Ultimate Fantasy Football Strategy - Weekly Consistency

Weekly Consistency
(page 2)

In order to test this, I used statistics from the 2007 season and created two teams of nine players (one QB, two RBs, three WRs, one TE, one K and one D). Both teams had the exact same total number of points from week one to week sixteen but one team was very consistent while the other was very inconsistent from week to week. The first team had an average coefficient of variation of 0.38 while the other team’s average coefficient was 0.60. Afterwards, I used a function in Excel which randomly selected a point total for each player from the fifteen possible (week one to week sixteen minus the bye week). For example I may be using player A’s week 6 performance, player B’s week 3 performance, player C’s week 13 performance and so on. Each was a simulation of one week’s game and I reproduced this simulation 100,000 times. Here is a summary of the results:

	CV	Wins
Team A	0.38	50,537
Team B	0.60	49,411

As you can see the more consistent team wins more often but it only has a 50.5% win percentage versus 49.4% while tied games were less than 0.1%. To put this in perspective, I created two more fictional teams that both have the same consistency but one team averaged one more point per week than the other (15 points total). The team that averaged more points won 51.6% of the time.

This study shows that you are much better off focusing on drafting better players than drafting consistent players as consistency barely has any impact on your fantasy team’s overall performance. Having a team filled with consistent players versus a team filled with inconsistent players will give you about a five points advantage for the entire season over you opponent. There is no statistical evidence that shows you should stay away from Terrell Owens or Chad Johnson because they are inconsistent players. In theory, a more consistent player should help your fantasy team win more games but with nine players on your team there are always some that will have good weeks and bad weeks so it neglects the effect of a single player’s inconsistency. Moreover, there are no NFL players that are consistent or inconsistent enough week after week to have a real impact. In conclusion, if another manager in your league says he’s staying away from Terrell Owens because his inconsistency cost him the championship last year; give him a fake smile and be very happy to draft Owens. If you have any questions about the methods I used for my calculations or anything else in this article, do not hesitate to contact me.