High Anxiety: Fantasy Football Playoffs and Your Risk Taking Personality

People are by nature self-reinforcing. We behave in ways that are consistent with and shore up our underlying beliefs and values. I like the idea that you can learn a lot about a person from simply asking their favorite TV shows or movies. Many aspects of our personality are reflected in our media choices. I'm a neuroscientist, not a psychologist, so I'm not going to psychoanalyze anyone's choices (mine are Breaking Bad, Modern Family, Friday Night Lights, The West Wing, and Survivor), but everyone can get a good feeling for a person's sense of humor, how serious they are, etc. from this short list. However, there is at least one key element of personality that probably can't be ascertained by this simple question: Are you a risk taker? Do you take chances in your life or do you take a safe, steady, and conservative path? We all fall somewhere on this risk continuum, but where? I propose that the answer lies in our fantasy football playoff rosters. How you approach the playoffs actually reflects not only your lifelong study of the game, analysis of the individual player and team statistics over the course of the season, or the amount of research time you've put in to this week's matchups, but also your personality. In the end, many decisions about whom to start and whom to sit will come down to how comfortable you are with taking risks.

The fantasy playoffs are a time of high anxiety, where every decision is magnified because it could be your last of 2013. Our rosters and matchups are on our minds constantly. The pressure to make the right choices or go home empty handed affects our brains and our bodies, not unlike the pressure some of us feel before public speaking, but longer lasting. The main chemical that mediates the anxiety response in the brain is called norepinephrine (NE). It's considered an arousal hormone or neurotransmitter for its ability to increase the sensitivity of the cells of the brain to input. The heightened awareness and perception caused by spikes in NE is manifest during everyday life through enhanced performance. A little bit of test anxiety or fear of public speaking--those butterflies in your stomach and sweaty palms--are the result of circulating NE and the more famous stress hormone, cortisol, and generally represent an adaptive response to help you succeed in your task. I discussed the role of NE in possibly enabling clutch performances, such as Tom Brady's game winning extravaganza last weekend, a few weeks ago at rotoviz.com. It appears, after facing Philip Rivers and Ryan Mathews in one league Thursday night, that I am in need of such a clutch performance.

In the fantasy playoffs, however, the anxiety isn't transient. It can last weeks-at least we hope it does! This chronic fluctuating awareness that our whole season comes down to the decisions we make this weekend and next probably stimulates levels of NE and cortisol that exceed the optimal performance enhancing levels. No one has ever measured these chemicals in high stakes fantasy players but I'd bet on them being higher than normal this time of year! Unfortunately, at chronically high levels of these stress hormones, performance can actually decline. The brain is operating at such a highly tuned state that processes that were previously automatic (e.g. thought patterns as well as motor skills like throwing a ball) are second guessed. It's like once you start to think hard about what it takes to ride a bike, you start wobbling all over the place. Some of us cruised to the playoffs pretty stress-free while some fought an uphill battle to squeak in at the very end. All of us are now over thinking and second guessing every decision we have to make. It's the fantasy equivalent of choking, a term I'm not too fond of, but could be due to loss of automation in motor skills when high NE causes the executive part of the brain to take over. In an ironic twist, my QB in the aforementioned league is none other than Tony Romo.

I can see this high anxiety, over thinking mind-set play out through two different biases depending on your risk taking personality:

First, we can ignore high upside new guys like Ladarius Green, Cordarrelle Patterson, and Nick Foles in favor of old fantasy standbys like Jason Witten, Mike Wallace, and Tony Romo. This is the safe play. You go with experience, consistency (over many years, not necessarily this season), the guys that have been there and come through for their fantasy owners before. You know them.

Second, we can go the risky route and play the hot hand. We start the high upside, tantalizing new fantasy toys like L. Green and C. Patterson, leaving those standbys well, standing by. The thrill of knowing they could put up a zero, like Green did last week (and nearly did Thursday night), or 25 PPR fpts like  Patterson did, and betting on the 25 is why you play fantasy in the first place. You dig the possibilities.

It seems logical that we should simply be starting the best players at each position, regardless of how many years they've been among the best players at their position. We've all seen the blind Player A vs Player B scenarios that suggest Matt McGloin makes a better fantasy play than Drew Brees or something incredulous like that. Don't worry, I'm not going there. I'm not interested in convincing you to start one guy or another. Instead what I did was plot players' position rank over the last four weeks against the % of leagues that started those players in week 14, the first week of the fantasy playoffs. This gives us an idea of how attached we as a fantasy community are to starting underperforming known quantities (safety bias) and how often well performing players are left on the bench in the playoffs.

(Notes on the analysis: The fantasy point totals are from a Yahoo PPR league I'm in. Although the week 14 points are included in the rank, you did not have these numbers when making your lineup decisions. I'm not sure the ranks change terribly significantly, but they would have been different heading into week 14. I used the last four weeks point totals because so much changes over the whole season due to injuries, etc. For QB and TE, I used the top 12 players, with a couple of others whose start percentage stuck out to me, that I'll highlight below. For RB and WR, I selected guys from a large range of ranks. There were many top 20 players at these positions that are 100% started--it doesn't really help our discussion to show that everyone starts Jamaal Charles or Calvin Johnson, so those kind of situations are not shown here. One more caveat with start % is that players may be rostered by teams not in the playoffs or on bye and therefore not making lineup adjustments. I'm guessing anyone ~85% started was started by everyone who owned him). 

Ideally, we should see a nice negatively sloped linear relationship between % started and rank, with the highest ranked players being started the most often. For WR this is generally the case. At TE, you see the nice correlation for the top 12 guys, it's the two extra points I included that skew the line. For the other positions, particularly RB and QB it is definitely not ideal. In more detail...

Quarterback: The notable outliers here were that only 32% of people started Josh McCown, the #1 fantasy QB over the past four weeks. Ben Rothlisberger, started in 27% of leagues, is the #3 QB. Alex Smith, Ryan Tannehill, Carson Palmer, Philip Rivers, and Andrew Luck are all top 10 QBs who were started in fewer than 50% of leagues last week. (Note: Nick Foles and Russell Wilson both had bye weeks during the total fantasy point calculation period, so they were not in the top 12 total, but were #5 and #10 respectively in average fantasy points over that period. Both were started in over 60% of leagues).


Tight End: Many people stream the TE position, which might explain why the best TEs are consistently highly rostered. The trend looks promising, but a closer look reveals that the #1 (Charles Clay), 4 (Vernon Davis), and 9 (Heath Miller) TE were started in fewer than 40% of leagues.  Meanwhile, the #17 (Witten), 18 (Martellus Bennett), and 20 (Jared Cook) were started in 87%, 42%, and 27% of leagues last weekend. To be honest, it was easy to miss at TE last weekend if you played the matchups.

Running Back: Many of the 20 top ranked RB are nearly 100% started. Since it's possible to start three RB in most leagues, however, we can reasonably expect that the start % for the top 30 ranked players should be much higher than the start % for those ranked over 30th over the past four weeks. I've excluded anyone who's fpt total over that period would be influenced by their own injury or a bye week. The straight line indicates that many highly ranked players aren't being started enough, and many lower ranked players are being started too often. Most notable? Shane Vereen, the #3 RB over the past four weeks was started in only 52% of leagues. Bobby Rainey was another player, ranked #6, started in only 41% of leagues last week. On the other hand, Alfred Morris, who is ranked #37, was started by 80% of fantasy GMs. His first round draft status is keeping him in the starting lineups of most of his owners.

Wide Receiver: The trend is good here. We are for the most part starting the best WR in the playoffs, and again, I've excluded the obvious 100% players. There are notable exceptions though. Most leagues can start three or four WR, so anyone ranked in the top 30 again should be started with high frequency. Here are the names and ranks of some highly ranked, low started outliers: Cordarelle Patterson #23, 11%; Dwayne Bowe #19, 53%; Ace Sanders #25, 0%, Michael Floyd #10, 54%; Rod Streater #11, 8%. On the flip side, those ranking over 40 but started in more than 20% of leagues: Riley Cooper #62, 45%; Hakeem Nicks #52, 36%, DeSean Jackson #50, 86%; James Jones #41, 37%, TY Hilton #55, 53%.

I didn't point out which decision worked out better in those cases where there was deviation from the expected start %. For me to say, "See you clearly should have started that guy because he scored 30 fpts last week" is ridiculous. You can find examples on both sides, which is why I highlighted L. Green and C. Patterson above. Not every highly ranked, highly skilled player will deliver high fantasy scores every week. However, taking advantage of the past performance data available on your fantasy site may open your eyes to consistent good performances in your scoring system that you might have overlooked.

We tend to see what we want to see and hear what we want and expect to hear. It's our Confirmation Bias, a topic I wrote about extensively in my book, Cognitive Bias in Fantasy Sports: Is your brain sabotaging your team?". It doesn't matter how many articles you read or how many podcasts you tune in for, not all the stats and facts we come across make the same impact on our neural processing networks. One way to think about it is that beliefs that we've held for a long time are readily reinforced by outside data, whereas those that are newer are resistant. So recent standout performances by Rainey or Clay just don't register as strongly as details of Witten's or Wallace's last big games do. It's part of how our brains subconsciously reinforce our beliefs and therefore, behaviors.

The Confirmation Bias works with heightened anxiety and your risk taking personality to ultimately sway your decisions about whom to start and whom to bench for your all-important playoff
matchups. If you play it safe in the stock market, with your restaurant/food choices and wardrobe selection, you are probably also going to field a pretty steady and conservative fantasy playoff team. It's a team that no one can really fault you for, isn't going to light the world on fire, but will probably come close to it's median projection. If you love to chase the next hot stock, are first in line at the new club, drive fast and frequently "take your chances" you will find your starting roster full of high upside and recently hot NFL players. You are swinging for the fences-you'll win big or lose trying. You'll have fun cheering for this squad of players the casual fan has never even heard of.

Both strategies are clearly in effect, as the graphs above indicate. Is one better than the other? This would require a more careful analysis than I've done, but I didn't find a clear trend at any position for the safe choice being better or worse than a risky choice. There is a trend toward starting the "safer" players, regardless of their rank, it's just not clear that if you do so you'll be let down in terms of fantasy production. Sometimes you will, sometimes you won't. They are old standbys for a reason.

Ultimately, the potential for reward and the fear of losing it all weighs heavy on our minds. We might be operating at a level slightly past optimal on the NE continuum. Yet the decisions must be made. My compromise, since I gauge my risk taking personality to be slightly higher than average, is to add one or two high risk/high reward players to a very solid core squad. A last thing to factor in is your opponent. In my biggest money "home" league-not the one above- I'm facing the number one seed (my brother) this weekend and am a huge underdog. It makes me a little uncomfortable but I will probably roll out a much higher ceiling/lower floor team than I'm used to against him. I won earlier in the year, handing him one of his two losses, but that was in his weakened bye-week state. To win now, I might need a couple of trick plays. One I considered-and thankfully rejected-was Jacob Tamme. I made it to the playoffs with a good team, there's no need to go off the deep end. Keep reminding yourself of that, because if you're like me, your brain is going to keep coming up with these possible scenarios non-stop. Good luck this weekend, whether you stick to the straight and narrow or take a flying leap of faith.

Motivation Narratives Matter Not to Fantasy Football

Well I had a plan of what I wanted to write about this week and then I was struck by the same glaring discussion on my twitter timeline over and over again during the past two days. I'm taking it as a sign. The topic is about predicting player performance using statistics only or factoring in intangibles as well. It's MoneyBall vs. The Trouble with the Curve. Y'all know how we at RotoViz feel about this issue, right? So why bother exploring it again this week? Because the response and defense of a statistics based scientific approach to player evaluation can't just be "numbers are better and you're an idiot if you think otherwise".

Scientists strive to generate hypotheses that can be proven wrong. It's very difficult to prove something is always true, while it's often quite easy to prove something is not always true. The former requires you to have knowledge of every instance of the event, while the latter requires only one reliable instance that doesn't support the theory. The hypothesis to be tested is compared with a null hypothesis. Let's start with what intangibles might be worthy of considering in making our weekly predictions or lineup sit/start decisions. The ones I want to focus on involve motivation. I'll look at three cases of motivation that you might consider in determining player value: 1) being in a contract year, 2) playing a division rival, and 3) coming off a humiliating loss/poor individual performance.
I admit I can't tell you too much about the psychology of a team or an NFL player. The farthest I got in sports was varsity volleyball and softball, and for a weak school at that. So I don't know if a player's actual motivation, effort, or intent changes in any of those scenarios. Ultimately, though, that doesn't matter to us. What I can do is look at the situations that we predict may induce a change in motivation and look at the fantasy results in those situations. So regardless of whether being in a contract year actually influences the player's behavior or emotional state, we can evaluate if the situation has any effect on his performance from a fantasy standpoint.

1) The Contract Year. It comes up during every draft season, people write about who's due for a monster year owing to the fact that they hit free agency following the upcoming season. The motivation in this case: Money, arguably one of the biggest extrinsic motivators known to man. Play well, even beyond your potential, and a lucrative new contract awaits. The hypothesis generated by fantasy writers/players is that contract year players will have exceptional fantasy seasons. The null hypothesis is that they won't, and that could be framed as either they will perform similar to their past 2-3 seasons or that they will perform similarly to others in their position. There is simply no evidence to suggest that being in a contract year prevents injury related poor fantasy performance (Cutler, Vick, Bradshaw, Finley, Maclin to name a few) or idiocy related talent squandering (Britt). A couple of guys in the final year of their contract appear to be getting an opportunity to show their skills (Donald Brown, Ben Tate) and a couple are having the same kind of excellent years we've come to expect (Jimmy Graham, Eric Decker). Most players on this year's list are racking up pretty average fantasy stats in their contract year (MJD, McFadden, Boldin, DHB, James Jones, Brandon LaFell, Hakeem Nicks, etc). There is nothing to suggest that the null hypothesis is false in either of its iterations, nor to suggest that the interesting hypothesis of exceptional performance is supported. This contract year narrative will probably never die, but you can safely ignore it.

2) Division Rivalry. The storytellers of the NFL love their storylines, and rarely does one warm the hearts of loyal fan bases than the upcoming division rivalry tale. The theme is: Teams X and Y, division rivals, and players on Team X and Y, will play harder than usual, resulting in a close game. The null hypothesis states that the score of a division rivalry game will be no different, on average, than the scores of non-divisional games. As a fantasy player, you might expect (hypothesize) better performance from players on the lesser of the two rivals, for instance, Atlanta in last night's barn burner of a TNF game. You might also temper expectations of the favorite in a division game, believing that a tight game favors defense. So what does the data say about the score in a division game vs. a non-divisional game? The average score differential of a division rivalry is 9.2 (SD=6.9) over the past 7 weeks while the differential of non-divisional game is 12.1 (SD=9.6) points, a statistically non-significant difference. In other words, divisional games are decided by the same number of points, on average, as any other game. There is also no trend toward a difference in total points of divisional vs non-divisional games. Based on this data, I can't see letting a storyline like rivalry influence your fantasy lineup decisions.

3) The Bounce Back or Rebound Performance. This is an interesting one. The idea is that when we fuck up, we go all out to do everything we can to make up for it next time. The narrative is, he's due for a big game, he'll be looking to silence the critics in this one, after an embarrassing performance last week, so-and-so will be fired up and ready to run/throw/score touchdowns. The hypothesis is that following a particularly poor performance, athletes (teams) will bounce back with a great statistical day. I read a terrific piece a couple of years ago on this topic with respect to NBA players. It sticks in my mind whenever I'm deciding whether or not to roll with a really high priced guy coming off a dud game. The upshot is that the top players bounce back from bad days and resume their studly ways way more often than not.
Yesterday this tweet from Ryan Forbes appeared in my timeline showing the up and down season the New York Jets are having. They're due for a high scoring day, fellas. Kidding there, as you'll see. I looked at eleven games decided by a score of more than 20 points. In five cases, the team blown out went on to win the next week. In six cases, they lost the following week. Not great support for a team bounceback theory, despite the Jets season trend.
When it comes to individuals, I unfortunately don't have the manpower to investigate this on a player by player basis so I just used the PPR fantasy stats from one of my leagues for the top 25 scorers so far. QBs P Manning, Brees, and Wilson have had 4 instances of scoring low double digit points (11-16). In each case they bounced back for 23-32 fantasy points the following weeks. RBs Forte, McCoy, Lynch, and Moreno have at least doubled their dudliest fantasy totals the next week out a total of six times so far this year. WR Andre Johnson has had two bad weeks that he followed up with a strong showing, and DeSean Jackson is two out of three there. Several notables had their worst fantasy days just last week. Jamaal Charles, AJ Green, and Brandon Marshall will be looking to bounce back in week 12 (Moreno is in this group too, though it wasn't technically his worst outing). Others on my league's top 25 page have not had a bad outing, or they lost time due to injury. While certainly not comprehensive, at the highest level of fantasy football, it looks like the trend identified by John Paulsen for NBA stars holds true. Good defense happens. One bad game is likely just that, and I would start all of those guys with confidence this week.

Motivation is a fascinating subject, yet one that's difficult to study in a laboratory. Intrinsic motivation (feeling good, matching actions with values, achieving goals) is reported to be stronger than extrinsic motivation (money, pleasing others). Do players and coaches adjust their motivation and effort week to week? Do extrinsic factors like looking good on national TV, beating a division rival, or safeguarding a star reputation in the wake of a scrub performance influence effort or motivation? The answer to both questions is that it just doesn't matter if they do or not. Each and every one of us fantasy players, as much as we use and respect the numbers, is influenced by these motivational scenarios to some degree. Hopefully, these numbers show that we shouldn't be.

The Big Questions

The other morning, after an admittedly late night of work, I was especially enjoying my morning coffee. The thought crossed my mind: Would I rather live forever with coffee and no beer, or with beer but not coffee? Of course, wine was the perfect loophole, so I made this little mind game about coffee or alcohol. Forever. Hmmm, tough one, right?
I became a scientist because of the questions. One question, answered well and true, leads to many more that are just as interesting and important. When you study the nervous system, there are far more questions than answers. The answers I do get in my research are small in light of the mysteries of developmental disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, and everyday behavior that interest me. Some questions even seem unanswerable given the current state of technology and understanding of the brain.
Some of you know that I don't exactly ooze patience. When I first started grad school, figuring out that I wouldn't always be able to find meaningful answers to my scientific questions was frustrating. (For a funny take on some of the other torturous aspects of grad school see this). Over time, I've redefined my definition of success at the laboratory bench and come to appreciate the incremental progress that is scientific research. I've reached some level of acceptance of what I don't know and btw, this makes me a rare specimen, a girl that doesn't know everything, haha. But the truth is, some things in science are unknown. Some are just unknown by me, but for other phenomena, there is no answer or explanation.
As fantasy analysts and avid players, we have access to massive amounts of data with which to answer our questions about this guy or that guy any given week. The stats, the numbers, and their interpretations are all out there for your consumption (check out the weekly Efficiency Scores here). The GLSP and Sim Score apps help you use that information to guide your lineup decisions using the most innovative approaches out there. The guys here at rotoviz answer most of the questions you think to ask, and then some.
Yet I am repeatedly made aware that there are questions in fantasy football that we can't answer. What explains Ray Rice's stunning decline this season? Why was pre-injury Doug Martin so bad when every other back in TB given a shot now tears it up? Last year, we wondered for weeks why Philip Rivers wasn't any good. Of course, we know now that he was hurting all year, but back then we had no answer. Being from Western NY, the one I hear the most is this: If CJ Spiller is 100% healthy, why is he not getting productive touches in the Buffalo offense? These questions frustrate the hell out of fantasy owners. It's not just scientists (or women) that want answers, that's for sure.
I approach these tough questions the way I approach a research problem. You have certain facts, things like touches, yards per carry, defensive rank, offensive line play, etc. from the current season and historically. You try to put the facts together to understand how the system works but sometimes they don't fit, like a puzzle with a missing piece. Many of us tend to obsess over the problem, trying to make it sensible over and over again, when it just isn't happening. At some point you have to say, maybe we don't have all the pieces, maybe all the stats and information coming from the team is still incomplete. There must be more to it that we simply can't know right now. I've had the CJ Spiller conversation a bunch of times, and the Bills Fan/Spiller owner response is neither gentle nor accepting. Everything we as fans know screams for a different answer than the reality. So everything we know can't be everything there is to know about the situation.
I think my neuroscience research has taught me to accept these kinds of inexplicable seasons from real life football players as just that: inexplicable. Once you accept that there may be no answer, you can stop wasting energy trying to find it and figure out what to do. It's a fine line. You can't give up too easily in your quest for the truth, as without due diligence you might miss an answer that is knowable. But if you spin your wheels for too long, you could have resources tied up in a no-win proposition.
I think we're getting to that time in this 2013 season. It was evident during the Week 11 TNF game when the fantasy community overwhelmingly agreed that Trent Richardson just isn't who we thought he was. Why doesn't really matter at this point, he just isn't. Not all Big Questions have answers, at least answers that are accessible to us in this time and place. We can hope the reality starts to align with our well researched and logical expectations I suppose. I'm a big optimist, but hope is a poor answer in a fantasy season entering do or die territory. Albert Einstein said "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".
Thankfully, not all questions need answers, and I can go on happily enjoying my coffee and alcohol whenever I want. They both have their benefits. What would you choose?

Week 1 Reflections Revisited Part 2: The Numbers

Earlier, I revisited some of my week 1 reflections in order to get a subjective sense of whether what we saw in week 1 was "true" or not for a few players near and dear to my fantasy teams. The Primacy and Recency biases-they cause you to recall more accurately the first and last events in a sequence-can significantly influence our future decisions. The first game of the year sways our opinion much like a first impression of a new beer, a new colleague, or your sister's new boyfriend. They are hard to overcome, those initial reactions. It can be done, of course, but we never quite forget the possibilities suggested by the first time we see a guy on the field. If it's good, we expect a repeat performance every week and if it's bad, we're nervous about a repeat for weeks on end.

To go beyond my own biased week one story lines, I looked at some actual data. I've wondered for some time how detrimental the Primacy Bias really is. What if it's not at all harmful? What if, most times, what you see in week 1 is what you get, more or less for the rest of the season?

So I asked, do week 1 stats actually predict future performance in a meaningful way? I started with the 10 best and worst performances at each position in week 1 from one of my PPR leagues, including only players with reasonably high ownership and who didn't almost immediately go on any kind of IR. I then plotted that against their season average (see below).

There was significant regression at every position. The best week 1 performances declined, and proved unsustainable at all positions. Even the league's leading passer, represented by the Denver blue line above the rest, averages far less on a weekly basis than week 1 would have had you hoping for. The worst performances by players who were/are heavily owned, on the other hand, have tended to improve over the season so far. Thus, sticking to Denver examples, Eric Decker started off the season with 5 fpts, but has averaged 16.2 fpts/game overall thanks to a steady string of good showings. I was frankly surprised that there weren't more straight lines. Jamal Charles is the only guy whose top 10 start actually translated into a slightly better season average in PPR fantasy points. The bottom line is that those memorably outstandingly good or bad week one fantasy points by and large failed to predict the player's subsequent value. We hear about regression all the time in fantasy baseball, owing to its longer season and much greater sample size, but these data show that it has to be expected in fantasy football too. Even though we can't help but place a higher emphasis on the week one data, there is no reason to believe it predicts the future outcome of any given skill player.

Week One Reflections Revisited: Part 1

Remember when it was week 1? Everyone was so happy and excited about football. Everyone thought they had drafted the perfect team, we were all sure to win our leagues. At around that time, I reminded everyone about something called the Primacy Effect, the finding that things that happen first in a sequence of events are preferentially remembered and hold a more prominent place in our memory than subsequent events, with the exception of the most recent event (Recency Bias).

I explained how the combination of emotion, attention, and love for the game contributed to the Primacy Bias, ensuring that at least some week 1 performances would be sticking with us for weeks to come. So I thought it would be fun to revisit some of those week 1 reflections now that we are this scary far into the season. A few guys stuck in my mind based on their week 1 games and my investment in them, so let's see how they've shaped up here in week 10. Who's singing the same tune and who's got a whole new sound?

Jesse's Girl by Rick Springfield
I wish that I had Jesse's girl...oh wait, I am Jesse. You know who his girl is? Eddie Lacy. That's right, Lacy followed up a decent week 1 performance with a concussion and a bye week, but since then he has been among the most productive backs out there, depending on your scoring. In the 75% of leagues where I own him, there is nothing and no one that could pry him out of my hot little hands. Runners up for the coveted role of Jesse's girl include Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers, LeSean McCoy, AJ Green, and Reggie Bush, who have all nearly maintained their week 1 excellence to this point, particularly in PPR leagues.

Ridin' Solo by Jason Derulo
On the other side of the coin, some of those week 1 studs have turned out to be the weekly dud in our lineups. Jared Cook and Anquan Boldin: I'm sorry, it didn't work out, I'm movin' on, I'm ridin' solo...But I still feel like it could have been great, ya know? What happened??? There's always some excuse, but inevitably, some performances are flukey. When they happen the first week of the season, it's much harder for us to see it that way than when, for example in later weeks when a Jerome Simpson or Jericho Cotchery has a great game.

Centerfold by the J. Geils band
You've spent weeks of holding out hope, sure that the matchup was so juicy that there was no way he couldn't produce, until finally, you give up. You just couldn't start Tom Brady again. His mediocre week 1 performance wasn't just a fluke, it went way downhill from there. Memories just aren't enough to go on at this point in the season, you need some real action in your starting lineup. It's a tough decision, but who can blame you? Single digit fantasy points in 3 of the last 4 games leading into week 9? Who wouldn't give Terrell Pryor a look? Then BAM, there he is, the hottest guy out there last week aside from Nick Foles, throwing for over 400 yards and 4 TDs. Just when you'd gotten over poor terrible Tom, he's right there smiling back at you from the centerfold. Has your love for Brady run cold? I think I have to buy it.

She Fucking Hates Me by Puddle of Mudd
We had some alarming performances in week 1 from our first round running backs this year. Guys we thought about never ever getting back together with after that. Among those who disappointed in week 1, Ridley has come around a little bit now that he's healthy, and Lynch of course bounced right back. However, due to injury or poor play or some mix of BOTH, Ray Rice, CJ Spiller, Doug Martin, and Trent Richardson are all first rounders who really let you down. I don't know why, but it's a vengeful kind of hate, isn't it?

Are you gonna be my girl? by Jet
Percy Harvin, Andre Brown, Michael Crabtree, are you gonna be my man? I've held Brown in an IR slot all year, and am trying to acquire Harvin from an owner impatient with the "he may play this week (even though he has no chance of playing said week)" chatter so I hope so. To be honest, the long game is not my strong point. I don't play in any dynasty/keeper leagues, except for my NBA fantasy league. I'm admittedly impatient and will need to see it to believe it when it comes to these guys. But there comes a point in the season where you have to plan to win in the playoffs, not just make the playoffs, and any of these guys could be the fresh hands and legs to help you do it.

Why is it so hard to define value in fantasy sports?

In one of my neuroscience courses I teach about the ethics of using fMRI scanning for neuromarketing purposes--essentially, should it be allowable for companies to "read your mind" in order to develop more effective business and sales plans for their products? Invariably the very famous Coke vs Pepsi study comes up, where the surprising finding is that brand knowledge substantially affects behavior (taste preference) and brain activity in reward-responsive regions. Some people who say they prefer Pepsi in blind experiments say they prefer Coke in brand-cued experiments, and their brain's reward centers are actually more active in the brand-cued condition! Thus, cultural information and perceptions--that red label--influence brain activity in a way that modifies our innate behavior. For those of us that prefer a different kind of drink, the same type of results have been found in wine or beer experiments where participants taste the same exact beverage twice, but in one case are told it is cheap, and in the other case, expensive. The "expensive" alcoholic beverages are always rated as more pleasant and invoke higher activation of reward centers in the brain despite participants actually tasting the exact same drink. Both of these examples demonstrate that something we think we know--our own tastes!--are easily overridden by external information.

Let me give two other examples of how our valuation mechanisms fail us. I recall this story from a few years ago about one of the world's best concert violinists, Joshua Bell, playing incognito for 45 minutes in a Washington DC metro station as part of a social science experiment reported here. Bell attracted no audience as he played some of the most famous classical music pieces on a multi-million dollar violin, and collected about $30 from hurried passersby. Two nights earlier, he had sold out the Boston Symphony to the tune of about $100/seat. 

More recently, I came across this piece describing a day that the famous British artist, Bansky, gave a homeless man over $225,000 worth of his paintings to sell in Central Park. The man sold eight paintings and cleared just $420. Once again, expectations and limited imaginations about what might be possible clouded value judgments. I'm assuming here that most of the people that encountered these artistic geniuses unexpectedly would have swooned with appreciation had they been paying customers at the Boston Symphony or at one of Bansky's NYC shows. The fact that they had been asked to pay a high price to experience the music or art would have primed them to appreciate its intrinsic value. Without the "label" they merely heard violin music and saw some black and white spray paint. 

Determining accurate fantasy value of football players is critical to our success, not just on draft day but all season long. Yet the examples above suggest that we're flat out terrible at assessing value. What constitutes value in fantasy football is how many fantasy points is he going to get us in any given week. That depends on talent and opportunity, right? Talent evaluations are usually reliable, but don't always translate to performance on the real or the fake gridiron. Matchup analysis is seemingly an important piece of value, allowing us to increase our perceived value of players who may be poised to exploit an opponent's weakness. Yet "matchup plays" fail as often as they succeed. The rotoViz GLSP tool combines these two research approaches to give you the most accurate and scientifically sound range of projections out there.  

Despite unbiased tools like GLSP, we can still make poor value judgments when it comes to trades and lineup or add/drop decisions. The most accurate experts are 60% correct, which shows just how hard it is to assign value in fantasy football. A few factors seem to affect our valuation, and one of my big beliefs is that once you understand how your brain is manipulating you, you can snatch back some logical control of your decisions. As I wrote about last week, the marketplace in your brain cares less about what you want and need, and more about avoiding regret. We make buying (or usage) decisions in part for the rewards they might bring, but fMRI studies indicate that the larger part of our decisions stems from avoiding activation of pain centers in the brain that respond to loss and failure, in addition to physical pain. I wonder if the extent to which this balance tips in one direction or the other correlates to personality traits like optimism and pessimism. 

We also fall prey to the Endowment Effect, which I've written about in my book. It says that we demand more to give up something we have than we are willing to spend to acquire it. In other words, what we already have is more valuable to us, just because we have it. Having invested in something changes its innate value as perceived by us. Consider your car, all the great trips it's taken you on, all the memories that it was involved in, then check it's KBB value. There's usually a little disappointment there...kinda like having Tom Brady on your team this year. 

Then there is cultural effect. If one, two, then three, four people had stopped in that metro station to listen to Joshua Bell more would have joined them and soon a large crowd would have gathered to see what was attracting all the attention. Sooner or later, someone probably would have realized who they were listening to. The point of the Washington DC study was to show us how tuned out to the world around us we are, and how many things of beauty and worth probably pass us by unnoticed. My point is that we often act like sheep following the hype to its source or hurrying on by the value right in front of our faces. What others do or deem important becomes suddenly more significant to us. The fantasy player that everyone is talking about instigates a frenzy of activity that no one wants to be left out of. Almost no one, I mean. There are the contrarians who run the other way when they see the hype train coming. If everyone else wants something it immediately loses its value to them. This is a bias too. Neither is helping you to make a logical or accurate value judgment.

As a scientist, I want value to be a fixed thing. Realizing that it just isn't, and understanding the reasons why it isn't is the first step toward improving our assessment ability. Use the projections, factor in your own needs--a lot of value judgments stem from your team construction and current status, and evaluate the arguments behind the crowd behavior whether they're flocking to a guy or running away from one. The more expensive beer really is better tasting. Putting an expensive label on the cheap beer doesn't make it taste better even if everyone else at the party is telling you it does. As always, use your brain, don't let your brain use you!

Neuroeconomics and Fantasy Football: The Fear of Regret

It's got mountains, it's got rivers, it's got sights to make you shiver...You're gonna miss me when I'm gone, when I'm gone, you're gonna miss me when I'm gone (Anna Kendrick, Cups (Pitch Perfect's "When I'm gone")). It turned into the theme song for an 1800 mile road trip I took this summer with my two boys, 9 and 11. It was pretty catchy too, until the 673rd time we heard it traveling from upstate New York to North Carolina and everywhere worth seeing in between.

It might also be the theme song for the new field of Neuroeconomics. Scientists recently discovered that what drives consumer behavior is not only a desire to get what we want, but a fear of losing out on something worth having. In fact, the fear of missing out on or giving up on a product or commodity too soon looks like the most powerful predictor of bidding at an experimental auction. Let that sink in: More important than how much we like something, how much we need something, how much we are drawn toward it, what drives our actual behavior is the avoidance of regret.

The most dreaded words in the English language are "I should have" or "I shouldn't have"? We all know the emotional pain and regret that comes when we have to own up to having made the wrong choice. Yes, it is something you want to avoid! You stay in a relationship long after the love is gone, hold a stock that is steadily dropping, and you're still starting Dwayne Bowe or Larry Fitzgerald on your fantasy team. In all these situations, there was once true value and the potential for future greatness was certainly there. It's when the current value doesn't match the expected value that we're faced with tough decisions. A) We can admit we were wrong and move on, cutting our losses, starting over, acknowledging and healing the wounds. We find a new source of hope. Or B) we can hang on, stick with it, praying that value will return and that the best is still ahead. We acknowledge that we had a good reason for picking the partner, stock, WR, whatever that isn't living up to our expectations and are unable to let them go for fear of missing out on the greatest performance yet to come.

So what do you do with your Bowe, Ray Rice, Fitzgerald, Hakeem Nicks, Doug Martin, CJ.2K, etc? What about you 2QB leaguers stuck with Eli, Vick, or Kaepernick? The higher the expectations (read auction price or draft pick you used on them) the harder it is to bench or cut these guys.
First, you don't want to admit you were wrong about them; that activates parts of the brain that signal pain, called the insula and cingulate cortex. These are ancient, highly conserved neural networks that evolved to hone our ability to detect and avoid painful stimuli. Interestingly, the human brain responds to emotional pain, such as being wrong, being excluded, being criticized or put down, exactly like it responds to physical pain. It's a powerful system for motivating behavior.

Second, you don't want to risk anyone else reaping the rewards of your guy if you do cut him. You're afraid that as soon as you drop Martin, he'll be rushing for 130 yards and a score every week, taking someone else to your fantasy playoffs. You can just hear Doug {or insert your personal fantasy let down players here} singing in your ear, "you're gonna miss me when I'm gone...".

But will you miss him, really? Is the fear worse than the reality? Neuroeconomics helps us understand what neural patterns drive value-based consumer decisions. Can knowing that it is the fear of regret that drives our behavior at least as much, if not more than reward seeking help us make better fantasy decisions? For me, the balance is tipping more toward being afraid of regretting leaving unproductive players in my lineups next week.