Thrilla Time: Putting Variance in Your Favor

The most important part of NFL football is clock management. The 2016 Atlanta Falcons can tell you that. In a stunning correlation, the most important part of your fantasy football experience is timing. Let’s talk about how you can put the variance odds in your favor and take home some fantasy football accolades in 2022. 

How J-Dilla Got His Groove Back

I’ve been reading Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, The Hip-hop Producer who Reinvented Rhythm. Questlove of The Roots — you know, that band that plays with Jimmy Fallon —  called J Dilla the greatest drummer in the world. If you’ve listened to D’Angelo, Common, Erykah Badu, or any of the “Lo-Fi Chillhop” channels on YouTube, you’ve heard J Dilla or his legacy. Here’s a list of J Dilla’s best songs from Complex. What did J Dilla do that earned him these accolades?

In a world where everybody played the same rhythms, J Dilla spaced out his rhythms and played off the beat. 

Image from Dilla Time, page 192. Used under Free Use.

For Dilla’s rhythm, he’s distributing the percussive elements throughout the phrases of the composition. If you’ve heard any pop music, you know this rhythm even if you don’t know the terminology. One and TWO and three and FOUR and (repeat ad nauseam). But for Dilla, he might be distributing this beat over 20 bars, or an entire verse, or an entire song. The effect of these non-aligned rhythms produces a rhythm that is unexpected. Rhythm needs expectation. For rhythm to exist, you need an organization of the beats, and the listener needs to expect where the next beat will be. Bass and DRUM and bass and DRUM. Not, bass bassbas-sbass b-a-bass-ssba baDRUM. 

In this section, we’ve established expectations and rhythms as our key terms. J Dilla succeeded by producing rhythms that challenged expectations. To understand Dilla Time, you needed to pay attention to the whole song, rather than just a typical 4 beat phrase. 

Now, let’s transfer this knowledge to fantasy football. 

Variance, Rhythm, and Expectation

Timing is the most important aspect in fantasy football. To understand timing, you need to understand that the scope of a fantasy football success isn’t week-by-week, but throughout the season. This enduring challenge of timing is due to “variance.”

For variance, we’re interested in the statistical definition used by investors and data researchers. Here’s how Investopedia defines variance in common language: 

The term variance refers to a statistical measurement of the spread between numbers in a data set. More specifically, variance measures how far each number in the set is from the mean (average), and thus from every other number in the set

In other words, variance is the measurement of out-performance or under-performance from the expected result. If the rhythm is the expectation, then the variance is Dilla Time — how far away the beat drifts from its expected place. 

The hallmark of an amateur fantasy footballer is the belief that performance is consistent. To illustrate this fallacy, let’s look at Cooper Kupp’s 2021 season. Keep in mind — Kupp’s 2021 performance was the second-best performance by an NFL wide receiver in NFL history. If anybody should be consistent, it was 2021 Kupp. Because of space constraints, we’ll just look at a representative sample of Kupp’s 2021 performance. All data is from Cooper Kupp’s Razzball Player Page: 

Remember — I’m not discounting Cooper Kupp. I’m not complaining. I’m merely explaining how variant a top performance can be. Kupp delivered a legendary performance in 2021 and still was benchable in week 4 in normal formats and in week 5 in shallow formats. 

In short, Kupp both outperformed and underperformed his six-week average by nearly 60 yards, as well as finishing everywhere in-between. Similarly, his catches varied by nearly 25% from the average. That week 4 nadir? It was against the Arizona Cardinals, who finished 7th best in the league in passing yards allowed in 2021. That week 2 peak? It was against the Indianapolis Colts, who finished 19th overall in passing yards allowed and second-to-last in touchdowns allowed in the 2021 season. 

Some of this stuff we expected, right? Worse performances happen against strong matchups, and better performances happen against weak matchups. This is how you put variance in your favor. 

The strength of schedule isn’t an iron-clad predictor that we would like it to be, but it provides the expectation by which we can establish a rhythm. Once we have an expectation, the most we can do is let variance take over and hope that our expectations are exceeded — good performances vs bad teams is all we can ask for. 

How do we help align variance in our favor? We resort to Dilla Time. We want to draft players who are expected to perform on different rhythms. We want our players to peak at different times. By varying the timing of our expected player performances, we improve our outcomes over the long term. 

Skin in the Game vs Staying in the Game

For the average fantasy footballer who plays in a 12-team league with their friends and family and co-workers, I recommend going all-out for the win. You really shouldn’t care if you come in last as long as you tried to shoot for the moon. Nobody has fun playing against their friends and family by drafting the safest roster. This is the “skin in the game” mentality, that you want to win and develop that social capital like a trophy over your mantle and $200 of your friend’s money in your pocket. 

But for other members of the fantasy community who play in many fantasy football leagues or even try to use sites like Underdog, Draftkings, or FanDuel as a source of income, then it’s much more important to diversify rosters and stay in the game. If all you do is lose by going all-or-nothing, then you likely won’t stay in the game. You can improve your chances of staying in the game by distributing your variance throughout the season. 

Whereas the expectation is that your studs will all fire off at the same time (stares at that clause), you can distribute some of that expectation throughout the season by looking at the strength of schedule. Of course, typical caveats apply — injuries happen, team situations change, and balls get deflated. Fortunately, Razzball Premium Tools has a strength of schedule estimator, and we can see some players with remarkably uneven schedules that might complement your team.

Here are some players that I see favored on the weekly ranking chart that you might want to try in 2022 to help put variance in your favor: 

K.J. Osborn: Earlier in my RazzBowl draft, one of you smart players took K.J. Osborn nearly 50 picks ahead of his previous minimum pick. OK, that’s not actually that smart and I don’t recommend “getting your guy” at the cost of, you know, 5 other players that will likely perform better. I made this mistake in 2019 when I looked at Zay Jones’ end zone targets and took him as my WR2 in my first RazzBowl (Note: I didn’t pay attention to Zay Jones’ actual TD conversions. They were not stellar.). Osborn is basically free in drafts right now. His early-season schedule looks tough, but for weeks 11-16, Rudy has him ranked as a FLEX2 option for 12-team leagues. Osborn is worth a look in Underdog formats, and likely a strategic FAAB option for Cutline or deeper leagues. 

Jameson Williams: First rule of fantasy club: don’t draft injuries. Second rule of fantasy club: FAAB players returning from injury when they’re ready. Jameson Williams will miss the first half of the season as he returns from an ACL injury. When will he play? Who knows. Don’t actually draft Williams. But when he returns, Rudy loves Williams — so much that JW places nearly in WR3 territory in multiple weeks. Put Williams on your watch list for now, and check the news once he gets closer to return. 

Robert Tonyan: See the above about drafting injuries. Tonyan will probably miss time to start the season because he still hasn’t played in the pre-season after returning from a knee injury. But Rudy’s system looks at week 6 as a turning point for Tonyan, after which he becomes a startable TE in 12-team leagues and a FLEX option in all formats. This is a big risk/reward type play: everybody wonders who will be the lead receiver in Green Bay, and nobody’s really talking about the guy who finished as the overall TE3 in 2020. Fingers crossed for a healthy Tonyan, who could balance out your team once he’s back to speed. 

Dameon Pierce: Everybody and their grandma is on the guy now. That stuff I wrote about Marlon Mack getting a shot — it’s trash. Apparently, the Texans are wonders at making 4th round draft picks into fantasy stars. Also, all of this is sheer hype. Most 4th round draft picks amount to nothing in the NFL. But if you’re drafting right now, Pierce is a hype RB that has been surging up the draft boards. Just like 2020 Clyde Edwards-Helaire! Or 2021 Michael Carter! Well, Michael Carter sort of worked out. Rudy’s system likes Pierce and places him as an RB2 in 12-team leagues for large chunks of the season. But it’s worthwhile to remember — teams that get blown out all the time don’t run a lot. Thus, Pierce could be a massive variance boost to the right team. If you can get him as a FLEX play, I’m fine with the current cost. However, the fantasy community needs to temper expectations about Pierce — dominating in the pre-season is nothing new. Like, DeeJay Dallas is the current pre-season rushing leader. Where’s the DeeJay Dallas love? ENYWHEY. This is about Dameon Pierce, and the meta-narrative that I just discussed with myself is basically the demonstration that you’re drafting these guys in the hopes that variance takes you in the right place. You can’t expect them to deliver every week, but if you get a great performance, say, 1 out of every three weeks, then you’re golden. 

Who are your favorite variance plays in 2022? Drop a note down in the comments and I’ll see you soon!