Project(ing) Hog Hunting

With two minutes remaining in the first half of Monday Night Football, your esteem Commish began playing the odds, ‘clinging’ to a 48.5 point lead over Smeet. It didn’t seem like much to fret over as ESPN assured me Ukraine Steel was 99% certain to win, but Josh Allen is absolutely terrifying in fantasy football, inspiring hope for Single Smeet like a middle-aged single mom at a Warren County Fuddruckers at 10:45 on a Wednesday night. Meanwhile, the much-heralded Buffalo Bills defense was getting minced to pieces, allowing a quick 76-yard run to King Derrick Henry and a short 16 yard field for the Titans following an Allen interception (also a touchdown).

One minute left before halftime, Allen obviously found a wide open anti-vaxxer in the endzone, for an extra seven points. As someone who takes this way too seriously, your Commish frantically looked at his vaunted defense, which hemorrhaged points (and yards) throughout the second half while Allen picked up a third quarter touchdown.

By that fateful last drive, with the Titans leading by three, and your Commish leading by 17, overtime became the biggest fear. The Titans were just one point from 35 (-10 points for a defense compared to 28–34 being -5) and 33 yards away from 400 total yards (another -5), meaning one more Titans possession would drop me from an uncomfortable 17 point lead to just seven with Allen potentially having another shot in overtime.

Worst case scenario and anxiety for the Commish, especially after Smeet threatened to hunt me down and slaughter me this weekend. (Candidly, this was only after the formerly-undefeated Smeet learned RB1 Nick Chubb was out exactly thirty-three minutes earlier and a fateful ‘Who’s his backup?’ comment that landed Hunt on Injured Reserve.) In any case, the projections for our match-up went from roughly 58% that the Commish would win to 51% for Smeet — that’s a huge swing despite Smeet starting three Giants players.

By Monday night, the projections were overwhelmingly in my favor, but the potential for back-to-back losses (my Week 7 is already over) was paramount with Allen and Henry scoring points on every single snap. How could I really believe the projections after this weekend, especially when ESPN clearly ignored the Bills defense getting carved like a wild boar after Smeet allegedly goes Hunting, bleeding points every play in Nashville?

In any case, what originally started as a brief email to owners is now a new 4,000 word column — and one we all need to read because anyone believing the projections this year are doomed to face the same anxiety and uncertainty your underdog Commish faced in Week Six’s Monday Night Football.

We have a helluva sample size of 2021 results — whether its records (only two teams currently have five wins), scoring (only one team crossed the 900 points scored mark), and your Commissioner, who would absolutely sit up until three a.m. comparing projected vs actual point totals in a fake football league.

If anyone is really curious, ESPN projections are fairly inaccurate in GMRRFFA. Please stop leaning on them. For example, ESPN slated Antonio Gibson to drop 16+ points on the dreadful KC defense and, instead, he didn’t even break five points. On the flip side, RB1 (BY A FUCKING MILE) Derrick Henry dropped 37 on the best defense in the league while ESPN projected half that. Between injuries and teams’ game planning, these projections are borderline impossible to be accurate. So far this season, ESPN projections are within five points of actual points scored just once in every four starting lineups, abysmal even if higher than Fredo’s postseason success rate.

In 42 match-ups featuring 84 lineups, ESPN’s projected totals are off by more than ten points a staggering 72% of the time, despite ESPN-projected favorites winning 26 of 41 match-ups (there was one identically-projected match-up). This might not make Smeet feel better after upsetting the Fantasy Karma gods and getting smacked this weekend, but 63% of those favored ultimately won thus far this year.

Even more insane, of those match-ups where ESPN was off by ten-plus points, it undervalued 35 lineups, meaning the stupid platforms undervalues a whopping 41% of all starting lineups (on the flipside, it overvalues about 31% of lineups by ten or more points).

For those lineups that outscore ESPN projections by ten or more points, teams are 25–10! Even more, this includes some really dreadful lineups from Markezy and Stabs, who are a combined 1–9; if you removed the four times these guys overperformed, ten point or more overperforming teams would be 25–6. In those six losses, each lineup also faced a team outperforming its ESPN projections by ten or more points.

On the flipside, its no surprise, but if actual points totals are ten points or fewer than projected, teams are just 5–21. Of those five victories, four lineups also faced lineups underperforming by ten points or more. The fifth was Coop’s filthy bad team, which won with just 117.7 points against the wildly-overrated 2–4 Mark Hutchinson.

(For teams in the middle performing within ten points of projections, it’s fairly even with eleven wins compared to twelve losses.)

The over performing vs underperforming debate is a bit misleading when we look at individual teams — for example, Markezy has out performed projections three times already this season (though he’s projected to score 113 points per week so its no wonder he’s winless regardless). Meanwhile, both Tito Galen and FIL outperformed projections by ten or more points four different times (yet both are 3–3 which makes no sense… actually it does. They both played Ukraine Steel).

On the flip side, in all four losses this season, Garcia underperformed significantly compared to projections (flip it with over performing in his two victories). Same goes for Fredo, probably the luckiest four win team in the league despite underperforming projections near weekly.

For Fredo, on average, he’s underperforming his projections by 13.8 points every week. Comparatively, look at some of the league contenders Fredo should be worrying about:

The Commish outperforms projections by 20 points per week;

Tito Galen outperforms projections by 15.71 points;

Larry outperforms projections by 12.4 points; and, finally;

Markezy outperforms his projections by 11 points — oh wait, we’re already penciling in Fredo for the LB6? Makes sense.

Ultimately, ESPN projections are kind of sort of worthless aside from a false sense of comfort and hope, but there’s a theme for lineups that outperform those margins by a substantial amount (ie they are some of the league’s elite 2021 teams). After Monday night, I’m not holding on to the little 99% data point, but its clear from the data that teams underperforming their projections — Fredo and Garcia particularly — are potential contenders who have struggled the most early in the season.

Its impossible to analyze Garcia’s line-up as it shifts more often than the Unicorn’s animus towards the Commish, but Fredo’s lineup is a dumpster fire. The Week Three CMC injury left Fredo’s squad on the edge of catastrophic; in Weeks One and Two, CMC and Aaron Jones dropped three 20+ games. Since then, Fredo’s squad has just two 20+ point performances from its running back position. Meanwhile, overrated-in-fantasy George Kittle overperformed projections once in four weeks and his replacement — Evan Engram — barely gets five targets per week.

Perhaps the most concerning position for Fredo is his wide receivers. Keenan Allen remains one of the most-targeted players in the league, but is just 25th overall in scoring (ie low-end WR2). Meanwhile, to no one’s surprise, Tee Higgins, is averaging the same number of targets as Ja’maar Chase and Tyler Boyd, but is hovering as a WR4 while Chase is a potential WR1 and Boyd is a WR3. Even if Higgins were the top guy in Cincy, there isn’t enough consistent volume for him to produce (almost as unpredictable as Henry being an elite running back again in 2021). Finally, the Geno Smith experience may cover for a dismal performance but Tyler Lockett (WR2 through two weeks) is WR57 over the last four weeks, averaging 7.5 points. Not only has Lockett failed to surpass projected points in the past four weeks, he’s only reached double digits once.

With all of this, its quite easy to see why Fredo’s weekly performance has been fairly erratic and underwhelming.

With CMC returning…. healthy maybe… eventually and Lamar Jackson being amazing, Fredo’s still 4–2 despite the early season struggles at running back, wide receiver, and tight end (kicker too if you want me to go there). He’s got three winnable match-ups on the horizon (the up and down Garcia, the overrated Mark Hutchinson who disappointed yet again in Week 6, and the nicest smile in the league) before he goes hunting with Single Smeet in Week 10.

There’s hope, and hope is a good thing. Just don’t lean on those projections when you face Josh Allen…