Thursday, November 13, 2025

Week 11 - Expected Wins: Who's been lucky (and unlucky) this season?

Welcome to week 11. The playoff picture is starting to shape up but I think other than Chris, every other team is technically still alive. We'll look into the playoff picture in a future week but today I'll show you a slightly different exercise I did to show whether or not a team has been unlucky / lucky.

For the most part, everyone uses PF as the measure to show the "real" rankings. If your PF is high but your wins are low, you basically chalk it up to bad luck. But what PF doesn't do well is show week to week variance. If you score 400 points one week but then 50 for then next 4, your PF will show 500, making you look like a pretty average team. But in actuality, your team sucks and should be 1-4. So if we look at week to week scoring, will it show something different? Or will it just line up with what PF shows?

The Methodology

I took everyone's points scored this season on a per week basis. Here is that information charted out (The font color was an accident but I actually like it because the trend of fill colors is more important to note than the numbers themselves).

Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9Week 10
Simon100.32136.7894.96110.5101.62123.18101.64112.1678.48143.2
Rich105.1211099.42128.1280.84129.24123.94121.6885.7692.6
Dan84132.18117.6295.28132.24127.7859.0876.6111.6155.7
Jon98.0481.98108.02117.24145.1276.76206.16119.9475.82115.4
Mike106.78138123.22151.593.0679.84115.88127.08109.44123.4
Eric94.2290.98123.6145.72111.14113.18129.1123.28172.3106.4
Cho109.92115.670.4699.7128.694.18137.94147.82132.991.32
Chris93.9265.14100.5889.72121.2279.6285.1478.0287.4685.3
Jung143.3681.22113.82120.76110.12107.1100.1689.72119.82122.24
David Yim103.3894.04134.8489.6104.52107.82115.9492.9680.8281.72
Paul Kim86.62114.4490.54150.36117.68102.5493.0681.02106.4106.06
David Kim94.76126.290.7250.58141.44109.1157.9288.22112.5693.74

The darker the green, the closer you are to the top score, meaning the more % you had to win that particular week. The darker the red, the closer you are to the bottom score, meaning the more % you had to lose that particular week.

Next, I found the median of the dataset, which landed us at 107.5. Basically, if you score above this you have more than a 50% chance of winning and if you score below this, you have less than a 50% chance of winning. The standard deviation of scores is about 24 points so I used the standard deviations to approximate how many wins you should get based on how you scored weekly rather than how many wins. Anyone half a standard deviation higher got .6 expected wins. If you were .5-1.5 standard deviations higher, you got .85 wins. And if you were more than 1.5 standard deviations away from the median score, you should have been guaranteed a full win. The same logic applied to losses with decreasing expected win values. So the chart looks something like this:

RangeExpected Wins
>143.71 win
119.5-143.7.85 win
107.5-119.5.6 win
95.4-107.5.4 win
71.2-95.4.15 win
<71.20 win

The Results

Unfortunately, the results didn't show as much variance from PF as I expected but there were some things that did stand out. First, I'll show the table of results and then bullet point my analysis.

NameTotal PFExpected WinsActual WinsLuckActual StandingsPF StandingsEW Standings
David Yim1005.643.662.4051111
Mike1168.26.381.70122
Paul Kim1048.72451.0071010
Dan1092.085.260.80478
Eric1209.926.4570.55211
Cho1128.445.4560.55345
Chris886.122.32-0.30121212
David Kim1065.244.54-0.501099
Jung1108.325.75-0.70653
Simon1102.845.254-1.25866
Rich1076.725.254-1.25987
Jon1144.485.53-2.501134
  • I've filtered this by my "Luck" metric which takes Actual Wins - Expected Wins. Positive numbers mean you've been lucky this year while negative numbers indicate that the football gods hate you.
  • Jon remains the unluckiest player this year so far. I knew he had some bad weeks so I thought that his 200 point outing was boosting his overall PF. While his expected wins standing is slightly less than his PF standings, he is clearly, without a doubt, the unluckiest player of the year. He should be 4th but he's currently sitting in 11th, looking up.
  • The person who stole all of Jon's luck? David Y. He should actually be in Jon's position at 11th in both PF and EW but he's somehow in 5th taking a whopping 2.4 wins he should never have had in the first place. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
  • Mike has also seen a lot of luck, although it's just taken his team from good to great. He'd still be a playoff bye team even if he stuck with his expected win total.
  • Simon and Rich probably have the biggest gripes after Jon and although both would be fringe playoff teams, that's better than having to fight for your life every week to get in.
  • Unsurprisingly, Chris's failure has less to do with his luck than just being a really bad fantasy football manager.
  • Aside from Jon, the person who has the biggest gripe is actually Jung. He should be 3 spots higher and with his top heavy lineup, he could have been in the running for a bye which would have greatly increased his chances at his first title.
  • After David, Dan and Paul have been the biggest beneficiaries of scheduling luck. They should both be much lower and possibly not even in the playoff race
All this to say that whether we love it or not, the randomness and luck shapes every football season. Our job as managers is to navigate around that. Who will find the right path over the next 4 weeks and make the playoffs? Who will curry favor with the football gods? It's anyone's game... except Chris. Chris is out.

Good luck to all!

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