Expected Games Played

 

by Michael Zangrilli unlucky@attbi.com

 

Data provided by www.football-reference.com

 

I used data from the past 16 years to estimate how many games you will play the players on your fantasy roster. The first step was to determine how many games a player at each position plays. For each position, I set up two different criteria and averaged the number of games played. Because the data pool was so large, I think is a pretty good estimate.

POS

GAMES

CRITERIA

FREQUENCY

qb

12.6

GS = G

180

qb

11.0

15 att/game

943

rb

13.9

GS = G

144

rb

12.2

10 carries per game

600

wr

14.7

GS = G

340

wr

14.5

3.5 reception per game

620

 

 

 

 


The next step was to calculate how many games you would play each player. A few things to consider:
1. I assumed a 16 game fantasy schedule.
2. Starting lineup of 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, and 1 TE.
3. All players will have 1 bye week. I calculated the odds (1 in 8 chance per starter) that your #3 RB or #4 WR had the same bye week as a starter, thus requiring a 4th RB or 5th WR.
4. I don't know where the TE games played number comes from. Not sure why it wasn't in table 1, but I think it's pretty correct. I must have calculated it, but forgotten to put it in the first table.
5. I DID NOT factor in the possibility that your projected starter sucks and you need a replacement.
6. These are averages. Take them as such. I am just trying to get a feel for how many games I will play each player. Mainly, I wanted to know how important each positions backups are.
7. The multiplier is the number of games played divided by 16. I might use this to help guage relative worth when drafting. For example, my #3 RB and #4 WR have similar multipliers. Therefore, I would consider them to be of equal importance, and draft accordingly. This is only a small useful tool to help in drafting. Many other things need to be considered first. I am just hoping that this is a little bit helpful.

POS

GP

Multiplier

QB1

11.5

0.719

QB2

4.5

0.281

RB1

12.5

0.781

RB2

12.5

0.781

RB3

5.7

0.356

RB4

1.3

0.081

WR1

13.5

0.844

WR2

13.5

0.844

WR3

13.5

0.844

WR4

6.4

0.400

WR5

1.1

0.069

TE1

13.0

0.813

TE2

3.0

0.188