comparison, everyone else has had a QB in their top 10 3 or 4 times).  Chris has cycled through Matthew Stafford, Eli Manning and even Marcus Mariota so far, trying to play matchups but those three are simply too hard to predict (well, you could probably predict Marcus Mariota hasn’t been worth starting any of these weeks).  Chris is probably best advised to pick one of Stafford and Manning and stick with them although no doubt whoever he picks will be the wrong one.  The other big loser here is the Firebirds but I’m wary of reading too much into this.  The Seahawks typically take time to get their offence going and Wilson has been banged up.  I think we can expect to see this improve.

Running Backs

Winners: There are two runners way ahead of the pack here, the Sadness and the Bombermen.  Neither of these is difficult to analyse.  Imagine me standing mutely on a stage.  To my right is Ezekiel Elliot.  I am pointing at Ezekiel Elliot.  To my left is David Johnson.  I am pointing at David Johnson.  You can dive a bit deeper and say that both are getting better support from Jeremy Hill and Matt Jones’ raging lack-of-any-competition but you probably don’t need to.

Losers: As many Dynabowl experts predicted (well, one… well, me) at the start of the season, T2 are suffering at tailback this season.  Jonathan Stewart disappeared some time in September and without him LeSean McCoy is trying to navigate choppy waters on his own.  T2 have traded for Bilal Powell this week in an attempt to put things back on course and it’s a good solid move that should help to steer them back towards mediocrity.  The other big loser here is Breeses but, considering their RBs are still the 5th highest scoring in the Dbowl, I don’t think there’s much to read into this.  With Doug Martin injured and Devonta Freeman not scoring three TDs every game it was bound to happen.

Receivers

Winners: The Bombermen are another big winner here and when you consider that between receivers and RBs they’re averaging 24 points more than last season it’s easy to see why they’re top of the rankings.  It feels like this is the production we thought was coming this year so it’s not really a surprise.  It must be very pleasing for Ben to see, having kept faith with Cooks, Benjamin and Jordan Matthews as each came through their own struggles last season.  The Losers and Brees are also much improved here and you can point at off-season trades for Allen Robinson and Jarvis Landry respectively as big factors in this.

Losers: While every category so far has been a triumph for the Sadness, the reading isn’t so pretty here.  Odell Beckham is mouthing off more than he’s balling out and losing Eric Decker and Golden Tate (look, he was good last season) has hurt too.  Stephon Diggs looks like the real deal though and as MANGBOOB’s rookies start to warm up to the NFL this score will head back the right way.  The Firebirds are the next in line to the throne of suffering.  No Gronk, no Demaryius Thomas and no Brady slingin’ it to Edelman probably explains this.  The good news for Neil is that Willie Snead looks to be a good WR 2/3 going forward and that Gronk and Brady will be back firing on all cylinders soon.  The real person to look to for trouble here is Pete.  Cooper doesn’t get a sniff in the end zone and Allen and Kevin White are done for the season.  That -4 is only going down from here I’m afraid.

Special Teams

Winners: We are all winners because we play in a league with fantasy punters.  Every day I wake up a little bit happier than I would have been otherwise, knowing that this is the case.  Now, if only we could get those fantasy Long Snappers in.

Losers: All those plebs out there who restrict themselves to a fantasy kicker.  They don’t know what they’re missing.  The only thing better than a great punt is an awful punt.

Offence

Winners: The Bombermen are a whopping 25 points better this season on offence than last season, turning from a middle of the road goose (they weren’t bad enough to be an ugly duckling) into a swan.  Most of that 25 points is accounted for above so I will take the time to draw attention to the second most improved team on offence, the Dynasore Losers.  I haven’t mentioned them much in any of the categories above because their improvement has more been about building on what came before.  Good gains at receiver at and running back pair with holding steady at QB and special teams to produce a strong growth.

Losers: Dyna Hard are one of the biggest losers compared to last year, their offence being 10 points down on last season’s performance.  Much of that is accounted for in QB as mentioned above but it’s worth noting that they are worse in every single offensive position this season, a worrying trend.  Bottom of the pile are Neil’s Firebirds with a modest gain at RB from CJ Anderson’s new-found reliability not enough to counteract that weakened receiver corps and a banged-up Russell Wilson.  The question really is, if Neil is giving 13 points away on offence compared to last season then how has he had such a decent start to the season?  Tune in to next week’s blat to find out…

Weekly Stats

Here are your stats after week 4.

Blat Once Again With The Renegade Master
Blat Once Again For The Renegade Master

 

Peter vs. Tim Watch

Week 1: Peter (average) 179.68 vs Tim (average) 192.14.  Tim wins.  1-0 to Tim (victory margin 12.46)
Week 2: Peter (average) 184.04 vs Tim (average) 200.91.  Tim wins.  2-0 to Tim (victory margin 16.87)
Week 3: Peter (average) 192.11 vs Tim (average) 212.54  Tim wins.  3-0 to Tim (victory margin 20.43)
Week 4: Peter (average) 175.27 vs Tim (average) 198.18  Tim wins.  4-0 to Tim (victory margin 22.91)

Season to Date: Peter (average) 182.78 vs Tim (average) 200.94. Tim leads (margin 18.17)

Oh dear.  That margin just keeps growing.  I might have to call this for Tim.  TKO.

MAX’S STAT BLATS! Week 2

League Business Max Stat Blats Stat Attacks No Comments

For this week’s Stat Blat I thought I’d take the subject of my week 2 Stat Blat from last season and expand it.  In Week 2 of the 2015 season I looked at the average points from 2014 and 2015 through two weeks to looks for early indicators of squad improvement and design, as well as looking at potential points on average to see what impact GM selection was having.  I’ll be doing a similar idea this week.  For those of you who might claim I’m only doing this again so I don’t have to think of a new thing to look at, you’re quite right.

Reality Bites

Below is a table of comparisons for average points in weeks 1-2 of 2014, 2015 and 2016, ordered by 2015 finishing order.

Team Name 2015 Standing 2014 Wk2 2015 Wk2 2016 Wk2 POA Diff
Champions 11-2 1-1 (181 poa) 2-0 (192 poa) 1-1 (216 poa) +11/+24
Tamworth 2 7-6 2-0 (185 poa) 1-1 (167 poa) 0-2 (184 poa) -18/+17
Dyna Hard 10-3 0-2 (168 poa) 2-0 (223 poa) 0-2 (176 poa) +55/-47
Kelkowski 6-7 2-0 (212 poa) 0-2 (153 poa) 1-1 (160 poa) -59/+7
Bombermen 6-7 0-2 (168 poa) 0-2 (156 poa) 2-0 (224 poa) -12/+68
Sadness 4-9 0-2 (129 poa) 0-2 (154 poa) 1-1 (174 poa) +25/+20
Losers 6-7 2-0 (175 poa) 1-1 (167 poa) 1-1 (190 poa) -3/+23
Dungeoneers 5-8 1-1 (161 poa) 2-0 (158 poa) 1-1 (171 poa) -3/+13
Breeses 6-7 1-1 (146 poa) 0-2 (152 poa) 1-1 (191 poa) +6/+39
Firebirds 4-9 1-1 (137 poa) 1-1 (181 poa) 2-0 (206 poa) +44/+25

 

The obvious story on the positive side is the Dynablaster Bombermen.  After a disappointing 2015 they’ve come out gangbusters in 2016 with a massive 68 point average performance jump from 2015.  A big part of that has to be their receivers with Brandin Cooks, Kelvin Benjamin and Jordan Matthews all in their 3rd years now and established as the number 1 options on their team.

Behind the B-men there are a cluster of teams showing significant improvement in the 20s range.  The Firebirds have started stronger each year of the Dbowl so far and have been propelled to a 2-0 start by the surprising strength of their defence, averaging 112 points per game, the best in the league.  The Dynasore Losers have also improved on 2015 and have had their strongest start yet, despite being 1-1.  Offensive improvement is key here as the team is averaging 15 points more on offence through 2 games then they did in 2015, much of it contributable to a shift to Carson Palmer at QB and Matt Forte’s huge workload in New York.

The Sadness have shown steady improvement now for two years but when you consider that they still only averaged 174 points this year so far then it’s clear that this is just the continuing story of a team struggling towards mediocrity after an awful initial draft.  Still, improvement is improvement and the team is young.  If they jump 20 points again next year they could find themselves 2-0.  Lastly, the Champions (in every sense of the word) may be 1-1 but have shown improvement again this year.  This may not be a sign that they are in for another dominant year though as they actually started slowly last season.  The second highest average points scored shows that they are still a force to be reckoned with though.

On the other hand, you have to look at Chris Braithwaite’s Dyna Hard With A Vengeance and wonder what went wrong.  They were hugely improved last season but seem to have lost all of that positive gain this year, losing 47 points on average.  As I highlighted in my preview, the running backs are a problem with none of them averaging over 10 points a game but the WRs are struggling too.  Only Antonio Brown is over 20 total points, none of the rest are even close.  The offence is averaging less than 100 points a game.  Only the Firebirds are worse and, unlike Neil’s team, Chris’ defence is not firing on all cylinders.

Interestingly, Chris is the only team to be averaging less points than this time last year.  Every other team is showing improvement.  This doesn’t seem to be a result of scoring changes as it’s actually the offences that are scoring higher than last year’s averages, rather than the defences.  Teams as a whole are averaging 189 points compared to 184 from last season.  Maybe we’re all just getting better at this shit?

Is It Indicative?

Is there really any point to this?  Does performance in the first two weeks of the season actually tell you anything about how a team will do that season?  Below is each team’s Week 2 Average and Season Average.

Team Name 2015 Wk2 Wk2 Rk 2015 Season Season Rk POA Diff
Champions 2-0 (192 poa) 2nd 11-2 (217 poa) 1st +25
Tamworth 2 1-1 (167 poa) 4th 7-6 (189 poa) 3rd +22
Dyna Hard 2-0 (223 poa) 1st 10-3 (199 poa) 2nd -24
Kelkowski 0-2 (153 poa) 9th 6-7 (189 poa) 3rd +36
Bombermen 0-2 (156 poa) 7th 6-7 (183 poa) 4th +27
Sadness 0-2 (154 poa) 8th 4-9 (179 poa) 5th +25
Losers 1-1 (167 poa) 4th 6-7 (176 poa) 7th +9
Dungeoneers 2-0 (158 poa) 6th 5-8 (168 poa) 9th +10
Breeses 0-2 (152 poa) 10th 6-7 (171 poa) 8th +19
Firebirds 1-1 (181 poa) 3rd 4-9 (178 poa) 6th -3

 

The thing that jumps out to me straight away is the reasonably consistent rate of improvement for teams.  5 of the 10 teams improved by 19 to 27 points over the course of the season on average.  This, presumably, is down to a combination of waiver wire pickups and starting lineup adjustment as the stars stashed on your bench in week 1 and 2 start to show.  The biggest risers were Kelkowski.  Looking at their lineups it’s noticeable that players like Blake Bortles, Brandon Marshall (LB), Reggie Nelson and Kwon Alexander weren’t in the starting lineup in week 1 and other big performers like Spencer Ware and Malik Jackson weren’t even on the squad yet.

To me it seems telling that the only team to lose average points (who didn’t start out abnormally hot like DynaHarder) was the Firebirds.  Neil only added 8 players through blind-bid waivers last season.  The four teams who added the most players?  Champions of the Sun (42), DynaHarder (40), Tamworth Two (30) and Kelkowski (28), i.e. the four teams in the playoffs at the end of the season.  Obviously there is a lot more to being successful in the Dynabowl than constantly churning through waiver wire additions but there’s no denying that the right pickups can have a huge effect and, just like the draft, the more tickets you buy to the lottery the more chance you have to come away with a Josh Norman, a Spencer Ware, an Allen Hurns, a Whitney Mercilus or a Willie Snead.

As far as the question of whether week 2 results are indicative or not is concerned, no team except Kelkowski moved more than 3 positions from their Week 2 Ranking to their Season Ranking.  You can improve in your score in the early weeks for sure but the best/luckiest GMs will also be improving so your ability to make up ground on those people is limited.  However, it is definitely possible to stagnate and not improve over the season.  Everyone around you will be getting better and their scores will be getting higher.  You need to do everything you can, whether that’s waiver wire additions, trades or rotating in from your bench wisely, to improve with them.

Weekly Stats

Here are your weekly averages for week 2.

Why do you Blat me up, buttercup?
Why do you Blat me up, buttercup?

Weekly Peter vs Tim Watch

Week 1: Peter (average) 179.68 vs Tim (average) 192.14.  Tim wins.  1-0 to Tim (victory margin 12.46)
Week 2: Peter (average) 184.04 vs Tim (average) 200.91.  Tim wins.  2-0 to Tim (victory margin 16.87)

Season to Date: Peter (average) 181.86 vs Tim (average) 196.53. Tim leads (margin 14.67)

MAX’S STAT BLATS! Week 1

League Business Max Stat Blats Stat Attacks No Comments

The first week of the NFL season is all about overreaction and the jerking of knees.  To honour that I will be looking at everyone’s opening week performances and drawing some wild conclusions about what it means for the season ahead.  In the absence of enough data to actually draw any real conclusions that’ll just have to do for you.

East Flanders Dungeoneers

Hot Take: Keenan Allen is broken!  Quincy Enunwa is the new Brandon Marshall!  Carson Palmer’s about to go full Peter!  I remembered Kevin White plays for the Bears!  Coby Fleener didn’t get Drew Brees a birthday cake!  That’s right, my wild conclusion for Pete’s Dungeoneers is that their receiver group that looked so good on paper in pre-season is actually a stinking turd.  “But Maxuell,” I hear you cry, “The Dungeoneers scored 6.38 points per receiver, which was bad, but the Firebirds were worse at 5.94 points per receiver!”  It’s true, the Dungeoneers were only the second worst team on a points per starter basis this week but the Birds had 7.4 per player on the bench and the Dungeoneers had 5.4.

Srsly? Yes.  Allen is really done and the Bears’ offence looks pretty dire.  Fleener’s situation does not look good either and Pete’s backup TEs don’t look great.  Obviously it’s not as bad as all that.  Cooper is still a stud and Marshall and Floyd will get theirs but I had high hopes for this group that look like they won’t be borne out.

Here Comes The Brees

Hot Take: The Breeses are the best team in Peter (not saying much, I know, see below).  Andrew Luck is back to his gunslingin’ best and even in a week where Doug Martin, Devonta Freeman and Lamar Miller didn’t get into top gear the Breeses’ offence still averaged 11.57 points per starter, good for 2nd in the league.  The defence was in the bottom half of the league as you’d imagine but this team has the raw power to bludgeon other teams to death with the power of their attacking options.

Srsly? Yes.  The Breeses and the Sadness were the best two teams in Peter this week by a comfortable margin.  Looking at the rosters of the 5 teams there’s no doubt that the Brees have the edge in offensive power so as long as their defence can maintain its position of slightly below mediocre then they should be good to go.

Tamworth Two

Hot Take: Tamworth Two will be picking at #1 in the 2017 rookie draft.  T2’s starters in week 1 were uninspiring.  I mean, they’re rolling out 52 year-old Anquan Boldin at WR and a Cleveland RB.  Things look better on the defensive side of the ball but the nerfing of big plays brings the ceiling down on their elite DTs and it’s not hard to see everyone else except Kuechly and Jones hanging T2 out to dry.  This team is very average rather than bad but everyone else has upped their game and Mat are getting left in the dirt.

Srsly? No.  Everything’s very close in Peter to my mind so it’s not impossible but I think T2 have enough quality and Mat and James are good enough GMs that they won’t finish bottom.  Although they have Slatz’ first round pick so they may still end up with the #1 pick in the rookie draft…

The People’s Republic of the 4th Dynmension: Dynasty of Sadness

Hot Take: Teddy Tinyhands’ injury will lead the Sadness to the playoffs.  We all know Michael likes to tinker.  He’s never happy with his lineups and his choices and he’s always going backwards and forwards.  This often leads to him getting too clever on his choices and overthinking them.  For that reason, Teddy Bridgewater’s season-ending injury was a very good thing for the Sadness.  Drew Brees is a consistent, top of the line fantasy QB and he was on the bench for the Sadness last season.  Now, unless Mangboob develops inexplicable Brockules man-love, Brees will be starting every game he’s available for and the Sadness will be better for it.  Perhaps the hotter take here is that I think the Detroit RBs will pave the way for a playoff appearance but both Abdullah and Riddick looked great and Mangboob could start both of them in a week and still be confident of results.

Srsly? No.  The Colts looked monumentally bad on Defence in the game against the Lions and Riddick and Abdullah will not get that open that often against many teams.  On the Brees front, I trust him, I just don’t trust Mike.  It’s a three way QBBC with Brockules and Goff when he starts.  Don’t ask me how it makes any sense, I don’t get it either.

Dynasore Losers

Hot Take: The Losers should be in re-building mode.  Look, they low-scored this week, they were third bottom in points scored last season and bottom in potential points.  Their running back corps consists of two 30+ year-old guys and a random assortment of limbs.  His defence looks like it was assembled by accident.  It’s time to get over that deep-seated tradeophobia, ship out some of the top talent and stack picks for the next couple of drafts.  Re-building around Moncrief, Landry and that stable of young QBs is the way forward for the Losers and week 1 proved it.

Srsly? Yes.  The team lacks youth and depth and you’re relying on a very high hit rate in the draft to get out of that if you don’t sell assets and stack picks up.  Free Agency should improve in quality over the next few years so it’s not impossible to rebuild that way but if Slater looked to sell the likes of Wilkerson, Forte and Sanders he could go into the 2017 draft with 10+ good picks and maybe even get back into the first round.

DynaForOne Firebirds

Hot Take: The Firebirds will make it to the Owl again.  A week 1 victory against the reigning champs?  Check.  A monster defensive performance?  Check.  The renaissance of CJ Anderson?  Check.  A dominant offence?  Ch… wait.  Oh.  Lowest scoring offence this week, you say?  Only 5.94 points per starting receiver, you say?  Second worst QB performance after Kirk Cousins, you say?  Oh.  Look, the fact that Neil’s boys put up nearly 200 points and won their matchup despite a poor offensive performance is exactly why I’m backing them.  You think Snead will be on the bench next week?  You forget that the Seahawks offence often starts slow?  Geno Atkins and Ndamukong Suh won’t put up over 40 points every week but they won’t need to.  I can see this team going places.

Srsly? No.  Of course not.  Neil will probably trade away all of his good players for a second tier DE and a 5th round pick.

Dyna Hard With A Vengeance

Hot Take: Braithwaite’s boys will be held back by weak running backs.  So, Gurley is a bust right?  OK, that may be an over-reaction but when the opposing defence can put ten players within 6 yards of the line of scrimmage on 1st and 10 because they know your QB can’t throw it further than that you’re going to be really up against it.  Apart from Gurley Chris is calling on Jamaal Charles (not healthy and coming back to a backfield dominated by Spencer Ware) and Jeremy Langford (just shit and only scoring points because there’s no-one better there yet) to do the business.  The rest of his RBs are long-shot rookies or backups and this could get ugly.  In week 1 they averaged 7.87 points per starter and 2.13 per player left on the bench (of which Shaun Draughn was the top scorer with his 16 yards and 1 vultured TD).  Gurley will have his big weeks but I don’t like any of the rest of these guys to produce consistently.

Srsly? Yes.  The hot take is harsh on Charles who isn’t the kind of player you don’t give a role to when healthy but I do think there will still be a big role for Ware all season long and that caps his ceiling.  Jeremy Langford’s best case scenario is that he keeps the job and continues to churn away his 3-3.5 YPC but any week he doesn’t get in the end zone is likely to be a low scorer.  Chris doesn’t have the TEs to only play 2 TEs and his best bet might be to hope for an injury to Rawls or Ryan Matthews to get Christine Michael or Kenjon Barner involved.

Kelkowski Don’t Play By No DynaRules

Hot Take: Kelkowski have one of the top three defences in the league.  3.58 per starter at DT/DE (7th in the league), 4.06 at CB (worst in the league) and 53.50 points total on defence (worst in the league).  Those stats should tell you everything you need to know to backup the point right?  Look, no-one’s going to pretend this defensive performance from Kelkowski wasn’t disappointing.  I imagine the men (man?) themselves had something to say to their players after the game but the reality is that the majority of this bad performance was down to a low-scoring secondary and a donut from Malik Jackson.  Every secondary in the league can have bad games, the position is very fickle, and Kelkowski have a good group full of potential.  Malik Jackson will start to rack up the points once he adjust fully to playing in Jacksonville and they still have one of the strongest groups of LBs in the league.  They’ll be fine.

Srsly? Yes.  This really is a very talented bunch who just had an off day.  Kelkowski were good in 2014, they were good again in 2015 and they’ll be good again this year.  Someone over there (presumably Ian because it’s almost certainly not Jay) knows what they’re doing.

Champions of the Sun

Hot Take: The Champions of the Sun will go from first to worst in Tim.  It was only a freakish performance from Ben Roethlisberger and DeAngelo Williams that even made this week 1 matchup with the Firebirds respectable.  The Champions scored ok on offence (largely due to the two already mentioned) but their much vaunted defence of last season did not show up at all.  Their 63.18 points was good for 8th worst and the main problem was upfront where their line scored a measly 1.75 points per player.  There was an average of 6.83 points per player on the bench but whether Cubberley has the nous to pick the right players week-on-week is seriously up for debate.

Srsly? Of course not, I’m a hustler baby.  Here comes Owl number 2!

Dynablaster Bombermen

Hot Take: Week 1 was a flash in the pan and the Bombermen will slide back to the pack and miss the playoffs.  The Bombermen were the best team by a country mile in week 1 with a whopping 13.72 points per player on offence (best in the league).  Their receivers racked up 85.8 points, only just missing out on the top 5 receiving performances of all time in the league.  So am I a crazy person?  That all depends on whether you think Melvin Gordon is going to get 2 TDs per fame when the Chargers are always playing catchup.  Or on whether you think Ryan Shazier (questionable for the weekend with a knee injury, again) can play regularly.  Or on whether you think Jordan Matthews is breaking out or if you think he was just up against the Browns.  There are obviously stars on this team (AJ Green, David Johnson, Brandin Cooks, Aaron Donald, Greg Olsen) but I think week 1 was just right place, right time, their QBs are terrible and this kind of performance won’t be repeated every week.

Srsly? No.  Did you see the list of players I wrote down as the stars on the team?!  I even left some out.  The Bombermen are stacked.  They were many people’s favourites to win the Owl in 2015 and week 1 establishes them among the favourites to win it this year.

Weekly Stats

If I remember, I’ll post up a picture of the year’s average stats here when I do a blat.

Nothin' but the stats, ma'am.
Nothin’ but the stats, ma’am.

 

Weekly Peter vs Tim-watch: For two seasons now, Peter has been the Wallace Shawn to Tim’s Andre the Giant but could the tide be turning?  Every Stat Blat I will take a couple of lines to compare Peter vs Tim so we can all keep an eye on the situation.

Week 1: Peter (average) 179.68 vs Tim (average) 192.14.  Tim wins.  1-0 to Tim.

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