A (Math) League of Their Own

Oct 15, 2019 | Littleton

The 2019 football season is in full swing! And with football, comes fantasy football, which for us math people, is really where the bread and butter of football is. Fantasy football fans have picked their drafts, done their free agent picks and bi-week waiver replacements and injuries have started to take some of the best of players down. You may be thinking that fantasy football is silly and a waste of time, but we’re here to prove to you what a game of math it is. It can even be a great activity for kids to participate in and practice math by doing so!

To begin, let’s review how fantasy football works. We’ve already stated it’s a math game. It’s based on real-life players and how well they do each week. In the beginning of the season, before football starts, you get together with a group of people who are known as the people in your fantasy football league and you draft players to form your team. Each week, after football season starts, you fill out a roster by “starting” players from your team in the various positions that are played on the field during a football game. The team usually consists of one quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, one tight end, one kicker, one defenseman and one flex player who usually ends up being a wide receiver or running back. Your team then goes head to head with a different person’s team in your fantasy league each week. Players accumulate points for different plays and the goal is to have a higher amount of points than your opponent that you play each week. 

Fantasy football has actually been around before the internet! It’s hard for us to even remember when that was… but it’s true. The principle of the game was the same as it is now; early adopter fantasy football enthusiasts would still form leagues and draft players. They would just have a wait a lot longer to figure out where their team ranked at the end of the week by reviewing the sport section of the newspaper and they would have to do all the math themselves to figure out who was winning. Now days, the internet does calculates scores and wraps it up in a neat little package in real time. Still, it helps so have good number sense for fantasy football.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the math part. Math is used in almost every aspect of fantasy football from reviewing statistics of players to formulate draft rankings to calculating the number of points each of your players has every week, to understanding where your weekly ranking is amongst your other league opponents. While we can’t give you all of our juicy secrets as to how to play to win (we do want to win our leagues, after all!), we’ll give you a few simple mathematical tips to help you prepare, some of which address the drafting of a team, but can be helpful next year:

  1. Pay attention not only to what your draft picks are, but also what your opponents’ picks are. When the draft begins, often you will see certain positions fill up first, say, a quarterback. When this is happening in a league, it’s called a “run”. If there’s a run on one position, you will likely want to pick a player in that position too in that draft pick round, instead of waiting for it to come back around again or you could have to settle for a player who’s sub-par in a crucial position. 
  2. Know your roster requirements and league size before you draft. Smaller leagues have more players become available through the season, versus larger ones lack options unless you have other opponents willing to trade players with you. For instance, in a 12 team league that starts one quarterback, there will likely be 24 to 26 quarterbacks taken after the draft if each team drafts a few quarterbacks. That leaves 6 – 8 quarterbacks still there, if one of yours is underperforming. 
  3. Running backs are more valuable in standard leagues, but in per point reception leagues running backs and wide receivers are equal in their points per plays.
  4. Player points generally get all the hype in fantasy football, but you don’t have to be the highest scoring team to win your league. It’s isn’t the Tour de France. The primary focus should be on outscoring the opponent you play each week and positioning yourself to having enough opponent wins to move on to the playoffs. Again, make sure you look at who your opponent is weekly and how their players are doing to be able to make decisions on what players you need to play.

Fantasy football is a game of math. The deeper you get into the numbers and statistics, the more likely you are to take home a league title… and maybe a little extra cash! 

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