The second week gives us two data points into the season and potentially provides the blossoming of patterns. Conversely, the second week might just be cover to hide from the first. This week I decided to take a look at champions records after two weeks (which does actually provide a strong statistic), transaction totals per season, and where championship teams drafted non flex position players. Will that information prove useful? Probably not! But is it interesting? You tell me.

Champ Records After Two Weeks Since 2012.

Take a look at that! Mostly even between the two points… But shouldn’t there be three? Discounting ties (of which none had taken place in the first two weeks for champs), there should be 2-0, 1-1, and 0-2. Well you’re reading that right. No championship team has started 0-2. What does that mean for D-Smith and Val? Well it means that if they want to be a champion they need to make For Reals Guys League history. Which, after a measly 9 years, should not be impossible. Someone has to be the first team to do it. There is no significant difference in teams that start 2-0 and teams that start 1-1. 4 vs 5 suggests to me it’s 50/50 with only 9 points of reference.

Transaction Totals

The pie chart below shows the ranks of each champ and how many moves they made in comparison to the rest of the league.

Since these are end of season numbers I can’t really project them out from here over who this makes most likely to win. What I can say is those in the top-half of transactions each year seem more likely to win (5 out of 9), while those in 8^th are significantly overrepresented. Don’t be 8^th this year - that position seems likely to have some regression (unless you really believe there is some magic to being number 8).

This chart I find interesting but not wildly helpful. I like seeing that Val won in 2015 with 7 transactions. That’s a wild outlier. That’s pretty close to a perfect draft. It seems like since the explosion in information available for fantasy football that the transaction frequency has increased. That might mean that we are now making faster decisions on players than we used to. That could also be because we are more experienced and know a dud when it presents itself. I’m not certain of significance here at all, but the numbers are likely to increase with an added week to the season.

Does Draft Round for Certain Positions Matter?

One of my favorite things that I saw while compiling all this was that in 2012 the first round was almost completely QBs. Notable exceptions being Maurice Jones-Drew, Ray Rice, and Arian Foster. That trend stuck for the next year but by 2014 it had completely changed. So the numbers I was most curious about were on the right hand side. Is this the way to plan a perfect draft?! Probably not. But… What if? I looked at those averages and looked at our current draft and found the players drafted in “CHAMPIONSHIP SPOT.”

QBs drafted in the 7^th round:

Tom Brady (Alex)
Justin Herbert (Nic)

TEs drafted in the 6^th round:

Logan Thomas (Andrew)

D/ST drafted in the 13^th round:

Ravens (Dan)
Rams (Andrew)

Following our data then, it appears that Andrew may have had the perfect draft. Looking at his team, we know that this is not true. Now his only problem is the sheer amount of Bengals on his team. Take this information for what you will.

Weekly Awards

This is based upon the same awards that Sleeper gives out each week. Unfortunately ESPN does not, but I can come up with the same answers. These are based on math done by hands so give me a bit of wiggle room on the maths.

Best Manager (Set the best line-up)

Val of the Greenbowl Packers. He could not have possibly scored more points.

Worst Manager (Set the worst line-up)

Matt of the Fly Boyds. He could have scored roughly 42 more points this week.

Biggest Blowout

Colt 49’s 152.72 vs Eff-Town sleazeballs 97.78

Colt 49’s (Ory and Daniel) dismantling of Eff-Town Sleazeballs (Cone) by a whopping 54.94. I can swing this to say, shame that Henry’s gigantic day was wasted. If you removed Henry’s ginormous output, Colt 49’s would have still won by 7.2. It’s not like Cone could have done much here, he left Hollywood on the bench but this is like his one free mistake card.

Narrow Victory

Rip Lips 128.46 vs Auto-Draft Machine 122.96

Rip Lips (Gary) manages to hold off Lamar Jackson and Baltimore’s defense by 5.5 points in a Monday night victory. I wanted to say that Butker was the reason, but he wasn’t. Really the reason that Auto-Draft Machine (D. Smith) lost was because of Baltimore’s inability to stop Patrick Mahomes. Or, to show the fragility of each match, if the Ravens had blocked or stopped Butker’s field goal, then D. Smith would have won with the additional defensive points and the loss of points for Butker. It really can all come down to one play. Better luck next time.

Highest Score (And Overachiever):

Football Cream (Alex) scored 171.34 and overachieved his projections by an additional 35%. A few questions for you, if I may. Do you really think Tom Brady can keep this up, or is this because he started the year off v Dallas and v Atlanta? Did Tyler Lockett use up all of his luck on the first two games of the season? Is Aaron Jones really going to be that guy again? And finally, when will the Jets actually start competing with the Patriots?

Lowest Score (And Underachiever):

Eff-Town Sleazeballs (Cone) scored 97.78, only 69% (Nice) of their projected points scored. And the pendulum swings. Tyreek Hill and Amari Cooper showing the true definition of boom and bust in the first two weeks. When they boom for you, it’s going to be hard to lose, but when they bust, your team looks like this. There are two real surprises as far as I can tell, Dak can suck in a matchup and your best RB was Leonard Fournette. James Robinson is so sad to me right now, he’s such a good player but just being wasted.