Everyone who plays fantasy football has toyed with the idea of creating some sort of model/analysis/AI that can draft the perfect team, pickup the best players, and choose the optimal lineup. I’ve spent more than a decade doing little experiments here and there, but never committed enough to pull something game-changing together.

The fantasy football season snuck up on me last year and I showed up on draft day without doing any research or analysis — it was the least prepared I’ve been for a draft in the 15 years I’ve played in my family’s competitive fantasy football league. I figured that so much depends on luck, my lack of preparation shouldn’t make that big of a difference anyways.

My fantasy football team was abysmal last year. Being prepared for the draft matters. To prove this to myself, I did some analysis. I rated each of my family members/friends in our league based on how much research they do (an A, B, C,… system) and explored whether their average standing at the end of the year is correlated with their research rating. It turns out that it’s highly correlated. In general, over more than a decade, the most prepared owners rank the highest, and ultimately, win the most.

I’m a software engineer and data scientist, so naturally when I discovered this trend I started thinking about how to:

Automate the process of research and analysis. Some of the people in my league spend hours per day listening to football podcasts, reading articles, etc. I want to figure out how to create an AI that gets an A research rating.

listening to football podcasts, reading articles, etc. I want to figure out how to create an AI that gets an A research rating. Model the translation of the research information into a draft, pickup, and lineup strategy.

Generalize this solution to any team in any league so that they can get highly custom recommendations.

I want to replace the PPR sheet that everyone has with a solution that is tailored to your preferences, league settings, opposing teams, etc. That’s the ultimate vision.