What sixteen seasons of replayed drafts actually show — including the times a popular idea turned out to be worth nothing.
StartSense answers one of the most common fantasy football questions — which of these players do I start this week — from the betting lines Las Vegas sportsbooks post. It also tells you how often a call like that turns out right, and when two players are too close to separate, it says so instead of pretending.
The Forecast's Vegas board, frozen before kickoff and graded against the box scores: 69.4% of 7,962 start/sit calls right, 237 priced players, the biggest beat Bijan Robinson and the biggest bust Drake Maye.
I replayed thousands of seasons to separate what a team scored from who it happened to play. On average, a team's schedule only moves a record by about a win, but in 81% of seasons, somebody who outscored a playoff team misses the playoffs.
I played two million simulated seasons to find out how often winless teams come back, then checked the answer against 846 real leagues. An 0-2 fantasy team makes the playoffs 27% of the time. An 0-2 NFL team makes them 11% of the time. You have been panicking on the wrong sport's odds.
I graded three seasons of start/sit calls. Starting the player the betting lines liked was right about 67 times in 100, roughly five more than going by draft position or recent form, and the lines won almost every single week. On close calls, where everything else was a coin flip, they were right six times in ten.
I measured every team's opening score against what it did for the rest of the season, across 846 real leagues. About a tenth of week 1 is real. But the bad news travels roughly twice as far as the good news, and there's a clear reason.