Dynasty Command Center: Overcoming Bias, Groupthink, and Mere Ownership Effect in Player Valuation

This is not a typical Dynasty Command Center piece.  For those of you who haven’t read the series before, I typically choose a specific player, trade, or issue, dive in to the data, give you my analysis, and send you off with actionable instruction.

This piece is a departure from that construct.  The off-season is a natural time to think back on what you could have done differently in the previous season, so I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on how I could be a better player and a better analyst.  I amassed a collection of those reflections, which ultimately led me to spend countless hours developing a data-driven dynasty player valuation engine which assigns baseline value to players based on their production and start-ability rates (I have come to strongly feel the dynasty community doesn’t value production enough), and modifies that value through a series of equations to remove the flaws that plague human rankers attempting to perform case-by-case player grading. 

I’m going to unveil the results of that project with you soon.  But first, I’m going to make you walk the journey with me.

Overcoming Bias, Groupthink, and Mere Ownership Effect in Player Valuation

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Nobody can maintain constant objectivity.

I know, I know – you think you’re different (you aren’t).

When it comes to player valuation in dynasty football, we really aren’t much different than we are in our daily lives.  We tend to gravitate toward the youngest or newest talent.  We are easily swayed by the information we consume.  We possess a proclivity to value what we already own more than we really ought to. Bias, groupthink, and mere ownership effect are very real issues in the game we call a fantasy. 

Age Bias

The overwhelmingly prevalent bias in dynasty player valuation is age bias.  Discriminatory practices towards aging players, even if still useful, are rampant.  Sacrificing a key veteran warrants no second thought.  “Keep a player past his prime (presuming to even know what prime is…)?  No way!  This other player is four years younger and has so much upside, even if it hasn’t been shown on the field yet.” 

Age bias may have manifested itself in some owners based on the reasonable view that, if all other things are equal, the more remaining player years in aggregate an owner has on a roster, the higher the potential lifetime value of the players owned.  Alternatively, it could have manifested itself because the owner had an experience in which a roster core got old all at the same time, forcing a painful rebuild, after which the owner swore – never again!  Another potential cause of age bias is the preoccupation with rookie age upon entering the NFL; a 23-year-old rookie might as well have leprosy in the view of some owners.

My issue with age bias is that it can become an obsession; one that distracts an owner from ever accomplishing the actual goal of dynasty football, which is to win.  Most dynasty players I know tell me they either play to win every year, or play to win in the “three-year window”.  So why do we care about a player having four, five, six or ten more years left?  A player with so many years left until the age of decline can still be injured, be traded to a worse situation, have a coaching change or quarterback change, etc.  A severe case of age bias can cause an owner to be caught in a perpetual state of rebuilding, trying to assemble the perfect team of early career studs. 

In the financial world, managers might calculate “net present value” to evaluate competing capital projects.  You’ve probably heard of this before, even if you don’t realize it.  “A dollar tomorrow is worth less than a dollar today.”  I think this principle is easily transferable to the way we ought to play dynasty football. 

We ought to be very confident about when is the right time to start devaluing a player due to age.  Great studies on positional age of decline have been compiled using over 40 years of player data.  We should be leveraging that to weight player values in an intelligent way. 

To-Do:

Develop a position-sensitive weighted value model which modifies a player’s worth based on remaining years from age of decline and consideration of position-sensitive prime age.

Pedigree Bias

Assuming equivalent levels of production, how many of you think an early career player who was drafted in the first round ought to be valued more than an early career player drafted in the fifth round?  I certainly do.

I think it makes sense to value draft pedigree early in a player’s career.  Players drafted in the first three rounds typically possess the combination of physical traits and college production that makes us feel safer about their long-term prospects in the NFL.  If a first round rookie finishes as a top 24 wide receiver, most of us would feel comfortable with the idea of that player turning in many more seasons with that type of production.  We probably watched that player frequently on Saturdays as a premier college prospect, and his early production is simply confirming what we already assumed to be true.  However, if an undrafted rookie free agent turn in similar production, we are probably looking for reasons to call it a fluke.  Each player gets valued in trades and startup average draft position accordingly.

But what about when that undrafted rookie free agent is producing top 24, or even top 12 seasons into his late twenties?  Does his draft pedigree matter anymore?  I don’t think it should.  However, if you were to look up and down our dynasty rankings, there are examples where pedigree bias is still holding down the value of a player like this.

To-Do:

Develop an equation which reinforces pedigree bias early in player careers, but eliminates it later in player careers.

Groupthink and Paying on Spec

Groupthink is a phenomenon in which a group of people, in our case the dynasty community, strongly desires to have harmony and it results in irrational decision making. 

One highly respected expert suggests a middling player could have a breakout year based on a change in situation or favorable data trend.  Soon, several more experts concur, adding more compelling analysis.  A month later, the player’s ADP has risen several rounds, based on nothing more than intelligent speculation.  Meanwhile, players with proven track records of production and stable situations are left in the ADP rearview mirror.  It happens all the time.

To protect against groupthink, blind player analysis is needed.  Consistent production and realized opportunity should be valued at a premium. 

To-Do:

Guard against unsubstantiated groupthink by developing a new metric which adjusts player value based on multiple opportunity factors.  Guard against overvaluing risky players by penalizing them for significant number of missed games.

Mere Ownership Effect

We value what we own more than we should in comparison to things that aren’t already in our possession.  That’s mere ownership effect in a nutshell, and it’s a big problem in dynasty player valuation.

Be honest, really honest.  How many times have you turned down a fair, mutually beneficial trade because you didn’t want to give up that waiver wire gem you had the genius to pick up before anybody else?  Yea, I lost count too.  I do my best to avoid it, but try as I may, I inevitably assign “extra” value to certain players based on circumstantial information that is not meaningful to another owner.  This irrational, emotional attachment clouds our judgement and causes us to miss out on trades that could make our rosters better.  Not only do we miss out on that specific trade opportunity, but we might miss out on future trade opportunities because the other owner thinks we aren’t fairly valuing the players on each side of the deal. 

Mere ownership effect can get into the heads of dynasty rankers, too.  Dynasty rankers are people too, and that means they aren’t perfect.  A pet player can quickly become a big personal portfolio stake, and suddenly the player climbs outlier-high in a ranker’s list, based not entirely on meaningful analysis.  Oh, and remember what I said about groupthink?  What do you think happens when other dynasty rankers see a respected dynasty ranker rank a player higher than they expect to see?

To-Do:

Produce a player value which allows for direct comparison of a player’s worth based on production, remaining years from age of decline, pedigree, risk, and adjusted opportunity.

Final Thoughts

I’m certainly not the first person to ever desire a less-biased player valuation system in dynasty.  I know any system devised, no matter the total effort, and consultation invested, is not going to be entirely foolproof.  A machine can’t adjust for team situational factors, such as how a quarterback near retirement age could negatively impact the value of his receivers, or how a new offensive coordinator might impact game flow and base opportunity rates of various players.  However, generating blind player values rooted in the things that really matter about a dynasty investment might help to us get to a smarter starting place, and hopefully lead us to invest our dynasty capital in the right players, for the right reasons.

In the next submission, I’ll share how I developed a player production baseline value and various modifier values to address the issues outlined in this article.  Subsequently, I’ll take you through positional ranks which were created by my rankings engine, and hopefully, we’ll start seeing player values in a more objective way than ever.  Soon, these new player ranks will become part of our menu at DLF, and you’ll be able to see how this objective model views players differently than our human rankers.  I can guarantee you’ll be surprised at some of the results.

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