Stay Flexible!

  Guest Submission posted 8/25 by Tom Holub, Exclusive to Footballguys.com

Allowing flex positions can fundamentally change the value equation between the positions available for the flex; when RBs and WRs can be used interchangeably, the issue of relative scarcity at those positions is no longer as important. In leagues with a single flex position, the effect is fairly small, but some leagues are trying radical concepts like 1 RB / 1 WR / 3 Flex or 1 QB / 1 RB / 2 WR / 2 SuperFlex. In these leagues with a strong flex component, position scarcity can be largely discounted; if you can start 3 RBs and 2 WRs or 1 RB and 4 WRs, you should just maximize your point total in each slot rather than stocking up on any one position. Thus, a WR you have projected to score 200 points should be drafted before a RB you have projected to score 190 points, despite the relative scarcity of the two positions.

In flex leagues, it's usually possible to take advantage of RB-RB-RB drafters by capturing value at other positions. For example, according to ADP as of this writing, some drafters in flex leagues are deciding between Thomas Jones and Reggie Wayne at the beginning of the third round. Footballguys currently has Jones projected to score 170 points, and Wayne projected to score 190, which means that people choosing Jones are leaving 20 points on the table.

An objection sometimes raised to this line of reasoning is that WR scoring is "less reliable" than RB scoring; that a WR will tend to score in bunches, rather than put up reliable numbers each week. The thought is that because the WR would be more inconsistent, the RB would be more valuable. I decided to examine whether this is really true.

I looked at all RB, WR, and QB seasons with 150+ fantasy points since 2000, and compared players in the same scoring tier. I used scoring tiers to control for the fact that RB#1 will provide more reliable scoring than WR#1, but only because RB#1 will outscore WR#1 by a long way. What I'm examining is whether a RB who scores 200 points provides more reliable scoring than a WR who scores a similar amount. In each tier, I took the average of the game-to-game standard deviation for all the players in the tier.

Some of the conclusions from this table:

• QBs score more than RBs, and RBs score more than WRs. (No surprises there.)
• High-scoring QBs (190+ season points) are measurably more reliable than either WRs or RBs.
• Higher-scoring players are somewhat more reliable than lower-scoring players (considering standard deviation as a percentage of total points).
• Accounting for small sample sizes, it's really hard to see any difference between WRs and RBs.

Given how close WRs and RBs look in this study, I have to conclude that their game-to-game reliability is more or less equivalent. That means that if your rules allow you to start either one in a flex spot, you should definitely draft Reggie Wayne (190-point WR) over Thomas Jones (170-point RB). And if you have a super-flex that includes QBs, be aware that QBs will provide more game-to-game scoring reliability, though whether that is advantageous depends on the league format and the rest of your team.

Finding other people's inefficiencies in drafting will help you dominate your league. If your league has flex positions, some people are probably overvaluing RBs and undervaluing WRs; take advantage of the trend and maximize your value.