Lineup Advice: Week 15 – Post Season Edition
Week 15 (Playoffs)
I hope your teams are in the playoffs and that my advice has helped you along the way, without too many catastrophic misses.
I fully understand when offering lineup advice that many of you will take it as gospel and may even change your already-chosen starting lineup based on my advice. It just comes with the territory and despite all the work I put in for each question, checking upwards of 15 variables to help to narrow down a decision, there’s just no way to get 100% accuracy. In many situations, a play is truly a coin flip. But there’s nothing worse than that early game injury that essentially blows a prediction out of the water before it even had a chance to play out. It happens.
In any case, I do also go back and review some of my incorrect calls to see if I could have picked up on something that would have changed my opinion/research. It is through that effort, following a lot of effort on the front end, that allows me to further hone my skills with lineup advice. I do feel each incorrect advice question, either way.
By reading this column over the many, many, years that I’ve been offering it, you probably already have a good idea of “what would Jeff say?” for each question. My style before going down the rabbit-hole on the specific question(s) always starts with what we know about a player’s role. Snaps equals opportunity. Touches equals more opportunity. Trend plus touches even more opportunity on top of that. Then, at the bottom of the rabbit hole are those little variables, nuances and obscure data details which could influence the decision. This is the game I play each week with each of your questions and why I also ask you to please keep them to as few as possible. In some cases, if you ask me if you should starter Parker Washington over DeAndre Hopkins, I’m probably not going to go down the rabbit hole on it. Over the years, it’s easy to tell when the bottom of the hole isn’t going to produce enough variables to have me suggest a “no-trend” player over a starting option player. Can this player outperform the proven starter? Yes. Will I recommend it? Very, VERY, rarely.
I just wanted you to highlight more of what goes into my advice each week for better understanding of my process. And, it may also have been more on my mind recently after receiving an email with a soft under-current suggestion that my advice is just guessing. I’d be lying if, sometimes, that isn’t the case and as I mentioned in my response, I always try to point out when a decision is akin to a coin flip.
I say much of this because we are in the fantasy playoffs now and you can expect that I’ll be tightening up my lineup advice and decisions even more. When it counts most, I tend to stay even truer to my start your studs methodology, even if there is a questionable trend present. I will usually mention this and give the poster the okay to “go with your gut” if you think the trend is material enough to play. When it’s a one-and-done situation in the playoffs, I like my true starters going unless there’s something very material for me to suggest a departure from that M.O. This can be difficult when it involves difficult-trend players like DeAndre Hopkins, Terry McLaurin, Brian Robinson, Devin Singletary, Jordan Love, Josh Jacobs, etc. etc., but snaps + touches = opportunity and I’ll sleep much better at night knowing that my studs were in the game.
This is just a long and drawn out way of saying I get far less cute and trendy when it comes to the playoffs. For me to suggest a risky player over a material-snap player, there will need to be a very significant variable for me to get my arms around.
That all said … let’s do this!
Team Tracking
Week 14 saw my teams go 10-4, matching my record from week 13. Once again, though, a couple of those teams really needed to lose to help me secure a better draft seeding.
Overall, I’m 116-80 on the season, a 59.2% win percentage to end the regular season. Still below my 65% goal but given the state of some of my teams, I’m surprised it’s this high. I’ll take it. Of my 14 teams, 10 (71.4%) made the playoffs, just slightly below my low-bar 75% goal. Of those 10, seven were convincing finishers and three squeaked in. Due to late season injury to, and around, my primary players, I can’t say that I’m confident in many of these teams reaching the championship game. To clear the high bar goal for a championship game, six of these 10 teams would need to appear in the big game. Not likely.
All said, if you had told me mid-season that 10 of these teams would be in the playoffs, I would have scoffed at the notion. It’s just the “what is” of the situation related to me teams’ composition right now. Nothing wrong with that. As I’ve always said:  Bad things happen to good teams! Sometimes, good things happen to bad teams and this plagued me down the stretch as well, LOL.
Good luck this week! Play your best roster and do your part to keep your league competitive regardless of the state of your team.
Let’s get to the advice!
Lineup Advice Rules & Format
DLF continues to see growth in our membership and each year I continue to wonder how I’m going to keep up with all of your questions while also holding to a level of service and quality you’ve all come to expect from me. I’ve been VERY happy with my level of accuracy but, for that to occur, I need your help. Each question can take up to 10 minutes for me to research as I research up to a dozen different variables and trends. I do everything I can to get my answers correct. For that reason, I need you to read the following rules and guidelines to help me maintain efficiency:
- Please don’t ask me to set your entire lineup
- Put “TNF” as the top line for any question involving Thursday Night Football games
- Please also make sure to tell me who YOU would be starting if not for my advice. It helps me to understand your gut feeling(s).
- Include your scoring format (PPR, Non-PPR, etc.)
- Keep your questions as brief as possible – Story questions add a lot of time
- I prioritize questions involving the earliest (Thursday, etc.) games first. If I skip over your question, don’t worry, I’ll be back to it.
- It’s easy to miss responses to my responses in thread. When in doubt, always post a separate new question
Lastly, I work very hard to get my advice correct and I do not mail it in. When I’m wrong, I feel every incorrect answer so, go easy on me! That said, the DLF community has been absolutely fantastic to work with which is why I’m still doing this after so many years.
Have a great week! Have an even better season!
You can find Jeff on Twitter at @dlf_jeff
- Lineup Advice: Wrap-up, Thank You and Goodbye (TTFN) - January 1, 2024
- Lineup Advice: Week 17 – Championship Edition - December 26, 2023
- Lineup Advice: Week 16 – The “What is” Edition - December 19, 2023
