FFPC Round 2 Playoff Challenge Ownership Projections
Quick post today for people playing Playoff FF on FFPC
Been a while since I’ve written, as I attended both the Sugar Bowl and National Championship in New Orleans and Houston respectively to cheer on my Huskies, and then got sick from the travel and have needed to rest up a bit. But for those of you who watch Ship Chasing or listen to Stealing Bananas and play playoff fantasy football, you might know after I got back from Houston, I did four shows in three days talking through the awesome FFPC Playoff Challenge.
I don’t have the time this morning to go through all the nuances of the format, but I did want to real quick send out an email to Stealing Signals subs who might be playing in it, particularly with the Round 2 challenge starting today. In that challenge, you have a roster of eight spots and have to play one player from each team; the way that all fits together, including how the field is expected to play certain teams, creates some really interesting game theory situations.
Every year, my buddy Pat Kerrane does awesome ownership projections for the main contest, which we discussed at length on Ship Chasing last week. To get a grasp on the Round 2 contest, I decided to whip some ownership stuff up real quick this morning. I want to be clear that where Pat studies past data closely, consumes content around the contest to get a feel for market sentiment, and would probably do stuff like study how the Round 1 actual ownership might influence Round 2 sentiment, I did these ownership projections off the cuff.
That said, I did make sure to cover the basics. For every team, the projected ownerships will total 100%. For the QB position, the projected ownerships also total 100%, while TE comes in slightly above (to account for some Flex play) and RB comes in slightly above 200% (to fill both RB slots and account for some Flex play). I’m quite sure these are going to be flawed in several ways, but I still thought they might be helpful for anyone playing the contest who is tinkering with lineups before the contest locks in a few hours.
I do think this exercise is interesting, and just looking at my results might give you a starting point from where to disagree with my assumptions. A couple things that were surprising to me were finding that I think Nico Collins will be heavy chalk given you can’t fade any team (and there are no kicker or D/ST plays in this contest), that Isiah Pacheco might get squeezed given people will want to play more Rashee Rice than the Round 1 contest, and that the TE position is really difficult to peg (which could help lead to Pacheco getting squeezed, as people will maybe have to get on Travis Kelce by default).
To that last point, you have Kelce, George Kittle (but playing him requires a scary fade of Christian McCaffrey), and then a big tier that includes Dalton Kincaid (who requires no Josh Allen), Sam LaPorta (who isn’t 100% and requires an Amon-Ra St. Brown fade), and then even guys like Cade Otton and Dalton Schultz who I expect to catch a little ownership.
So my main TE takeaway was even though people don’t really want to play Kelce these days, he’s going to be on a lot of rosters because it does get thin at TE with no David Njoku in this contest like we had in the first one. (My secondary takeaway was I’m probably light on at least one TE who the field will play a little more than I expect, possibly Kincaid or LaPorta as sexy rookies, but maybe even someone like Mark Andrews.)
Anyway, here are those projections in a screenshot and a Google Sheet link. I will be back soon with some of the promised 2023 recap stuff and starting to look ahead to 2024 best ball contests.