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Known Degenerate's avatar

Johny! Thanks for the article. Please answer a question regarding my 12t PPR 1QB,2WR, 2RB,1TE,1FLX,any3IDP League if you can. The scoring is Tackle2 TackleAssist1 Sack5, Pass Defended2, Force Fumble4 and Fumble Recovery4. Do you think streaming a CB each week is good tactic since so many defensive players with upside are available each week. Or do you think the space is too volatile and just stick with LBs that may have more consistency?

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Johny the Greek's avatar

Great question! In situations like that I tend to let my matchup each week dictate my risk level, if I'm projected to win then I'll usually stay with linebackers, which are more consistent overall and are much "safer" production each week. If I'm behind or projected not to win then it's time for "smoke and mirrors" and some hail-mary type ideas. That's when I'd lean cornerback in any IDP flex spots and pray that I chose a good matchup and that corner goes crazy. In general with that few IDP slots each week id probably just go with 3x consistent, 100% of snaps inside linebackers and know I'm getting consistent production every week but don't be afraid to use some corners as an X factor/kill shot attempt if the matchup already looks dire and it can't hurt since I'm already not looking great against my opponent. Hope that helps and good luck this week!

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Known Degenerate's avatar

Thanks! This approach make a lot of sense and will follow. I guess this begets a new question.

How do you really determine when and if you are behind and need to run with the upside potentional?

As these yahoo and sleeper projections are never close to reality going into Sunday and at midday Sunday you become quite limited with player availability to make adjustments as about half the teams have already played.

I could base that risk on player availability, easy, but expectation for game script is way harder to call. Any pointers on projecting the risk?

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Johny the Greek's avatar

Yeah man that's true, all these projections are wild, they've had Jaylon Jones and Riley Moss at less than 2 points per game in their projections on yahoo all season even though those guys are going crazy every week. The real answer is just time, experience, and eventually you get a read on figuring out how "in trouble' you might be in any given matchup. Barring that you could probably use the sleeper/yahoo projections and manually adjust them to the best of your ability each week. There is no easy answer on this one to be honest.

There are some sites that do their own projections which are closer to reality, football guys for one, I'm sure there are others too. For me it's always been a gut feeling just based on seeing this movie over and over for 21 years now and there's no easy way to get to that point unfortunately.

The good news is IDP is only getting more popular every season so the number of tools, sites, and options for this kind of thing is only improving every season so i do see a future where accurate IDP projections are possible (I suck at math though so not from me lol) and offensively the projections are decent from what I've seen. Sorry I don't have more on this my man, but you're here and reading this and other items on the site so you're already well on your way to being a "known degenerate" (the highest possible compliment around these parts) and will be able to make these adjustments/calculations on the fly before you know it!

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Known Degenerate's avatar

Well, I appreciate the answers and support to help. I guess the research will continue and maybe need to start thinking about ranking "safety" separately from CBs as they are always mingled and ranked as DB. -known degenerate

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