Where bad takes come to die and good ones get receipts.
The group chat says draft the bell-cow because volume is king. Our own three-year receipts say the rented-volume tax is real in exactly one RB tier, the muddy middle, and reverses at the top. So we tested whether to fade workhorses. The data said no.
Read the receipts →My own error report flagged the engine for over-rating receivers age 23 and under, so I went hunting for the bust. Ten years of pairs say the opposite: hold target share fixed and the young receivers who earn a real role actually edge their older peers by four-tenths of a point a week. The over-rating is real. It just lives in the kids who never see the targets, not the ones who do.
Read the receipts →My own error report flagged the engine for over-rating pass-catching tight ends, and the takesmiths' favorite tell, touchdown regression, looked like the smoking gun. Ten years of pairs say the TD spike does regress hard off its own line. But hold target share fixed and those tight ends land right back with their peers, 0.37 points a week apart. Real regression, no consequence. The over-rating is real, it's just hiding somewhere else.
Read the receipts →Every player in your dynasty league has two numbers. The price the room will trade him at, and the value the math says he'll produce. I built one tool to measure each, and the spread between them is the whole product. VibeRank is live, public, and free.
Read the receipts →My own error report flagged the engine for over-rating big, athletic running backs, so I went looking for the age cliff that would explain it. Ten years of data say it isn't there. Post-peak, the freaks decline 0.16 points a game faster than the field, which is to say, not at all. The over-rating is real. The aging story isn't.
Read the receipts →My engine's own outcome audit flagged pocket passers as its single biggest mistake, 57 ranks of under-rating. So I checked the tape. At equal production, rushing QBs repeat as top-12 fantasy QBs 53 percent of the time. Pocket passers, 34. The engine's rushing tilt was right. The flag was measuring something else.
Read the receipts →The smart-money reflex is that running back efficiency is luck and only volume sticks. Band 457 back-seasons by workload and the top-quartile yards-per-carry guys beat the field by 2.2 a game, and by 4 at a true workhorse load, then hold it the next year. The engine already bets on this. The "efficiency is noise" crowd is the one getting fooled.
Read the receipts →The regression crowd is right that a hot passing-TD rate comes down, about 2 points a game off the spike. They're wrong about what to do with it. At the same passing volume those QBs still beat the field by 1.9 a game the next year. The rate regresses. The quarterback doesn't.
Read the receipts →Every air-yards column this month wants you to buy the deep threat. I ran ten years of it. At the same target share, the downfield guys score half a point a game LESS the next year, not more. The only place aDOT helps is the low-volume dart-throwers, where it's touchdown variance wearing a lab coat.
Read the receipts →Every dynasty column tells you tight ends fall off a cliff after 32. I paired ten years of TE seasons and controlled for role. At the same target share the over-32 guys lost 0.75 ppg, not a cliff, and in the aggregate they actually scored more. The cliff is survivorship plus job loss wearing an age costume.
Read the receipts →Every sleeper column this month tells you receiving work hands a back a safe PPR floor. On average it doesn't, those backs are a touch worse. Control for total workload and the three-down bell-cow beats the pure grinder by 3 points a game in the 250-touch tier. The floor talk is backwards. It's a high-volume edge.
Read the receipts →Every May the same article tells you year 3 is when the TE light comes on. Ten years of TE pairs say the within-band lift is under a point a game. The engine quietly priced it in months ago.
Read the receipts →Your favorite QB scribe will tell you 100-rush-attempt QBs hit top-12 PPG 91 percent of the time. They're off by 14 points. The real rate is 77. Still huge. Still bet-the-ranch. Just not what the takesmiths are quoting.
Read the receipts →Every August someone publishes a sophomore-WR breakout tier. We tested all 955 rookie-to-vet pairs against it. The "jump" is under a point a game. The engine's been pricing it correctly for months. You can stop forwarding the article.
Read the receipts →An open notebook for an engine that doesn't read FantasyPros. Here's what goes in, what doesn't, and why your group chat is wrong more often than it thinks.
Read the receipts →If you've read one post-draft dynasty piece this month, you've read the phrase "vacated backfield" forty times. Annoying. Also correct. Day-2 rookies inheriting an empty depth chart print +3.5 ppg.
Read the receipts →The dynasty crowd has been screaming "sell before 27" for years. Ten years of cohort pairs say they've been right the whole time. Your 300-touch alpha hits 27 and forfeits 3 ppg to his younger self.
Read the receipts →