Bruce Henderson - Inside the Projections Dominator

Enter your league variables: Number of Rounds, Number of Teams, and Starter requirements. Click Save General.
Enter your league scoring system: Points per Passing Yards, Points per Passing TD, Points per Rushing Yards, Points per Rushing TD, etc. Click Save Scoring.
Click File -> Print -> Cheatsheets to see a print preview of the custom cheatsheets.
Click File -> Print -> Top 200 / 400 to see a print preview of the custom Top 200.

Tweaking individual Projections:

Lets say you have a real strong feeling this year about Tom Brady. To see his projections, click the QB branch to expand it, and then click on Tom Brady's Name. You should then see Tom Brady's projections:

Right off the bat, you should notice a couple of things: 1) This page contains the last three years of stats for Tom Brady that you can use as a historical reference, and 2) There is more than one set of projections for Tom Brady that can be used as a guide.

Looking closer, you should see that Bob Henry sees a high side of 304 fantasy points, and Maurile Tremblay sees a low side of 270 fantasy points. This is where your strong feeling comes in to play. Are you leaning towards another good year... or are you thinking that everything fell into place for Tom last year and his numbers will probably come down some. For this example, lets say you are leaning towards another good year for Tom Brady.

To Change the projections, you can do a couple of things. One is to change the weight from 100% David Dodds to 100% Bob Henry. To do this, click Set Weights to bring up the Set Weights dialog.

Click the Clear Weights and Clear Apply To to reset the form. Then enter 100 % next to Bob's Name, check the Current Player box, and then click Apply Weights. Click the close button to return to Tom Brady's page. You should notice that the User Projections have been filled in with Bob's Projections.

With the Set Weights box you can try other scenarios too, like averaging two of the Experts by using 50% next to their names. Or averaging all five experts by using 20 % next to their names.

Another way to tweak the projections is to edit the User Projections directly. For example you could start with 100 % David Dodds, and then change the TDs from 25 to 27. Once you tweak the User Projections, notice that the User % jumps to 100 %. This flags the Projections Dominator to not overwrite your projections with the Set Weights dialog, unless you specifically tell it too.

At this point you can click the Sort by FP to sort the players by fantasy points or Print either the Cheatsheets or Top 200, to see how the tweaks to Tom Brady affected his position ranking.

Changing the Weights for all players at a position.

Let's say that you have been reading various articles and message board posts at Footballguys.com and you find yourself agreeing with Jason Wood and Chris Smith on most things. To set all your QB weights in one shot, click the Set Weights button. Then set both Jason and Chris to 50 % and check the Apply To Quarterbacks box. Then click Apply Weights and Close. Clicking through the QBs, you should see that all of the QB weights have been set to 50% Jason and Chris, unless there is a QB that one or the other didn't project. In this case, the one that did project that player will be weighted at 100%.

Picking an Expert

David Dodds is one of the co-owners of Footballguys, and has been doing the VBD projections since the days of Mr. Football and Cheatsheets.net. He has also been doing the projections for the Draft Dominator the last four years.

Bob Henry used to run the popular Redeye Sports website before coming to Footballguys.com, and did all of the offensive projections for Redeye Sports. He won the FFIndex Experts two years in a row (and narrowly missed a three-peat). He also leads the Training Camp Updates.

Chris Smith is an Offensive Line Guru. Want to know anything about the offensive lines, just ask Chris or catch his Offensive Line article in the latest Footballguys.com magazine. Before joing the team at Footballguys.com, Chris was the one man-show that was Tuffguys.

Maurile Tremblay is the contributing editor for the Footballguys magazine, and participates in the Face Off write-ups and Team write-ups. He is firmly based in statistical analysis

Jason Wood is best know for heading up the Player Spotlights, but is also the Senior Editor for the Footballguys magazine and has done some fill-in projections for Dodds in the past.

Mike Herman is known as the Kicker Guy. He lives, breathes and sleeps Kickers. This might seem a little odd, until you need to decide between two kickers for your championship game. This is when you really appreciate Mike's dedication.

Shawn Culcasi headed up the Footballguys IDP material when it first started. He is still very active in the IDP arena.

John Norton came over with Bob Henry from Redeye sports. John did all the IDP projections for Redeye, and has been doing the IDP projections for the Draft Dominator and Lineup Dominator the last year or so. He contributed most of the IDP content for the Footballguys magazine too.

Looking at the Team Picture

The Projections Dominator has a Team View page too. This page summarizes all of the individual projections for a given team.

On the Team View page, notice that there is a summary box at the top, this provides a quick "Reasonability" check to make sure that the projections are in line. For example, Passing Yards should roughly equal Receiving Yards and Passing TDs should roughly equal Receiving TDs. You can also check the totals against past team stats to make sure they are in line.

The Team View page shows the User Projection line for each player. If you click Sort by FP, then the players will be sorted by Fantasy Points within each position. You can edit the User Projections on this page and they will be reflected on the Individual Player Pages. If you do edit a player here, it will flag the User Projections for that player with 100 % again, so that the Set Weights dialog won't overwrite that player's projections in the future.

Keeping the Projections Up to Date

The Projections Dominator has a Get Latest Projections menu option under the File menu to grab the Latest Projections at anytime. The Projections for all of the experts are pulled right off the Footballguys.com website so they are always current.

Importing your Projections into the Draft Dominator

The first step is to save your work. Click File Save As... and give it name associated with your league.

Then open up the Draft Dominator and click File -> Import -> Projections Dominator File. Browse to the C:\Program Files\ProjectionsDominator subdirectory and select your league file that you just created and click Open.

One question that always surfaces at this point is "Why aren't Draft Dominator Player Fantasy Points and the Projections Dominator Fantasy Points the same?" The Fantasy Point calculations are identical between the two apps, however the Draft Dominator by default only shows 16 games in the Player Pool. To see this, open up the Game By Game window and uncheck the Use Weekly Weights button and click Recalculate. Now the numbers should match up.

Side Note: If your league only plays 16 games, then you will want to recheck the Use Weekly Weights button. Also if you want to weight some of your games heavier than others, for instance, if you need to win your divisional games to advance to the playoffs, then you will want to weight those weeks a little heavier. Likewise you may want to weight the playoff weeks a little heavier, so that once you make the playoffs, your team will perform well. Anytime you weight the weeks, they will affect the Player Pool Fantasy Points accordingly.

Conclusion

Whether you use the Projections Dominator as a quick and easy way to generate your custom cheatsheets and Top 200 lists based on your league variables and scoring, or use it to weight the existing experts projections as a starting point to tweak your own projections, the Projections Dominator is another valuable tool for your Fantasy Football success.