DFS Player Rankings – Week 6

In the world of DFS, it's all about competition.  But how do you determine the best DFS player?  At Advanced Sports Analytics, we believe that theres skill involved in roster construction.  Total winnings and number of cashes are important, but don't necessarily reflect the skill.  We set out to develop a player rankings system that was about more than just winning the top prize in a Millionaire Maker or entering the maximum number of entries into every contest.

As I mentioned, we believe that every draft pick is a reflection of skill.  Picking chalk players is not very skillful: most people believed that player would perform well.  Skill is more heavily reflected in low-ownership players.  Picking a low owned player who had a bad scoring week is particularly unskillful - most everybody thought he would not do well, yet you still picked him.  Conversely, a low owned player who had a great week is very skillful because you found someone that few others believed in.  Therefore, we have developed a formula to measure skill in the terms above:

Each drafted player's receives a number of points based on how they compared to the average scoring player that week.  Scoring above average yields positive points, and scoring below average yields negative points.  The possibility of negative points penalizes contestants for picking poorly.  Additionally, each player's score is weighted by how low their ownership was.  This give more weight to the low owned players that are more indicative of drafting skill.  Our results are highly correlated with finishing position in tournaments, as players who placed highly obviously had some good picks along the way.  However, it is more indicative of skill rather than luck or playing volume.

Through Week 6 of the NFL season, here are the top 10 players overall:

Similarly, here are the top performers in Week 6:

Please visit our Player Rankings page for more information and rankings.