WeeklyProjections.com » Strategy
The latest six pack is up here. Rumor is that a link to this is going out to all RH users in the morning so we’ll see if that affects the results at all.
If I can find the time outside of the office to work on it I’m hoping to overhaul this site in the next few weeks. I’m working on developing some major improvements to my weekly projection system and I’d like to move the site in the direction of focusing more on those numbers rather than specific RotoHog strategy (which I’m already covering over at rotohog.com).
The new six pack is posted over at RotoHog, so check it out.
Also congratulation to Mr. Ugly Pigskins aka rsgregory aka Richard who currently sits at #2 in the overall. He’s all out of guys for this week, so he’ll drop a few slots but that’s an amazing start.
I forget exactly but I believe it took me several weeks to even crack the top 100 last year. Anyway, I’d be interested to hear where others on here stand. I’m pretty far behind the pack at the moment, but there’s plenty of football left to be played.
PS – I bought Marshall to replace Andre Johnson and then forgot to place him into my lineup. Ouch.
The first edition of the Six Pack is up. This one was fairly straight-forward except that I had 7 guys and only 6 spots. I bet you can guess who the guy was that I had to leave out…
Hey guys, sorry I haven’t had any pre-season posts for you. Just like baseball, I feel like I’m spending too much time making the game to have any time to post about it.
The final batch of IPOs is up on the trading floor now, so there are no changes left to worry about as you search for bargains. In regards to the trading floor discussion, I can’t really say much, but it’s correct that a player’s price only changes when he is bought or sold. Supply and demand will factor into the price change obviously. All that to say, a highly-owned player is probably going to make you money, but it won’t happen instantly at the opening of the trading floor.
Last year a lot of players’ prices tanked at the opening of the market. This was because teams were created using a traditional draft and many users drafted too many expensive players and couldn’t fill out their roster, so they sold those expensive players as soon as they could. With unrestricted preseason trading, this shouldn’t really be an issue and baseball generally showed that to be true.
Overall, the pre-season trading floor definitely makes the first day of trading a little less volatile. Still, the money-making strategies are the same: identify under-priced players, follow the price change momentum, and be the first to anticipate match-ups. To put that into practical terms, right now I recommend filling out your roster with only the very best bargains (maybe 3-5 players). Tomorrow morning, pick up the guys who seem to have some momentum, and sell if they start to lose that momentum. Finally, start looking at Week 1 match-ups, and try to anticipate when the broad masses will start to transition into building their Week 1 lineups (my guess is it will be next Wednesday or Thursday in anticipation of the opening game on Thursday).
Alright, good luck tomorrow. Keep the discussion going for trading floor bargains (it sounds like Kyle Boller may be out for the season), and be on the lookout for my Week 1 projections coming to RotoHog.com.
I think I’m going to be able to at least break even this week despite totally whiffing on selling guys Tuesday morning. Buffalo and New Orleans appear to be the popular teams this week. It was quite the surprise, at least to me, when Brees sold out. It wasn’t that long ago that he had been pretty much forgotten for the season. I think he’s a good start this week, so we’ll see if that sell out holds or not (I’m not currently a Brees owner).
One quick note about Brady, a lot of people are talking about buying him late in the week and holding for RotoHog’s adjustment. I only really recommend this for the teams with very high team values. If your value is low enough that you’re trimming the full $90 out of your starting lineup then it’s questionable if having an extra $8 or whatever (forgot the exact “Lothar Number”) the rest of the year will make up for that. There’s also the fact that most of you have a chance to have more money than you can spend before the end of the year so that $8 may not even be useful for a full 8 weeks.
Projections will be out soon. I’m going to finish them up over lunch.
Edit: A couple of you have made the point that buying Brady this weekend may be out of concern for not being able to get him otherwise. I agree with what Chuck said below that if you can be on the site Tuesday morning you should have no problem getting him. If you can’t be on at that time then there may be some value in getting him this week.
In some sense the less money you have the more options you have. If you have $700 the only “decisions” you have are picking the best players at every position. As you look at lower and lower team values there are more and more decisions because you’re now considering both production and price in relation to each other. I think this is why the most common “lineup help” threads are for teams under $300.
In light of that I’m posting a bonus “perfect” lineup for teams currently sitting at about $275. Obviously this is just one option, but I think it helps highlight some bargains as well as setting a framework to work your own opinions into. There’s $40 set aside to buy a defense and kicker and (hopefully) leave around $10 for weekend purchases.
Hackett is as much of a steal at that price as Bowe was at his erroneous $13 mark. Jones and Lynch are great bargain RBs this week who should put up top-level performance.
Edit: This goes for anyone under about $550, but please please please resist the urge to start anyone from NE, NYJ, TB, or HOU. You may miss out on a great performance, but the money you lose will cause you to miss out on far more great performances over the course of the season.
A number of you have mentioned only selling on Tuesdays and holding off until Wednesday to buy in for gains. I’m not ready to go that far just yet, but I’m not ruling the strategy out by any means. I think there are usually still a few fairly obvious guys each Tuesday who can net you a couple of bucks each. However, you have to make sure that the players you’re targeting don’t fall victim to overnight adjustments and/or widened bid/ask spreads. I think if you stick to the safe guys who haven’t experienced any of those adjustments you can make at least enough to cover your initial Tuesday losses each week.
QB Kellen Clemens NYJ $11.39
QB Brooks Bollinger MIN $5.91
RB Adimchinobe Echemandu HOU $6.14
QB Kurt Warner ARI $18.23
QB Jay Cutler DEN $46.18
QB Drew Brees NO $45.38
The first 4 I think are pretty obvious. I like Cutler mostly due to his match-up next week. It seems there are always a couple of starter-quality players each Tuesday who go up based on upcoming match-ups. Brees has a pretty decent match-up as well, and his price has been hammered down enough that I think he’ll see a nice bounce back after a solid performance yesterday.
Let me know who else you’re targeting (for those who are still planning to do some buying tomorrow).
What a strange week. As several of us have been discussing in the comments it seems like the best players all have the worst match-ups. On top of that, the injuries pile up a little more each week. I don’t think anyone would’ve guessed coming into the season that Jesse Chatman and Kevin Jones would both be in my top 8 RBs for Week 8.
Obviously both talent and match-ups are important, but it’s weeks like this that force you to choose between the two to a degree. Personally, I’d rather trust Tom Brady to rise to the challenge over taking a guy like Derek Anderson with an easier match-up.
Downloadable Weekly NFL Projections – Week 8
This is the second straight week I’ve remember to leave guys who are on bye next week out of the perfect lineups, amazing. Again, the $550+ ideal lineup does include those players on the basis that you may be able to afford taking the cash hit. It’s somewhat unusual for me to have a guy like Tomlinson, with his $82+ price tag, in the cheapest lineup, but it just goes to show how much better he is than the next options this week.
I just finished tabulating the results of the first ever “Outsmart JibJab” contest. It didn’t take too long but it was a bit more tedious than I expected. If someone would be interested in scoring/posting results each week that would be awesome. Otherwise I may have people score themselves if we keep doing it. Anyway, on to the results…
JoeCool: 4-1
MikeJ: 3-3
ranmix: 3-3
dlukas: 1-5
Total: 11-12
You can find the specific breakdowns in the forum (link is on the right bar, down a bit). JoeCool is the clear winner this week. He actually had 5 out of 6 correct but his under on Garrard was voided due to injury. Well done JoeCool. I expected to fare much worse than this giving people the opportunity to cherry pick six guys out of a full sheet of projections. I think I got lucky this week.
Usually I would post some “must-starts” for Week 8 right now, but I’m honestly not sure who they are. I think Tomlinson and Paker look great, but beyond that all the top players have fairly tough match-ups. I expect to see a lot more variation between rosters this week than usual, so it will be extremely important to do well. Do extra homework this week, and then hope for some luck on Sunday.
Since I’ll be out of the house most of the night I decided to get this up early. I’m considering changing the name of this feature to “What the heck do I know?” After 5 weeks of success last week’s six pack was a colossal failure. Hopefully this week will be a little better, but again, what the heck do I know?
Jesse Chatman is one you need to pick up tonight if you can. It’s almost a sure thing that RotoHog will adjust his price. There’s also a chance of Cobbs getting an overnight adjustment and an even smaller chance of Watson getting the same. Obviously if large adjustments are made while trading is closed you should be wary of buying in once trading opens. Coles had a fantastic week and is a top WR at a bargain price. Kyle Brady just keeps scoring TDs and he’s the one Pats guy that everyone doesn’t already have. LT is not on anyone’s roster, so he shouldn’t see any sell-off issues tomorow. He’s still the #1 guy in my book, and you can’t beat his match up this week.
Also, I don’t see any reason to expect Moss and Brady to do anything other than gain throughout the week. It may be more profitable to wait until tomorrow evening to grab them though. On the other hand, if Brady is available you should consider getting in while you can.
Well, there it is. Keep throwing out your suggestions and any criticisms. I’ve certainly proven that my opinion alone is a bit risky.