They say that the trend is your friend in the stock market. A lot of handicappers make a living and a career finding and following trends in sports betting.
But most people are to late to the party. They try to jump on the ship when it has already sailed, buy the stock when the value is gone and bet on the team everybody else already are betting on.
Even worse is people who use stats and come up with trends that have nothing to do with the current situation. I promise you that a game that was played eight years ago has nothing to do with a game played today.
I guess I also should mention the guys who wants you to buy their picks and tells you that they are on an 8-3 run. But they don’t tell you that they where on a 2-13 run before that.
Stats are a very important tool in your arsenal to become a Daily Fantasy Football Champion. But the skill is how you use the information and that you extract no-biased and relevant information. It’s harder than it looks, but let me help you out a bit.
Let’s look at the last 8 seasons in NFL and see if we can find any trends worth taking into account.
You probably heard that it’s a passing league now days, and you have probably noticed yourself that teams score more, the bookmakers totals are higher and that a lot more QB’s score a lot of fantasy points. Let me run the numbers for you to see the facts behind the sayings.
Fantasy points by Quarter Backs
Points per season 250 300 350 400 Total
2008 6 2 8
2009 9 1 1 11
2010 7 4 11
2011 5 1 3 2 11
2012 6 7 2 15
2013 10 4 1 1 16
2014 10 5 2 17
2015 8 8 2 1 19
The numbers tells a clear story. More and more QB’s score more and more points.
Your takeaway should be that the QB-position is important, but you should definitely not go all-in on a QB.
In Daily Fantasy Football you should look for a cheap QB with a good matchup. Instead of paying through your nose for Andrew Luck, Colts at home you pick the opposing QB at a bargain price. A lot of time you see the star QB feed the ball to the RB in the fourth quarter because of their comfortable lead, and you see the garbage team put up garbage point and both QB’s end up with the same number of fantasy points.
But what should you spend your dollar on instead? Lets do the same exercise with Running Backs.
Fantasy points by Running Backs
Points per season 150 200 250 300 Total
2008 17 8 8 2 35
2009 17 12 1 4 34
2010 12 8 7 2 29
2011 13 11 1 4 30
2012 9 8 5 3 25
2013 11 11 3 3 28
2014 11 5 3 4 23
2015 16 10 1 1 28
The trend is not as strong as at the QB position, but it’s clear, running backs are scoring less.
You can also see that it’s very thin at the top. That’s why the bets RB’s are so expensive. If you hit with a RB you are in great shape, but if you miss you are almost surely out of contention.
Pick RB’s with upside. Get the cheap ones and hope for a couple of TD’s and a home run (borrowing Baseball lingo).
But if we generally shouldn’t spend our dollars on QB’s or RB’s there is not so much left. Lets run the numbers for Wide Receivers.
Fantasy points by Wide Receivers
Points per season 150 200 250 300 Total
2008 17 14 6 2 39
2009 14 11 10 3 38
2010 18 14 7 1 40
2011 21 14 6 2 43
2012 25 6 11 4 46
2013 20 11 7 6 44
2014 24 15 7 5 51
2015 18 12 8 6 44
Once again the trend is clear. Wide Receivers score more points. You can also see that the total number of players scoring plenty is increasing.
The game has changed!
Each of the last 5 seasons has seen an increase in the total point production of the top-twenty WR’s. The total increase has been 9,4 % in standard formats and 12,7 % in PPR format.
The cumulative score for top-twenty RB’s on the other hand has dropped 18,0 % during the same time span, and 16,8 in PPR format
Las year the top-twenty WR’s outscored the top-twenty RB’s for the first time.
The Running Back position is far more volatile in point production than the Wide Receiver position. And you know just how many RB’s get injured every season.
This trend is your friend. Bank on it, and spend your top dollars on Wide Receivers.
