Week 1 Power Rankings — The Worst League

Sep 12

Sep 12 Week 1 Power Rankings

A Lamar is born, indeed.

Looks like I picked the wrong team name and quite possibly the wrong running QB. It was Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson, not Kyler Murray, who provided the biggest storyline of Week 1, throwing for 5 TDs and totaling 32 fantasy points in a 59-10 romp of the Miami Dolphins. It was the first time a player had thrown at least 5 passing TDs in a season opener since Peyton Manning in 2013.

No one could have seen this coming. I mean, Jackson threw for just 6 TDs all of last season. Then he goes and throws 5 in just one game? Well, no one except Alex, of course. Call him the QB whisperer. The team owner who last year drafted Patrick Mahomes in the 12th round, this year grabbed Lamar Jackson with the last pick in the 10th. Now Jackson, just like Mahomes in his second season, may be ready to break out. Let’s see if he can keep it going against teams not named the Dolphins.

Of course, Jackson wasn’t the only surprise in Week 1. Several unexpected names appeared atop the leaderboard, especially among the pass-catchers. For example, here’s the list of all the WRs to finish within the top-10 in scoring in Week 1.

1. Sammy Watkins, KC – 37
T2. John Ross III, Cin – 27
T2. DeSean Jackson, Phi – 27
4. Marquise Brown, Bal – 26
5. DeAndre Hopkins, Hou – 23
6. Phillip Dorsett, NE – 21
T7. DJ Chark, Jax – 20
T7. T.Y. Hilton, Ind – 20
T9. Keenan Allen, LAC – 18
T9. Terry McLaurin, Was – 18
T9. John Brown, Buf – 18

Aside from Hopkins, Allen and Hilton, this list is chock full of surprises. It includes seven players drafted in the 10th round or later, including two who went completely undrafted. Not to mention Chark and McLaurin—two guys who got jokes in the draft chat after they were selected because most people, myself included, had never heard of them.

The result of that, however, is that much of that production went unused. Both Gray and JT had benches that either equalled or exceeded the production of their starters. Unfortunately, that didn’t help them much in Week 1, but it’s a good sign moving forward.

The Scoreboard

Brandon barely edged out Jess to lead all scorers in Week 1 with 135 points.

Alright, we’re off!

In Week 1, scoring was up overall. In fact, with teams averaging 94.3 ppg, it was the second-highest scoring opening week in league history, surpassed only by 2013. Individually, Brandon and Jess had scores that ranked third- and fourth-most all-time in Week 1 games. Only Josh last season (137) and Jess in 2014 (142) have ever started the season hotter.

Speaking of hot starts, Brandon led all scorers in Week 1, defeating Greco 135-99 behind 32 points from Christian McCaffrey plus 20+ from each of two rookies—Kyler Murray and Josh Jacobs. Greco, for her part, had the fourth-highest score of the week. Unfortunately, big days from Le’Veon Bell and Mark Ingram were just not enough.

Jess defeated Samantha 133-77 thanks in large part to 32 points from Austin Ekeler. The sixth-round pick more than made up for the absence of Melvin Gordon on her bench. In fact, her three starting RBs averaged a ridiculous 24.7 ppg, all finishing within the top-8 at the position for the week. You might recall that Gordon was one of the biggest draft-day fallers, but Jess may have invested wisely, buying herself a third top-10 RB for the price of a fifth- and sixth-round pick. The trio of David Johnson, Dalvin Cook and Gordon/Ekeler seems sustainable to me. As for Samantha, I’d just chalk it up to a bad day for the Cleveland Browns. We’ll see if they’re able to bounce back in Week 2.

League newbie Beth Ann acquitted herself well in her Week 1 debut, defeating Geoff 102-79, joining Samantha and Josh as former league newcomers to hit triple digits in their very first game. And it could have been much more had the Jaguars D/ST not saddled her with -8 points. It was the seventh-lowest individual score in league history. (In retrospect, maybe not the best decision to start the defense facing Mahomes and the Chiefs.) Still, Deshaun Watson (30 points), Alvin Kamara (16) and Marlon Mack (25) more than carried the day against Geoff, who after a difficult 2018, is already facing some early injury woes in 2019. That includes Tyreek Hill who is expected to miss 4-to-6 weeks with a collarbone issue and Derrius Guice who was just placed on IR following surgery for his meniscus.

In the closest matchup of the week, Josh narrowly defeated Erik 96-92, withstanding 9 points on Monday Night Football from Phillip Lindsay and Jared Cook. Erik needed just four more points and likely would have had it were it not for some roster mismanagement involving a mid-game trade, resulting in an empty kicker spot. Painfully, there were 13 kickers on the waiver wire who scored at least 5 points. Josh, meanwhile, was saved by the unlikely duo of Derrick Henry (27 points) and Harrison Butker (17).

Alex defeated JT 88-78, but it was closer than you might have expected for the team owner rostering Lamar Jackson. That was due in part to average production overall for Alex, plus a bagel from Devonta Freeman (0 points) and a negative defensive score from his beloved Broncos. On the other side of the ball, hard to fault JT for not starting DeSean Jackson or DJ Chark, both of whom had 20+ points, not to mention literally every WR on his bench who scored double-figures. No, it was the RBs that let him down (David Montgomery and Duke Johnson combined for 11 points), a question we wondered in our draft recap last week. Oh yeah, and that defense he drafted in the 10th round, which managed just 1 point in Week 1.

Finally, in the lowest-scoring game of the week, Nick defeated Gray by a score of 94-59. For Nick, the RBs (Joe Mixon and Sony Michel) were disappointments (just 2 points combined), but Dak Prescott led the way with 33 points—best among the position in Week 1. For Gray, it was just a dreadful showing overall with a pair of Buccaneers (Jameis Winston and Mike Evans) performing particularly poorly. Certainly, it’s not the bounce-back he was hoping for either after last year’s difficult season. But perhaps Week 1 blunders are something Gray is getting used to, having now lost four straight Week 1 games. The last time Gray won a Week 1 contest, Barack Obama was still president.

Power Rankings

With the highest score of the week, Brandon tops the first Power Rankings of the season. As a reminder, the Power Rankings are sorted by TW%, which measures the percentage of games your team would have won if you had played every team every week. Since Brandon would have beaten every team this week, he’s 11-0 with a perfect TW% of 1.000. Meanwhile, his opponent this week Greco may have lost, but her 99 points would have been good enough to go 8-3 against the rest of the league this week. So despite the loss, she ranks fourth, ahead of three other team owners (Josh, Nick and Alex) who picked up wins in Week 1.

Right now, there’s really not that much we can take from the Power Rankings because it’s so early. The sample size is too small to extrapolate for the rest of the season. So we’ll wait to unveil the Playoff Picture (where we calculate the probability of each team making the playoffs) until at least Week 4.

Bur what can we learn? How important is a hot start to predicting whether or not a team will make the playoffs or win a championship? It turns out, it’s actually a pretty good predictor, which I was honestly not expecting. But then I ran the numbers and was pretty surprised at what I found.

It turns out, starting within the top-2 of the Week 1 Power Rankings is a very big deal. Not so much for third place. But the first and second-place teams in the Week 1 Power Rankings go on to make the playoffs an astounding 88% of the time. But immediately after second, the odds drop off a cliff—just 25% for the rest of the teams in the rankings.

And of the just two teams (out of 16) that missed the playoffs after a top-2 start, another one (Trevor, 2012) was deserving of a playoff spot, finishing third in the final Power Rankings, narrowly missing with a 7-6 record. The other (Alex, 2013) finished seventh. That’s the worst a top-2 team has ever done.

It’s just one game. And it counts no more than any of the rest of the 13 regular season games this season, but it’s hard to argue with the numbers. A good start out of the gates is a good sign for your team. Not only that, but five out of the league’s eight champions had started within the top-2 of the Power Rankings. That’s certainly a good sign for Brandon and Jess.

But…

Just because you didn’t start in the top-2, that doesn’t mean your season is doomed. That number (25%) seems like a pretty small number. But it’s not that far off from your odds of making the playoffs overall, at least historically. Remember, most of this data is for years in which just four teams made the playoffs. That’s 33% of the league, which is really just a hair below 25%. So top-2 teams get the benefit. But the rest of the league isn’t necessarily getting the boot.

And it should be noted that teams that finish in the bottom-3 of the first Power Rankings actually have better odds of making the playoffs (29%) than teams in the middle (23%). The difference there is probably marginal, but it’s just to show that even the worst performers in Week 1 have bounce-back potential. Look no further than last year’s champion, yours truly. In 2018, I scored just 66 points in Week 1, which was tied for second-worst. Then I won eight of my next nine games, finished second in the final Power Rankings and won the whole thing. Ditto for Gray in 2013 who lost his first game, started 11th in the Power Rankings, then reeled off seven straight wins on his way to the championship. Greco once scored 47 points in a Week 1 game (2014), started 12th and rebounded to make the playoffs.

So yes, right now the numbers like Brandon and Jess a little bit more than the rest. But they also say that Samantha or Gray have just as good odds as Beth Ann or Greco to make the playoffs or win the whole thing.

In fantasy football, things can always turn around quickly.

Just ask Lamar Jackson.

Looking Ahead to Week 2

Lots of good matchups this week including two critical ones between 0-1 teams battling to avoid falling to 0-2. In the first, Samantha takes on Gray. Both have already had lackluster games from Buccaneers starters on Thursday night, but the projection is still fairly close. The matchup will likely come down to Monday night’s Browns/Jets game in which we’ll see if Baker Mayfield and Nick Chubb can make amends for last week’s performance.

In the second, Greco takes on Erik who now has new starter Sammy Watkins in his lineup following the trade with Jess. With Tyreek Hill out, Watkins could prove to be quite the asset. Like with the first matchup, I expect this one to come down to Le’Veon Bell on Monday night.

As for the rest, Brandon will try to keep his winning ways going against a hobbled Jeff who is without the aforementioned Hill, plus Guice. It certainly helps, however, that Christian McCaffrey scored a paltry 4 points on Thursday night.

Jess will take on JT in a battle of RBs vs. WRs with David Johnson, Dalvin Cook and Austin Ekeler squaring off against Julio Jones, Odell Beckham and DeSean Jackson. Jess will also be starting new QB Drew Brees, acquired in a deal with Erik.

Josh faces off against Beth Ann, for whom the Antonio Brown saga rolls on. Just when you think it can’t get any crazier, Brown was embroiled this week in a civil suit involving sexual assault allegations from a former trainer. And yet despite all of that, it seems he will play this week. Despite that, Beth Ann appears to be the statistical underdog according to ESPN projections.

Finally, the matchup between Nick and Alex guarantees we’ll have at least one 2-0 team come this time next week. Alex is already off to a good start with 18 points from Chris Godwin on Thursday night. So, Nick will need bigger performances from his RBs this week to catch up.

Alright, that’s it for Week 1. On to Week 2 and good luck to all!