My IDP Off-Season Calendar

Tom Kislingbury Posted On March 23, 2017

As I write this, it’s the middle of March. It’s been six weeks since the Super Bowl and it’s another 23 until the season kicks off again. In the dynasty world, we are total degenerates who think and talk football all year around, so I thought I’d put together how I spend my off-season. A lot of this is the same as non-IDP, but given we need to know about a much higher number of players I believe it changes things a bit.

January

After the regular season is over I start updating my information. I track snaps per player per week all through the season so I can spot trends happening, but in January I link back all that snap data to the newly-finalised production data; which gives efficiency. For the first time, I have solid information on which players managed to do the most with their playing time. I also use this time to merger the season just completed with past seasons’ data. I’ve got a lovely spreadsheet that tracks all defensive stats (including tackles/fumbles/etc. made on special teams) back to 2010, so I can see long term trends very easily.

Of course, I’m also enjoying the NFL playoffs!

February

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After the Super Bowl I generally have a bit of time off. It’s nice to bask in the pure joy and drama of real life football sometimes and just be a fan. After a week or two it’s back to work trying to find an edge on my league-mates.

This is when I start actually analyzing the information I have. The reason I care about efficiency so much rather than pure production is that I believe it has more predictive power. By benchmarking what the likes of Danielle Hunter and Landon Collins did on limited snaps in 2015, we could see their emergence as elite options in 2016.

I’ll also ramp up my rookie analysis in February. Historically I haven’t watched college football in the actual season (with no allegiance it’s remarkably dull) so I have a lot of players to catch up on and get my head around. I’ll typically try to get 100-150 players solidly fixed before the build-up to the NFL draft. In real terms that means about 15-20 players a week from February onwards. As many people do, I try to start off as much in a vacuum as possible before comparing what I thought about players to what others do.

March

I’ll continue to watch rookies and get my big board in place. I tend not to have single lists of how good/bad players are because with IDPs so much depends on scheme. Pass rushers landing in 4-3 or 3-4 schemes is the obvious example but safeties being drafted by 2-deep compared to cover 1/3 schemes is just as important for me.

I’ll continue to analyse data from the season just gone. For example at the moment I’m trying to work out of I believe players like Joey Bosa, Elandon Roberts or Miles Killebrew can maintain their efficiency with larger snap counts.

After free agency, I’ll also start to build out my early predictions for playing time for the following season. Nothing will be set in stone, but the major players will be mostly clear at this stage along with changes in coaching schemes. This is where some of the data I mentioned earlier comes in handy, as I can use historical trends to work out which defensive coordinators are good news for which players. A good example is Gregg Williams’ tendency to rely on two core LBs as prime pieces: great news for Christian Kirksey and Jamie Collins.

April

Most of this will be taken up the build-up to the draft. I like to be in a good place knowing approximate relative values early in the month because I’m fascinated by leagues that hold their rookie drafts before the NFL draft. In those you can’t just pick a Darron Lee or Karl Joseph that got drafted in round one – you really need to know which players have pure talent.

As soon as the draft is over I’ll start working out which players move up and down my rookie rankings based on draft capital and landing spot. Obviously players that look close to high snaps are immediately enticing but being behind ageing starters or those in contract years can also be beneficial.

May

I’ll continue here to get a really good idea of how I think playing time will shake out for the coming season. At this stage that mostly means how close are rookies to playing time? How much does the staff on certain teams like to rely on young players? For example, the Bengals and Vikings really don’t like to play rookies. The Bears are surprisingly willing to do so.

Rookie drafts kick in here as well, and my goal is to be the most prepared person in the room. In the later rounds when people start to snatch at cornerbacks and defensive tackles whose names they know, I’ll be grabbing high-upside players who I believe can contribute. Nick Kwiatkowski, Chris Jones, Yannick Ngakoue and Kevin Byard last year were good examples of where I think preparation can give me the edge I’m looking for.

June

Where May is about grabbing talent, June is about finding value in veterans. In many contract/salary leagues I’m participating in free agency here and this is where great value can be had. Most FF players are still all excited about the new rookies and predicting veterans to be relegated to also-ran status. Of course that’s not always true, and veterans without sexy names can often be secured very cheaply.

July

As training camp kicks in I’ll have already identified key battles to monitor. So instead of trying to follow all 32 teams I can concentrate on the situations where I think an unknown player can secure value. Last season this was when Zach Orr, Todd Davis, and Tahir Whitehead all become key pickups. If you signed two or three of them chances are you had an excellent linebacking corps with very little outlay whilst the person in your league who spent a second round rookie pick on Reggie Ragland cried himself to sleep.

August

This is when I’ll make sure all my data is ready to go. I’ll have all the players for the season ahead set up in my snaps spreadsheet correctly. One key part of this is making sure everyone has their correct MFL designated position. I want my own rankings to accurately reflect their value in IDP leagues. So as Breeze moves people around based on pre-season play, my own data must be accurate. Then I’m ready for the season to begin and all the data to start to filter through. Many IDP players won’t make changes until too late – or will make them too early based on faulty data. If I can be smarter than them in the very early season I can get enough of an edge that will give me a tangible benefit each and every week.

So there you have it. When DLF say there is no off-season, there truly isn’t in the IDP world. Approximately 1,000 IDPs record data each and every season and we need to use all that data to understand where the new success stories will come from. Of course they aren’t all fantasy-relevant, but it’s important to understand the distribution of statistics between the stars and the support cast.

I don’t think for a moment that this is the sort of process anyone should do because they think they can find an extra player or two off waivers each season. I do all the analysis because I like to think I’m a kind of football detective. In the IDP world the answers are there in plain sight – it’s just a case of working out which information is meaningful and which isn’t. My goal is to know what actually happens in the IDP world so I can use that information against the people in your league’s that rely on what they think happens. And hopefully this season I’ll be sharing that information with you.

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Tom Kislingbury

Contributor at Dynasty League Football

Being from England Tom only discovered American Football in the late 90s. From there he's gone from casual defender to devoted obsessive and likes to delve into deep data primarily about defensive players. He spends his days trying to pretend the spreadsheets and graphs he makes about football are actually work for his day job. No-one is fooled.

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