Review of our Pre-Season Predictions 2015
- Jan 1, 2016
- 8 min read
Quick Announcement before I get started: I will not be writing about DFS during the 2016 season, but instead writing about Start/Sit, waiver wire pickups, and following a high stakes league. The main reasons for this are, I have been consistently good at season-long Fantasy Football for 6+ years, and have been very average at DFS. I think I can give better advice helping everyone with leagues that are through the whole season. Also check back in for a big announcement in January!
Review of our year
Happy new year everyone! 2015 was another great year of Fantasy Football. Overall I had a very successful year despite choking in the playoffs in many of my leagues. The Bestball leagues I played in still put me in the green for this year which counts as a good year of Fantasy in my book. I will now highlight some lessons I learned along with a review of the predictions I made before the season.
Lessons
This was the first year I participated in a high stakes league and it was a fantastic experience. After getting off to a slow 1-4 start, I rattled off 7 straight wins finishing 8-4. Unfortunately this wasn’t enough to get into the top 4 and the playoffs, losing on tie breakers. My biggest lesson here: TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS. I had done loads of research on Julio Jones (King Jones: Julio will be #1) and knew he was going to be in for a big year. The problem was, I was picking #4 and Eddie Lacy was still on the board. I really wasn’t expecting him to be there which gave me pause. I made the mistake of going against my research to grab Lacy who I thought would be a stud. I will admit I was very wrong. He looked slow, sluggish and chubby. He wasn’t focused on Football as seen by his benching where he was out past curfew. The Packers offense as a whole was so bland and not the exciting, electric offense we were accustomed to. This mistake of picking a “consensus” top 4 player over my own research unfortunately cost me not only a trip to the playoffs but most likely a league championship as well.
This was also my first year playing in a competitive auction league. I played with 9 other esteemed fantasy writers as well as 2 competitive players. This league, set up by THE FIRM, Jay Harding @UDONTWINONDDAY, was a lot of fun but provided another great lesson looking back. I won the league and what was interesting was my two MVP’s cost a combined $4. I got Doug Baldwin for $1 and Jordan Reed for $3. These two led me to winning and without them I may not have even placed. A place where I made a mistake was not spending big. My most expensive buy was Calvin Johnson at $33. I should have paid up for Julio despite the price being absurd. My general philosophy going in was to build a very deep team because of the bestball scoring and this caused me to shy away from spending big bucks. Now after playing, I had realized if I had spent up on an elite player (Julio) and still built a deep team (which could have easily been done with the money I had left) I would have absolutely dominated.
Another league I played in was "Superflexing in the mirror" This is a superflex league run by @MikeMarFF where you can start a second QB in your flex position. I came in second after getting a first round bye and then proceeding to choke in the finals. Eli's 7 or so points just didn't cut it. However it was my QB's Cam Newton, who I took in the FIRST round, and Eli who led the way for my team the whole year. Having the #1 QB and another QB1 was invaluable in the superflex format. I learned that going QB heavy and building a deep team made for a great year. My RB stable is: Doug Martin, Lamar Miller, Mark Ingram, Darren Mcfadden. These 4 RBs finished as the RB5, RB6, RB8 (Season cut short), and RB15 in PPR this year. I am looking forward to next year and seeing if my team can continue to play at a high level.
2015 Articles:
Now onto a look at the articles I wrote this year, and how accurate they were. I will be doing the same scoring system as our mid-year report article.
This was one of the first articles written on the site and had a lot of in-depth analysis looking at some interesting trends with Bell and who he played against. I can’t really call this article a win or loss due to the season-ending injury that happened. I am not going not give myself a win on this one because no one can predict injuries.
(Tie) 0-0-1
Side Note for 2016: Bell could be a huge steal next year due to the explosion at the WR position and the lack of trust in RBs. He actually impressed me a lot this year and if he returns to good health he could be Draft Day robbery.
This is another article I wrote way before the season and was before the original foster injury. He didn’t look fantastic when he played this year but got the volume to be a RB1. Unfortunately, he also suffered a season-ending injury so I can’t really judge whether he would have panned out or not. I wrote this article way before he was getting hype.
(Tie) 0-0-2
This was one of my favorite articles going into the year because it was a bold prediction but not outrageously bold. Halfway through the year he was #1 in both PPR and Standard. Going into week 17 he is tied for #1 in PPR and #2 in standard by 4 points. Julio has been unbelievable this year and lived up to the hype I gave him. This is definitely a win and drafting Julio automatically gave you a shot to win your league. NFL.com just published a list of what players were on the most rosters that won. Julio came in at #3!
(Win) 1-0-2
This list of 7 rookies was written in early May and ended up being very average, if not poor. Tevin Coleman hasn’t done anything this year because of the emergence of Devonta Freeman and his injuries. I really think that if Coleman hadn’t gotten injured, he would be having similar success to Freeman. Unfortunately that hasn’t happened and he hasn’t done anything productive in the fantasy world. Nelson Agholor has been one of the biggest disappointments in my mind so far. I thought that even if Chip Kelly’s system faltered a little bit Agholor would still produce solid numbers for a late round pick. What we didn’t know at that time was that the Eagles offense would look very bad and that almost no one would produce in their offense. Amari Cooper has had a lot of success this year and clicked with Derek Carr. Cooper and Gurley seem to be the only two rookies that I was correct that would produce this year. Gurley had a very good rookie year, especially with the lack of help from the rest of his team. I hope the Rams give him some help so that he doesn’t have a Steven Jackson like career. Kevin White and Breshad Perriman both have been injured the whole year so they don’t count towards anything. Melvin Gordon has been very bad and while I did say he would have some success I also preached caution about him. I was very worried about his offensive line and that worry was correct. Overall I whiffed on Agholor, Coleman and Gordon but was right on Gurley and Cooper. Overall, not great predictions and I’ll give it a loss. I will definitely wait until longer to make my official predictions, or possibly write multiple articles.
(Loss) 1-1-2
I ended up in 4th place by 100 points and will be looking to make some trades in the offseason. I have developed some trade targets and will be sending out offers.
This was written by a guest writer and for being written in the middle of June, it was a pretty good article. His hates were pretty spot on with the exception of Brandon Marshall who has been a beast. Mike Wallace busted pretty bad as he predicted and Desean was a non-factor even though most of that has been because of injury. He did well with his love of Edelman and Jarvis landry has been solid, but TY and the Colts are not in sync, Jordan Matthews and the Eagles are playing poorly. After starting slow, Brandin Cooks ended up as a top 12 WR. Overall this article was solid and packed full of good advice that could have been used to pick some solid middle tier players so I would give it a win.
(Win) 2-1-2
My 5 players for this article were Forsett, Edelman, Landry, Cooks, and Spiller. The best call of all of those was easily Edelman while the worst call was Spiller. As soon as Spiller got injured a few weeks before the season I knew he could have some troubles, especially in the beginning of the year. He never got touches and probably will not be back with the saints in 2016. I was really close to putting Hopkins in this article also but evaluated his situation and it made me nervous. Would teams just double cover Hopkins? Who would get him the ball? Were his huge games last year an anomaly? These questions led me to keeping him off but that was a big mistake as he has been a stud this year. Overall I would consider Cooks, Landry, and Edelman wins while Spiller and Forsett a loss so overall 3-2 makes it another win.
(Win) 3-1-2
This is another one of my favorite articles from before the season. I highlighted 4 QB’s who could be studs but wouldn’t cost you more than an 8th round pick. Those 4 QB’s were Carson Palmer, Eli Manning, Matt Stafford, and Sam Bradford. In this article I recommended that one of these QB’s should either be your backup, or draft multiple of them to stream. Palmer, Eli and Manning ended up as the QB5, QB10, and QB11 going into week 17. This is very good considering where you could have drafted them. A combination of 2 of these 3 could lead to some stability at the QB without having to spend up at QB. In fact Carson Palmer outscored both Aaron Rodgers and Andrew luck (consensus top 2). As a sleeper article of sorts, having 3 out of the 4 players hit is a win.
(Win) 4-1-2
That wraps up all of the articles that I wrote before the season! The overall record at the end of the year Is 4 wins, 1 loss and 2 ties! This is just the beginning of FFMatrix and I am excited to write more in 2016!
COMING SOON: Testimonials + Big announcement. Get an inside look at how some of my clients did and who I reccomended for them to draft, or how to manage their teams!
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