I wanted to title this graph, “Why Fantasy Football Is a Nightmare for People Who Love Math,” or maybe, “Not Even Bayesian Models Will Help You Win Your Fantasy Football League,” but they were too long.

I rarely make a graph that is personal, but after barely clinching a playoff spot in my league on Monday night, I needed to vent a little. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but I researched meticulously prior to my draft and built a detailed model for selection order (though some errant clicking and poor time management led to a couple mistaken selections). I even built a Bayesian model for informing my waiver wire pickups. And yet, my team is solidly average. When it comes to fantasy sports, I’ve lost faith in the notion that the advantage goes to the statistician.

Maybe I’m just bitter that LeSean McCoy has been so mediocre or that Julius Thomas is injured. Maybe I expected to do better when Yahoo graded my draft as an A-, the best in my league. Maybe I haven’t figured out how to account for garbage time or susceptibility to injury. Maybe I need to stop playing fantasy football – my wife would certainly support that decision.

Anyway, for me, this graph sums up why there is so much luck involved in drafting the perfect team. If points were based on ADP, we would expect to see strong negative correlations for each position. Though there is a weak correlation for some, it mostly just appears as a jumble of dots.

Clearly, the any-given-Sunday principle holds. So good luck in the playoffs, everyone. You’ll need it.

Data source: http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/