It’s hard to believe that 17 weeks of NFL football have already wrapped up. While it is sad to see it go, all things must pass. The good news is that the playoffs are on the horizon, and that gives us football geeks another opportunity to get in as many fantasy leagues as the wife allows. NFL Playoffs fantasy leagues are not a new idea, but they have been increasing in popularity over the last few years. At only a quarter of the length of the regular season, these leagues are a great way for those who are jonesing to get one more fix of fantasy or a chance for redemption to rid that bad aftertaste of a losing season.
NFL Playoff leagues use a variety of formats, though the most common are salary cap and total points. Regardless of which your league uses, the idea remains the same – put the best players on your team. This is a much easier task in the regular season, as barring any injuries or suspensions, all players play the same amount of games. In the playoffs, guys can play up to four games, as Larry Fitzgerald and the rest of the Arizona Cardinals did back in the 2008-2009 playoffs. At the same time, some players will bow out after just one game. The key here is not just to draft quality players, but to draft quality players on teams that have the best chance to play multiple games and hopefully advance to the Super Bowl.
To determine which teams you think will advance, I suggest drawing up an NCAA Basketball Tournament style brackets or you can do a Google search to find an already made copy. When mapping out your picks, remember that Vegas is your friend. Let’s take a look at the current odds to win the Super Bowl:
Atlanta Falcons – 11/2
Baltimore Ravens – 12/1
Chicago Bears – 12/1
Green Bay Packers – 12/1
Indianapolis Colts – 14/1
Kansas City Chiefs – 35/1
New England Patriots – 2/1
New Orleans Saints – 10/1
New York Jets – 20/1
Philadelphia Eagles – 11/1
Pittsburgh Steelers – 11/2
Seattle Seahawks – 100/1
Two things should be quite obvious right away – 1) The Patriots are the odds-on favorite to win the Super Bowl, and 2) The Seahawks have absolutely no business being in the playoffs and are a bigger long shot than Mine That Bird. From there, however, the picture gets a bit murkier. You have a lot of teams jumbled up in the roughly 5/1 to 12/1 range (with Indianapolis falling just outside at 14/1).
It can be difficult to use the Super Bowl odds to our advantage here, but we can use the odds to win the AFC and NFC to help us out. Here’s the AFC:
Baltimore Ravens – 7/1
Indianapolis Colts – 10/1
Kansas City Chiefs – 18/1
New England Patriots – 5/6
New York Jets – 11/1
Pittsburgh Steelers – 3/1
Again we can see that the Patriots are the favorite, with the #2 seed Steelers coming in as the second choice. From there, the #4 seed Chiefs are not getting as much love from the odds makers as their Round 1 opponent, the #5 seed Ravens. The Ravens are currently giving 2.5 points to the Chiefs on the road. This marks the third season in a row that the Ravens go on the road in the first round, and they’ve won the last two. In the other Wild Card matchup, the Colts and Jets come in at nearly identical odds to win the conference, which suggests this game will be closer than you think. The Colts are currently giving 3 at home, but this may be a tough one to call.
In the NFC, the odds play out similarly:
Atlanta Falcons – 9/5
Chicago Bears – 7/2
Green Bay Packers – 6/1
New Orleans Saints – 4/1
Philadelphia Eagles – 5/1
Seattle Seahawks – 50/1
The #1 seed Falcons and #2 seed Bears were installed as the two favorites, and the #6 Seahawks essentially need a miracle to get past the Saints in the first round. That should help, but before you go nuts and pick Drew Brees with your first pick, remember what just transpired between the Falcons and Saints this past weekend. The game between the Packers and Eagles is a very interesting and difficult one to predict. The conference odds are close, with the Eagles holding a slight edge. Looking to the game odds, the Eagles are giving 2.5 points at home. When making your decision on this one, I think the question you need to ask is – which Eagles team is going to show up? Will they be the team that pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in league history or the one that lost to Joe Webb? From here, it’s really up to your personal take on how the playoffs will play out, so go ahead and fill out your brackets.
Now that you’re armed with your playoff predictions, you need to start evaluating players at each position. Remember, we want good players on teams that we envision playing multiple games. There are many analysts out there who post positional rankings, and I recommend you check them out. However, I think we can also benefit from using the PFF data. Last year, the highest scoring WR in the playoff leagues using standard scoring was Sidney Rice. In the regular season, he graded out overall at +21.2, which was good enough for 2nd at his position. Among the RBs, Pierre Thomas led all RBs in playoff scoring and ranked 5th in the regular season with a PFF rating of +13.1. Ray Rice was the top-rated RB in the regular season at +22.6 and he finished 3rd among RBs in playoff scoring. Though Aaron Rodgers only played one game, he posted the single highest scoring performance in the playoffs last year. He also entered the playoffs as the 2nd highest rated QB in the regular season at +60.6.
This is not to say that you should only go by PFF data and ratings. There is always going to be guys like Shonn Greene, who graded out at -2.9 in the 2009 regular season but was 2nd among RBs in playoff scoring last year. Or better yet, someone like Dustin Keller, who led all TEs in playoff scoring after having graded out as the 57th ranked TE at -17.6 in the regular season. The fact of the matter is that we’re just not going to be able to predict these sorts anomalies that are part of the fantasy luck factor. But we can do our best to make the most statistically informed decisions on each of our picks.
If you’re in a playoff league that holds a draft where only one team can own each individual player, you’ll want to target QBs early. Last year, the two highest scoring players in the playoffs were Drew Brees and Peyton Manning, so QBs are quite valuable. Among the QBs this season, seven of the top ten PFF rated QBs are in the playoffs. What may come as a surprise is that based on PFF overall ratings up through Week 16, Matt Ryan (+56.7) grades out as the top rated QB of the bunch.While he did not have the biggest fantasy season this year, Ryan had a very consistent year under center where he displayed the chops of a seasoned field general. Depending on how you feel the Falcons will fare in the playoffs, Ryan makes an interesting value pick who will almost certainly be there after Vick, Brees, Rodgers, Manning, and Brady are off the board.
After QBs, it’s essentially a tossup between WRs and RBs in terms of value. Last season, Pierre Thomas scored the most from these two positions, but Larry Fitzgerald led the two in the 2008-2009 playoffs. Our best bet here is to take the tried-and-true method of selecting the best available player. Of course you’ll want to consider regular season fantasy numbers, but let’s also take a look at a few other things. Here's where PFF data can really benefit. When plotting out my playoff league draft strategy for RBs and WRs (and TEs), I'm going to first take a look at each player's overall rating, as this is an excellent gauge of the player's potential to shine in the playoffs. From there, I also want to evaluate – a) how often the player is on the field, and b) how often the player touches the ball. The first part is easy to establish with PFF's detailed snap count data. The second part is a bit more tricky, and I will use a different method for RBs than I will for WRs and TEs.
For RBs, I suggest you take the overall all snap count for each player and this will give you a good sense of who's on the field the most. Just be careful here, however, because you can easily be mislead. Chris Ivory (+9.7) comes in at 186 snaps after Week 16, while Ray Rice played 790. In this case, we obviously can't assume that Rice will be on the field 4 times as much as Ivory because Ivory played in less games during the season. So be sure to take games played into your equation.
From there, I recommend looking not just at rushing attempts, but at total touches from RBs. Now, to get a sense of how often each RB is touching the ball, just take their snap count and divide it by their touches (Snaps/Touch). The lower the Snaps/Touch ratio, the more often that player touches the ball. The idea now is to find the highest rated guys who touch the ball most often and are on the field most frequently. For example, Danny Woodhead (+13.0) and LeSean McCoy (+13.0) have the same overall ratings and similar Snaps/Touch ratios (3.1 for Woodhead and 2.9 for McCoy), but McCoy was on the field twice as much as Woodhead this season and is thus much more valuable.
For the WRs and TEs I’m not as worried about touches. Instead, I’d prefer to look at their target counts. Like the RBs, you want to consider each player’s overall rating and how often they’re on the field. But with WRs, we can use their targets to see how frequently the players are seeing passes their way by taking their snap counts and dividing them by their target counts (Snaps/TA). So here, we can see that although Deon Branch (+9.6) and Lance Moore (+8.2) grade out similarly and have played nearly the same amount of snaps (529 for Branch and 514 for Moore), Moore saw a target every 6.2 snaps to every 7.3 snaps for Branch. That would make me lean towards selecting Moore over Branch if I were deciding between the two.
The TEs also display how this method can prove useful in draft day decision making. In terms of the TEs, Jacob Tamme (+10.7) is heads and shoulders above all of the other playoff TEs based on his overall rating and his very low Snaps/TA ratio (6.3). But beyond Tamme, it's can be difficult to differentiate between the playoff TEs based solely on regular season fantasy statistics. You could be faced with a decision between someone like Tony Moeaki (+9.3) or Todd Heap (-4.2). In this case, Moeaki has a higher Snaps/TA ratio (14.1 for Moeaki and 12.9 for Heap), but he also grades out much higher. Since Heap's PFF rating is well into the negative, I would lean towards selecting Moeaki.
So now with your playoff picks and the PFF data, you can establish which players you like at each position. I recommend making your own rankings or tweaking the rankings of a trusted analyst (our own Mike Clay is darn good!) based on what you come up with. From there, all that’s left to do is draft/pick your squad. Good luck, and for the love of God, don’t select a kicker until the last round!
Feel free to hit me up with any questions or comments on Twitter – @JeffRatcliffe
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