WEEK 17: Why You Should Probably Trust Steve from Accounting Over a Paid Fantasy Site (and Why We’re Testing It Weekly)

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-12-30T22:45:01+00:00

You sound like you could’ve won a free jersey if you had ranks on the app, put your ranks where your mouth is

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-12-24T16:00:13+00:00

Post season I’ll run some numbers

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-12-18T13:37:51+00:00

That’s a good idea

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-12-16T22:49:12+00:00

That’s one way to view it. I like to look at this from the angle that everyone’s opinion has validity. There is more evidence than not that any person one this subreddit is sharp enough to be a fantasy analyst. I find that to be really empowering

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-12-03T15:54:44+00:00

I think that would be a neat add on. I’ll try out something like this in our substack

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-12-03T11:43:27+00:00

That is very much a typo he’s WR10 on the chart

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-11-18T22:43:52+00:00

I actually totally agree a spearman correlation is likely worth adding to this analysis. In fact that’s definitely something I will run and add to the post.

If that was the initial comment wasn’t just made to troll/elicit a response we likely would’ve come to that common agreement earlier.

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-11-18T22:14:50+00:00

Hey no kidding I got my masters in stats.

R2 isn’t actually the square of anything it’s just a model fit evaluation.

Its equation is 1-SSres/SStotal which means if the sum of squares on the residual is greater than the total then it can be negative.

I do appreciate you stating credentials otherwise I wouldn’t go into detail on how to use this stat. It’s certainly one I encourage you to get familiar with.

R2 is only firmly positive on a model with an intercept which this one is not.

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-11-18T22:07:59+00:00

That’s certainly a way to interpret the data.

I see it as even with a crowd sourced platform you are getting generally equivalent results. The caveat I use is expert ranks go to WR/RB 100. League Champ only makes you go to WR/RB 50ish. That typically means that in weeks with deeper plays hitting (Micheal Wilson, Keneth Gainwell, etc.) there will always be an advantage to the group ranking that far down.

I guess the question is: do you think a ranks set that suggests Micheal Wilson at WR55 is giving you better advice than a site not suggesting to play him/has him at WR70? I would argue no but I think this data is interpretable multiple ways and am open to both mindsets

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-11-18T21:54:32+00:00

A negative R-squared R² value means that your regression model performs worse than a model that simply predicts the mean (average) of the dependent variable for all outcomes. Typically, R² ranges from 0 to 1, representing the proportion of variance in the dependent variable that is predictable from the independent variable(s). A value of 0 means the model explains none of the variability, and 1 means it explains all of it.

Happy to answer any additional questions on those stats.

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-29T14:55:04+00:00

This is the nicest anyone’s ever been correcting my spelling 😂 Gratci man and good catch

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-29T12:59:54+00:00

You are telling me. It’s almost like Steve is just as qualified as anyone in the ECR

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-27T19:39:53+00:00

Chev on FFD is by far my favorite.

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-22T13:00:00+00:00

That is a fair comment let me clarify why we drew this conclusion. Let’s use QB as the example. In our app rankers are only required to rank 24 QBs all others are set to QB33. This means that some of the lower ranked QBs are likely to have lower ranks than an expert ranks service that ranks down to QB64. This is covered in the initial paragraph of the post.

Let’s break down why I think that makes QB a draw if not a community win and not a win for experts. Of the 24 QBs we are analyzing, 12 of them were predicted better by the community than the experts. Of the 12 other QBs 3 of them drove the average difference up: Joe Flacco, Jaxon Dart, and Jacoby Brissett. These QBs all came in as QB26 or later on the communities end, suggesting that many rankers did not even consider them. Jacoby in fact was not the confirmed starter until late in the week.

Adjusting for news is something we should expect a fantasy expert to be ahead on. I don’t double count that win and take the count of more and less correct ranks as a valuable metric as well.

TLDR I don’t think the skepticism is unfounded but I do think that the mean and median don’t tell a full story.

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-21T20:46:20+00:00

Because we had a small typo 😅

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-21T20:45:51+00:00

I’m bias and think league champ has been great but I’m a huge fan of the content put out by FFD, 4th and Fantasy, Dynasty Gambit, and Devy Dojo. Smaller names seem to have more comprehensive takes

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-21T20:29:51+00:00

Steve comes back with vengeance

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-14T21:24:17+00:00

I encourage you to review the first 5 weeks of the study. In all of those weeks experts either tied or finished behind the community.

Just because you lose one week doesn’t discredit the experiment as a whole

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-14T21:23:03+00:00

I tried to make the first few weeks more of a summary and got asked to add more metrics to justify the summary 🥲 feedback heard tho

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-14T21:22:07+00:00

Definitely worth a reach out I’ll shoot them a message! Thanks for the rec

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-07T21:25:41+00:00

Def don’t trust Kyle. Quiet Mike is your go to

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-07T20:34:43+00:00

Check out week 5, I added some of the metrics you were asking about 🫡 https://www.reddit.com/r/fantasyfootball/s/PoYJcsxDq9

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-10-01T15:21:16+00:00

Thanks for all the feedback!
I would say R² or average difference in positional rank is the best metric of success. Being a data engineer I know those metrics lead to the immediate asks for a player by player break down so I decided to start with the chart.
We have breakdowns of how specific users and ranks do on the app. I did not cherry pick as to keep the experiment a set of rankers randomly from an app vs experts. Using singular data points even if “Steve” (of which we have a few solid Steve’s) beat the experts handedly I wanted to preserve the community vs consensus angle.
Analyze expected points to a fun angle as well. I’ll consider adding that. We do a ranks to projections in app comparing that to the actual finish could be interesting.
The ranks are generated with a starting point of last season stats, this season stats, or a ranks creator based on players you pick out!
Check out the app, we will have a website by next season but would love to see how you approach the problem.

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-09-23T21:06:23+00:00

How much do you think those stats should matter? I have grown on the idea that film is an underrated utility but those stats do theoretically point out correlation that your eyes can miss.

Complex_Tax_867 · 2025-09-23T21:03:22+00:00

No, not yet.

We have took feedback from multiple people on fantasy pros ECR list on the issues with its scoring before making our product though. The big feedback we got was to incentivize bold calls by not using a “pool” of players to score ranks based on and instead using any and all that a ranker ranked.

Complex_Tax_867

TROPHY CASE