By Mike “Footsteps Falco” Rogers

@TheShaneFalco16 @EliteDynastyPod

I try to approach the fantasy season by following the old Sun Tzu proverb from The Art of War “Every battle is won or lost before it’s ever fought.” If reading 5th century BC Chinese military treatises isn’t your thing, then you might also recognize this quote from Oliver Stone’s 1987 hit film Wall Street. Gordon Gekko portrayed by Michael Douglas tells a young and aspiring broker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) the value of information.

Sun Tzu’s quote can be applied to all aspects of life where you are trying to succeed, such as building a career or achieving a goal. Our goal is to be as prepared as possible heading into each week of the fantasy season. One such way is delving deeper into the idea of player tiers.

One of the most overlooked strategies in fantasy football is the concept of creating player tiers. You might be asking yourself what are tiers? and why should I care about creating them? A tier is a visual level that is built off of some type of ranking. The objective is to group players of similar talent and scoring potential together. Doing so helps us gain a visualization that can help us quickly decipher a players respective value.

There is an excellent website that provides weekly Fantasy Football Tier rankings for players created by Boris Chen. He compiles all of the data from select expert rankings at Fantasypros.com. Chen uses an algorithm to finds players who are ranked similarly and discovers natural tiers within the data. The results are a series of simple charts that can help you decide your fantasy football line up each week. Match ups, injuries, strength of offense and defense are all accounted for.

For the purpose of our example, we will focus on week 17 QB Tiers from last season. The Quarterbacks are organized into one of seven tiers based off Chen’s algorithm.

The X axis shows the average expert rank for each QB during week 17 (black dot), as well as the range for that specific player among the different experts rankings. The Y axis shows the expert consensus rank for each QB in a downward staircase ranking from #1-#26.

We will break down E.J. Manuel’s ranking for week 17 by looking at the chart above. E.J. Manuel was the 21st rated QB and in Tier 6 by himself (baby blue line). He had an average expert ranking of 21.5 (black dot) with a range of about 20 (bar 1) to 23 (bar 2).

Looking at Tier 1 we can see that Aaron Rogers and Matt Ryan were both expected to score within the same point range for week 17. These two quarterbacks were in a league of their own for the 2017 season and one can see why The Packers and The Falcons both made it to The NFC Conference Championship. Matt Ryan had a career high in yards (4,944), touchdowns (38), and completion percentage (69.9%); translating into 410.26 fantasy points in yahoo standard leagues. This was second to only Aaron Rodgers who scored 441.82 fantasy points by passing for 4428 yds, 40 TD, and a 65.7 cmp%.

The roughly 30 fantasy point difference can be accounted for when comparing each QB’s rushing numbers. Ryan rushed for 117 yards on 35 attempts with zero touchdowns. On the other hand, Rodgers rushed for a career high 369 yards on 67 attempts with 4 touchdowns. The rushing ability of Aaron Rodgers has helped him maintain a place in the elite QB Tier for many years now and is one of the reasons why he is often the first quarterback off the board in fantasy drafts.

Tiers become more useful when you get into the middle of the rankings. It is obvious if you have one of the Top Tier players that you should be starting them each and every week no matter what the match up. However, once you get down the tier rankings it becomes more more difficult deciding who to start. We can see this by looking at the WR Tier rankings for Week 17 of last season.

For our example we will look at Davante Adams and Tyrell Williams. Let’s assume that you owned both receivers and were deciding which receiver to start in your flex spot for week 17. When looking at bleacher report’s projections for standard leagues, Adams and Williams were projected an identical 10 points for the week.

*Bleacher Report Week 17 Rankings*

If we were to have taken the bleacher report rankings at face value then it looks like it would not matter which WR we put into our flex spot. However, if we were to look at Boris Chen’s Tier rankings for week 17 we would see a different story.

Davante Adams was the 10th rated WR for week 17 and in Tier 2 for WRs. Tyrell Williams was the 15th rated WR and fell to Tier 3 for WRs. If we were to go by these Tier rankings, then it would be more beneficial to start Davante Adams in our Flex spot.

When looking at each receivers respective performance for week 17 we can see that we made the correct choice. Davante Adams had 6 receptions for 31 yards and caught 2 touchdowns. Tyrell Williams had 6 receptions for 70 yards, but did not catch any touchdowns. This translated into roughly 23.1 ppr fantasy points for Adams vs. only 13 ppr fantasy points for Williams. *Fantasy Pros*

I am not saying that these tier rankings will always provide the proper player to start week in and week out. It is impossible for them to be even close to 100% accurate. They can however be a valuable resource in your weekly preparation.

As Gordon Gekko and Sun Tzu once said …

I plan on addressing the Top 6 incoming rookies in my next post. We will see how there is a possible tier break or even two within just these 6 players.

“Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory… lasts forever.” – Footsteps Falco