Stealing Signals in-season plans

What to expect for the next four months

It’s been an absolute blast of an offseason writing for you guys, and I’m super excited for what’s in store over the next four months. For those that are new around here and maybe joined up for draft rankings, it’s maybe interesting to note that the entire reason this Substack exists revolves an in-season article called Stealing Signals that I began writing way back in 2017 over at RotoViz. Signals has had a couple different homes over the years, including CBS for the 2019 season, but has been sent out in this newsletter form since 2020.

Each week, I’ll write up the Thursday night game and all the early Sunday games in a Monday newsletter that looks at not just what happened, but what might have happened. Then on Tuesday, I’ll be back with the late Sunday games, Sunday Night Football, and Monday Night Football, with a full recap of Part 2 to include the biggest Signals and Noise of the week, plus looks at some fancy data like the always popular HVT charts my buddy Sam Hoppen provides.

To be successful in fantasy football, you have to learn to think probabilistically, which means synthesizing not just the observed outcomes but also likely ones that didn’t actually occur. That’s the area where we can find a weekly edge in such a high-variance sport as football, especially on a short sample when early-season waiver reactions can have massive impacts for your seasonal teams.

The market tends to be very results-based, once upon a time chasing last week’s fantasy points and only slightly more evolved today in that it now chases things maybe one layer below the surface, including much of what I’ll talk about related to usage and opportunity. But there is a ton more to recalibrate every week based on those metrics, including how to evolve a set of priors that always understands we’re really pretty poor at predicting what might happen next in the NFL. That’s to say that today’s usage numbers don’t always predict tomorrow’s fantasy success, because we still need to understand the potential chaos ahead for all teams, and think through the variables that really matter for the specific paths we’re hoping for — which vary based on the different player profiles we’re discussing. I’m not trying to make this sound more complicated than it is, but I do think to the extent I add value here, it’s not in reviewing the data but in interpreting how that impacts a range of potential future outcomes — and those potential outcomes are influenced by a lot more than last week’s data.

So I look forward to recalibrating my expectations for every player, every week, right here for you, before waivers run. Here are a few more things to look forward to from this newsletter and the extended community over the next four months.

• For those of you interested in joining Discord to chat with other Signals readers, here’s an invite link. Please note that while I’ve been pretty active in Discord over the past few weeks, my in-season time will be pretty limited, and this space was created by request as a place for Signals readers to interact with one another.

• For those that are hoping to get more personal help during the season, I’m going to bring back my weekly Office Hours for Premium Signals and Signals Gold subscribers in Discord. This is an additional service you can sign up for through Discord (and ultimately a site called LaunchPass). It’s fairly pricy at $35/month for Premium Signals and $100/month for Signals Gold, and that’s by design because I frankly don’t want too many people signed up for it. I have to be somewhat protective of my time in-season. The features for each for this season are as follows:

  • Premium Signals: Weekly Office Hours on Wednesdays, typically in the afternoon or early evening, but with the time subject to variability. Questions can be submitted in advance. The discussion often revolves around waivers, but also trade ideas or general team questions about direction and approach. Last year we had a dozen or two people in for these Office Hours, and I was typically able to get to the vast majority of the questions, which is the idea, but it’s also limited to just a one-hour period on Wednesdays each week.

  • Signals Gold: Includes the Office Hours, but I’ll also be more available for one-on-one questions throughout the day Wednesday and then also on Saturday night and into Sunday morning, with a cutoff two hours before kickoff Sundays. The idea is this is slightly more expansive and a bit more private. Again, the price is expensive by design and space will be limited for this; I’ve just made these things available to people who have asked and am passing it along for anyone else who may be interested in more personalized in-season discussions.

• Lastly, by popular request for me to spin some of my Stealing Signals backward-looking work toward the future, I’m going to dabble with a Saturday post here at Signals that loosely looks at a few weekly projections sources and discusses players I believe might have some kind of “input volatility.” Essentially, I’ll zero in on some players the market could miss on by a wide margin, which is most useful for DFS but also carries seasonal ramifications in terms of potentially providing sneaky starts or players with more floor concerns than most base projections are showing. For the most part, I trust good in-season projections for my start/sit decisions, but this article will attempt to argue where they may be a bit blind. It may go terribly! I’m also not sure I’ll do it all season, based on workload and family considerations. But we’ll give it a go and see if it’s a fun new feature that adds value and isn’t too heavy of a lift each week.

Lastly, if you’re looking for sports betting content specifically, be sure to join Dalton Kates and I over at Stealing Lines. Dalton has already posted a ton of Week 1 props to hit, some of which were clearly mispriced and our subs got at great numbers before they moved. I’ve also sent out my Week 1 card picking sides and totals, and will be making game picks all season.

Looking forward to a great season here at Stealing Signals and I’m excited to have you all aboard! We’ll talk again next Monday!