The Unjust Benching: A Statistical Deep Dive
Analyzing fantasy football's most wrongly disrespected players through five weeks
We’ve all had that sinking feeling when you realize you had the foresight to roster a good player but not the guts to put him into your lineup. And then, like clockwork, he goes off on your bench. In this post, we set out to figure out if there are players that so far this year have been consistently benched incorrectly.
We dove into the first five weeks for over 1,800 leagues on our Fantasy Genius platform, calculating the optimal lineup for every team each week. If the player was benched but would have been in that team’s optimal lineup, we consider it an incorrect bench. Let’s take a look at the data definitions and dive in. If you’re like this guy and not a fan of stats and analytics, maybe sit this one out.
Data definitions:
Incorrect bench: Player was left on the bench but would have resulted in more points for the team that week if they were started
Disrespect Quotient (DRQ): incorrect benches normalized for the number of weeks a player was rostered.
To get the obvious out of the way first: Yes, we are aware that many of these incorrect decisions are defensible. Starting Ja’Marr Chase in week 2 made complete sense (you’d be crazy not to) – but if you had Marquise Brown who went for 15 points on your bench, it was ultimately an incorrect lineup decision for that week. This is why aggregation is critical – if you look over several weeks, you’ll get a true sense of the players that are being over and undervalued and some of those anomalies will be smoothed out.
This is the first in a series of posts where we’ll analyze how managers broadly are making roster mistakes.
Most disrespected players
Most over-respected Players
Players with highest overall correct decision rate
Players with lowest overall correct decision rate
Today, we’re going to focus on the most disrespected players. Put another way, the players who were incorrectly left on the bench the most.
Let’s check out a few examples from each skill position.
Josh Dobbs is the #1 most disrespected QB after putting up solid performances in weeks 2 through 4. I will own up to disrespecting him – I didn’t even think he was that good in college… And Russell Wilson, despite clearly being cheeks, has been a decent fantasy asset this year (outside of last night’s disastrous performance against the Chiefs).
RB disrespect data this year is interesting – production has been so poor overall that the #1 guy on this list, Jaylen Warren, hasn’t really even had a single great game. He’s scoring low numbers but has been reasonably consistent, so was a better lineup choice compared against a lot of “better” options that have been garbage (looking at you, Najee & Miles). Perhaps a better example here is Zack Moss who has been amazing this year (with and without JT) – his worst outing was RB18. He has truly been shown disrespect.
From the receivers the one that sticks out to me is Thielen. Many of us were guilty of writing him off – he’s old, in a terrible offense, etc. Plenty of reasons to think he wouldn’t be good. And yet…after week 1, he’s been solid. Another instance of the DRQ identifying biases in fantasy managers decision making.
I’ll own up to disrespecting Cole Kmet – I did not have him as a top 5 TE on my board but through strong performances in weeks 4 and 5, he’s put himself in that conversation. Also Logan Thomas — the second appearance from a Virginia Tech alum on the disrespected list (Khalil Herbert). Folks, this is hard to believe now, but at one point…Virginia Tech* was a decent football program. Don’t punish these guys because their alma mater is a little light in the ass now.
Disrespect is just one side of the equation – some players have been over-respected. Stay tuned for the next post in this series where we’ll highlight the players who have been incorrectly started the most.
Comment below with any thoughts or questions — any big surprises on this list?
*about half of the FG staff attended Virginia Tech. Absolutely the only reason they were called out specifically here. We don’t know what other players attended which colleges.
This data was gathered from leagues synced with Fantasy Genius, which provides automated weekly recaps, previews, and other stats tailored specifically to your league. We support ESPN & Sleeper right now with Yahoo coming soon!