Recap from Week 3 (sorry – I really am trying to post before Thursday night but it seems that between work right now and updating my model stats mid-week, I just run out of time).
Week 3 was wildly successful. NFL.com was closer this time in terms of predicting my win over my opponent but nowhere near to the results that I achieved. I will always stand by Russell Wilson – what kind of Seahawk would I be if I threw in the towel and in my 2nd league (Standard format), he did not fail! He was simply divine. But alas, he is not my primary league QB (Tom Brady is – a hard pill to swallow personally being a die hard Seahawks fan after what happened in a certain very important yesteryear game – but he has proven his PPR fantasy value in Week 3). Primary League Week 3 – Wins = 3 / Losses = 0 (remember, after draft day, I was projected to end the season with an 8-8 W/L ratio. So, this might be the week; maybe not).
But last week, I genuinely felt bad – Locheness Jabberwokies, my week 3 opponent, happens to also be my man. And, this annihilation just felt like a win that went one step over the line of fairness. I mean a win’s a win – but this kind of decimation belongs outside of one’s relationship. Trust me. But he was a good sport. Except, he will no longer listen to my neurotic banter about losing in any given week, even if all signs point to a loss. Somehow, when I trust my model, it all works out. Now, I can’t predict injuries mid game like what happened in Week 4 to Ty Montgomery (my League 3 Flex position player). Standard league wise, he brought home 2.3 points ~ projected to earn about 10.70 Standard points with a st. deviation of +/- 1.5. But this was my lineup for Week 3 across my 3 leagues:
League #1 (Primary PPR) – remember, I aim to not just win but also optimize my lineup. 
A bench full of points is a fail to me. But in this case, I benched Jordan Reed and picked up whomever was the next available TE off the waiver wire (granted he definitely contributed nothing). But out of my WR1 and WR2 + WR Flex, those I played were the best options (even though Mike Evans came in about 1.10 points less than Adam Thielen (bench), it was within the expected standard deviation, so either one would have been fine if played).
My RB situation has always been the bane of my league this year starting with my draft choices – Nothing to write home about except seeing the early value of Kareem Hunt (TG), even when NFL.com continued to project very little in his court.
Terrance West was supposed to be double digits but my model said to bench him vs. either Mike Gillislee or Kerwynn Williams. Both scored very little and essentially were within their own standard deviation negating their slight point difference.
All in all, players played worked out well and yes, though many stellar performances carried those that failed might be outliers in some regard (or at least they won’t bring home that many points week over week). But the PPR space is my golden circle of happiness – after all, I built my original algorithm using PPR league play / bench + historical point spreads + my secret sauce nearly 5 years ago; and those years of learning have “taught” the model (and me) many nuances otherwise missed by others in the sports ML space (though I respect greatly what my fellow ML “sportstaticians” put forth, my approach is very different from what I glean from others’ work).
One day, I would love to have a league with only ML Sports folks; the great battle of the algorithmic approaches – if you are interested, let me know in the comments.
League 2 (Standard): Wins = 3/Losses = 0:
As you can see, I should have played DeSean Jackson over Adam Thielen or my Flex position Ty Montgomery. And geez, I totally spaced on pulling Jordan Reed like I did in League 1. This win was largely because of Russell Wilson, as mentioned before, Devonta Freeman and the Defense waiver wire pick up of the Bengals who Im glad I picked up in time for the game. oh yeah, I am not sure why Cairo Santos shows as BYE but earned me 6 points??? NFL.com has some weird stuff happening around 12:30 last Sunday ; games showed as in play (even though kick off wasn’t for another 30 minutes); and those that showed in play erroneously allowed players to be added from the wire still as though the games weren’t kicked off. Anyway, not as proud but still another win – Year 1 for Standard; perhaps after another 5 years training Standard like my PPR league, I will have more predictable outcomes , other than luck.
#NFL.com, #Week3, #Standard,@NFLFantasy
Musings on ML, Deep Learning & AI 