Refining Processes: Quantifying Subjectivity
Dynasty is a game of trial and error. There is no such thing as the “perfect strategy”. I can almost guarantee that you will make mistakes. We are all relatively bad at this game we play, because predicting the future is hard. All we can really hope for is to be marginally better than our league mates when it comes to making decisions. This Refining Processes series is aimed at improving our decision-making processes through experimentation. Some avenues we explore may be completely fruitless, while others may yield useful results. Regardless of the outcome, there will still be many valuable lessons to learn along the way. It’s all part of the journey to becoming a better dynasty manager.
What Informs Your Opinion?
A big part of the appeal of playing fantasy is the ability to call the shots, constantly making decisions to improve your team. For most players, the content they consume plays a large role in shaping their decision-making process. That’s natural — after all, consuming content is one of the most efficient ways to sharpen your skills as a dynasty manager, outside of gaining experience through playing the game.
Think of it this way: fantasy analysts spend countless hours researching stats and breaking down film. When you tune into your favorite podcast or fantasy show, you’re essentially delegating much of the hard work. Instead of diving deep into the details like analysts do, you can take a broader approach — drawing from multiple trusted sources to inform your own opinions.
The real skill here lies in selecting the most valuable content and determining how to mentally weigh each source. Think of it as curating your own dynasty content diet, where the better you construct it, the more informed you will be. The key to a good dynasty diet is to seek out content that approaches the game differently than you do which in turn helps to minimize your blind spots.
Making Room For Subjective Opinion
Personally, I’ve leaned heavily on data as a core part of my process. But as I dove deeper into statistical modeling, I became increasingly aware of its limitations. Football is a relatively new sport with limited historical data. With this, overfitting becomes a major issue, as the past rarely perfectly represents the future.
Additionally, it’s easy to fall into the trap of ecological fallacy — assuming trends apply universally when, in reality, every player and situation is unique. This nuance is often lost in modeling, making it crucial to balance data with context.
As you might have guessed, my approach has evolved over time into a more holistic one. While I still have a strong understanding of data, I now heavily incorporate opinions from trusted individuals in the film space. I would say this shift in philosophy has become my greatest strength — now, I see my ability to navigate a spreadsheet as more of just an added bonus.
Ultimately, this is just a shift in how I shape my opinions. Since I can’t go back in time to compare my past and present perspectives to measure the impact of this change, I find myself wondering — how can we determine whether your opinions are truly useful?
Putting a Number to Opinion
In the previous article of this series, we established that a good rule of thumb for valuing players in dynasty is to focus mainly on talent. I also touched on the importance of tracking your thoughts. Doing so helps you identify mistakes and learn from them. Without a record of your initial evaluations, it’s easy to develop selective memory — remembering only what you got right while overlooking your mistakes. This can slow your growth as a dynasty manager and as a person in general. If you believe you always get everything right, there’s no motivation to improve and that’s why tracking your opinions is essential.
How you choose to track your opinions will vary from manager to manager. Sticking with the theme of talent from the previous article, the approach I’ve settled on is assigning players Madden-style overall ratings, which serve as a snapshot of how I currently perceive a player’s talent level.
The main reason for using the Madden ratings scale is that it’s a familiar system that’s easy for most people to understand. To clarify, there are no individual ratings that make up the overall score — it’s simply an overall rating based on your perception of the player’s talent level. This approach is intended to keep things simple and efficient. If the process becomes too tedious, it’s easy to push aside and not update it as much as you should.
One of the best aspects of this process is that you don’t have to spend much time updating ratings. These are talent ratings after all, and a player’s talent generally doesn’t change drastically over time. Of course, you don’t want them to get too outdated, but for the most part, updates can be relatively rare, making this system easy to stick with.
Once your initial ratings are set, the process becomes surprisingly simple. From there, it’s mostly about making adjustments and adding incoming rookies each year. Ideally, you’ll update the ratings over time as you gather more information, allowing the system to reflect your evolving view of player talent over time.
A Whole New World Of Possibilities
This framework for tracking our opinions about player talent is super exciting. (At least to me.) Having a history of talent ratings opens the door to testing their usefulness in various ways.
For example, you could examine the correlation between your ratings and fantasy production over time, or subtract your player talent ratings from their actual production to estimate the impact of their situation.
Another intriguing possibility is using data to model your player talent evaluations. There may be stats that consistently align with your opinions over time. By doing this, you could create an expected rating model based on stats and compare it to your actual ratings, helping to highlight any discrepancies. These discrepancies can then be further investigated.
These are just a few ideas to get started — there are likely even more use cases I haven’t even thought of yet.
The Value Of Tracking Subjective Opinion
Many might be skeptical about whether tracking subjective opinions is worth the effort. I share some of that skepticism, but I believe it’s worth exploring. At the very least, it offers an opportunity for self-scouting and learning from your mistakes.
In the fantasy community, I’ve noticed that some completely dismiss subjective analysis, viewing it as less valuable than objective data. However, I see it as just another data point — one that can be just as valuable as any other when applied correctly. I believe it is up to us as decision-makers to incorporate a variety of data points to paint a more complete picture. After all, subjectivity isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you can show it’s predictive.
analytical insights. He draws strong inspiration from the likes of
Adam Harstad and DLF's own, Peter Howard.
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