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Be prepared: tornadic FF outcomes

Yesterday afternoon shortly after I finished my post, a massive storm came rolling through the NYC area. I live up on the 36th floor with a fair number of windows so I was watching these black clouds grow increasingly menacing and as the rain/hail mix started to hit the windows I realized this was no ordinary storm. If you've been around the blog long enough you know that I love weather stuff - crazy weather stories are right up my alley. But when I turned on the local news and heard them suggesting that Brooklyn viewers (hey that's me!) get themselves into a basement ASAP, I realized that dangerous weather is um, less exciting to actually live through. So I hung out in the bathroom with a laptop and one cat (the other cat had wisely lodged himself deep under our bed when the storm started) until the storm passed just a few minutes later. The wackiest part of this storm was that there was no warning from the weather experts that such a ferocious storm could be en route.

This of course makes me think of fantasy football...we put such stock in our FF experts and get worked up when they recommend starting someone who has a bust of a day - or when they don't see the Arian Foster Storm a comin'. But much like we've come to expect with the weather, there are always situations that no one could see coming (Kevin Kolb) or that just seemed too unlikely to comment upon (Peyton Hillis). So while I find FantasyPros.com's Week 1 accuracy report as posted on the Fifth Down a compelling read, I say 1 week of data is way, way too little with which to make decisions. Read but proceed with caution.

Meanwhile the experts are of course at it again, posting their start/sit advice like crazy. So onto today's links:
I'll be back later today or over the weekend with the consensus start/sit for Week 2!

Comments

dave said…
Hey Sara, I totally agree with you that week 1 is WAY too early to make any calls on which experts to trust.

I mentioned this in the Fifth Down article as well - we are definitely not advising people to draw too many conclusions from the data.

We're simply keeping score each week. Hopefully, we'll be able to keep track of these expert "batting averages" for years to come so that the true all stars will rise to the top.

Thanks again for your support!
Thanks Dave, I noticed your comment in the article about not making decisions with this data...and I was by no means criticizing the work you're doing. I love it and am guessing many other readers on here appreciate it as well.

So much cool stuff that could be done with this data - I know you have 2009 data so at some point I'd love to know if the experts that were spot on with say RBs last year are on track again with RB accuracy in 2010 (obviously this would take a few more weeks to determine)...or are there experts that are showing trends of being particularly accurate during the first few weeks of the season? Or, if you're tracking it, are there experts that really know their sleepers? Or can see when a player is being overvalued by others?

Oh the things you could do! :)
dave said…
Thanks Sara...I just commented so folks would know that I totally agree with you about not drawing too many conclusions from week 1.

Hmm, I wonder if this also means it's a good time for me to trade away Arian Foster??

Regarding the other things we can do with the data, we're definitely tracking it all. I especially love the fact that we can now objectively see which experts tend to take risks and which ones are actually pretty good when they gamble. Lots more to come through the course of the season...
Anonymous said…
I was in Flushing Queenz and sure looked like a tornado to me. I luv the way u use analogies and metaphors, a new site should be the Fantasy Meteorologist.
I still subscribe to the Random Walk Theory, in essence go with ure Gut
Anonymous said…
Heard you on Satellite. Nice job. Like the blog/site and appreciate being able to come to one place for a font of knowledge. Good luck with the venture.- Zphillips Plymouth ma

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