Final Thoughts: Week 12

Best Ball Update

• Best Ball Portfolio: 191 advancing teams. 23.7% (+4.9% vs baseline)

• Best Ball Mania: 33 advancing teams. 22.0% (+5.3% vs baseline)

• Vulnerability Index: 1.0 (7 teams on the cusp, 7 teams vulnerable)

• Best Case Scenario: 53 teams advance (+2 from last week)

• Worst Case Scenario: 22 teams advance (+3 from last week)

• Quartile teams

  • Top 25% = 30%

  • Top 50% = 55.4%

  • Top 75% = 81.1%

  • Bottom 25% = 18.9%

It was a strong week 11, as I added four advancing teams in Best Ball Mania, and my overall portfolio is now advancing at nearly my expected rate (23.7% vs 23.9%). My worst case scenario for Best Ball Mania is advancing 22 teams, which is approaching the baseline of 25 expected teams. With my Vulnerability Index now at one, I’d be largely content with advancing 33 teams and betting on my playoff correlation to carry me through. However, there’s one area I would very much like to improve on before the playoff weeks start.

Thanks to the new Strategy Deep Dive feature on bbmportfolio, I can see that I’ve performed at or better than the field in almost every strategy category, save one glaring one — elite tight end.¹ I’ve written about the outsized benefits of elite tight ends in the best ball playoff weeks numerous times, calling them playoff hammers, skeleton keys, and spending far too much time arguing with those that prefer the late tight end strategy on twitter. Unfortunately for me, I’m currently underweight the field, as my elite tight end advance rate is only 9%, about 6% worse than the field.

Diving into this further, I can see that I have four Brock Bowers teams within 45 points of advancing, four Trey McBride teams within 54 points, and one George Kittle team 38 points behind. Obviously I’d like as many of these to advance as possible, but I need 2 or 3 more to finish even with the field for the playoff weeks. If they don’t, I’ll largely be joining the late-TE drafters in hoping that each of Bowers, McBride, and Kittle fail to separate for three consecutive weeks.

Injury Considerations for Week 12

QBs:

• Jaxson Dart - out

• Aaron Rodgers - questionable (50% to play)

RBs:

• Rhamondre Stevenson - questionable (85% to play)

• Bucky Irving - out

• Isiah Pacheco - out

WRs:

• Xavier Worthy - questionable (80% to play)

• Chris Godwin - questionable (75% to play; possible limited snaps)

• Matthew Golden - questionable (50% to play)

• Drake London - out

• Calvin Ridley - out

• Brian Thomas Jr - out

• Marvin Harrison Jr - out

• Ja’marr Chase - out

• Garrett Wilson - out

• Brandon Aiyuk - out

• Terry McLaurin - out

TEs:

• Sam Laporta - out

• Dalton Kincaid - out

Weather Considerations

As you might have guessed, I am not a meteorologist. However, there are some occasions where weather impacts my start/sit decisions, or DFS considerations. My process for accounting for this to usually look at Kevin Roth’s analysis here, and via NFLweather.com, before breaking it down into a watch vs warning methodology to get a quick handle on it.

Weather Watch - monitoring, but no knock to projection

• Vikings at Packers: 42 degrees

• Colts at Chiefs: 7% chance of rain

• Jets at Ravens: 11mph wind

Weather Warning - small knock to projection

• None

My Start/Sit Decisions

In this section, I’ll provide the tougher start/sit decisions I’m making, and why I’m doing it. I’ll also keep a running count on these over the course of the year. My goal for these start/sit decisions is to be 50% or better, as most of these are coinflips (or worse) in projections. For tracking purposes, I use 5 points as the difference between correct, neutral, and wrong.

Season Tracker: 27 correct, 20 neutral, 15 wrong - 64%

• Weeks 1-5: 11 correct, 12 neutral, 4 wrong - 73%

• Weeks 6-10: 13 correct, 7 neutral, 9 wrong - 59%

• Week 11: 3 correct, 1 neutral, 2 wrong - 60%

Week 12 Start/Sits

Tetairoa McMillan > Zay Flowers

This debate, along with Tee Higgins, is a weekly tradition at this point. It’s a good problem to have, but one that is difficult to think through each week. I’m rolling with McMillan, who sees a sterling matchup vs a 49ers defense that just let Jacoby Brissett set the all-time record for completions. However, Flowers and the Ravens have a 29 point total compared to 21.5 for the Panthers, so it’s easy to see Flowers outscoring him as well.

Bhayshul Tuten > Kyle Monongai

Each rookie is in a split backfield, and has a quality matchup this week, but it’s Tuten that look poised to be the lead back last week. ESPN’s projections slightly favor Monongai in PPR, but Tuten’s ceiling is probably much higher, both from a volume and explosive ability standpoint.

TreVeyon Henderson > Emmanuel Wilson

Wilson probably sees a greater percentage of his team’s running back volume than Henderson, but Henderson has the better matchup, higher total, and is far more explosive and talented. We also don’t know for sure that the Patriots will give Rhamondre Stevenson his lead role back, as Henderson has looked legitimately good in the last few weeks. This is partially a bet on talent, and partially a bet on the better matchup, which I’m more confident in than the projected volume for each player.

Jacoby Brissett > Joe Flacco

The projections have this very close, with Brissett holding a very slight lead. Put simply, there is some risk of systemic risk to the Bengals offense this week, as the loss of Ja’marr Chase will enable the Patriots to gameplan specifically on stopping Tee Higgins. Brissett isn’t a safe play either, but he does get a home and dome game vs a pass-funnel Jaguars defense, making him my preferred play.