On a scale of 1-to-Flex, where do your fantasy starters land?
Point benchmarking by position tier in standard and PPR fantasy leagues for Running Back, Wide Receiver, Tight End and Flex
Listen to our Ep. 8 Week 4 Waivers and Benchmarking Fantasy Outliers Podcast to hear what the Daves think
When I started playing fantasy football, I had no real idea how good my players were. Sure, if they scored in the 20’s, I assumed that was good, but how good? If my RB2 scored 10 points in a 12-team PPR league, was that good, bad, or average? What about my 8-team standard league? You get what I’m saying. I had no good quality benchmarks to base my decisions off of.
Still, after a few years of playing, I’m not much better off. Until now. Enter the most exciting fantasy football article you’ll ever read:
Fantasy football point benchmarking by positions by tier!!
Before I go any further, I just want to say that while 20’s are good, 30’s are even better — just sayin’.
Our methodology
Woo hoo! If you’re as into fantasy football as we are here at Fantasy Outliers, you should be excited about this. Here’s our process:
- Analyze 8-, 10-, and 12-team standard, half-PPR, and PPR leagues with QB, 2 RB’s, 2 WR’s, TE, Flex (RB/WR/TE), K, and D/ST
- Look at actual fantasy football play data from 2008/2010 (depending on the league format) through 2016 of competitive leagues
- For each scoring format for each league analyzed for each team in that league for each week in the regular season (1–13); tag each player as the top scoring player in that position group that week on their team (e.g. RB1); the second highest scoring player in that position that week on their team (e.g. RB2); and then, the Flex position as the 3rd RB, 3rd WR or 2nd TE, depending on the starters
- Analyze the points scored distributions by position and tier
The concept of ‘what constitutes an RB1?’ can be a little murky to define. Some players are considered RB1’s one week and RB2’s another, and while most people start what they think will be their RB1 in the top RB slot in their lineup, that’s not always the case. So, instead, we answered the question:
How many points has the best performing RB (or WR or TE) on a given week on a given team in a competitive league scored on average?
Standard 10-Team Position Tier Benchmarks
Again, we ran this analysis for 8-, 10-, and 12-team standard, half-PPR, and PPR leagues — that’s 9 total combinations. Here, we’ll discuss 10-team standard and PPR formats only. If you’re interested in another format, they’re all available on our website — the Points by Tier graph (just click on “8TmHalfPPR” above the section, for example).
In the table below, I would pay more attention to the “Median Points”, since extremely high scores tend to bring up the average a bit.
So after two weeks in the 2017 regular season, C.J. Anderson, Leonard Fournette, and Devonta Freeman are all averaging RB1 numbers whereas Kareem Hunt and Todd Gurley are averaging above the RB1 medians. Obviously, just two weeks is a small sample size.
As you can see from the point distributions by tier, there is a wider range of the ones — RB1, WR1, and TE1 — and much more narrow ranges for RB2, WR2, and Flex. This suggests that..
Huge point advantages arise when pitting top tiered players against each other, whereas smaller point advantages/disadvantage come with the second tier and flex positions.
No surprises there, but here’s the cold hard evidence.
Also, keep in mind that players do not have to ‘average’ the RB1 median throughout the course of a season to be considered an RB1. Just like some celebrities think you can have different soul mates throughout your life, you can also have different RB1s throughout the course of a fantasy football season. (I happen to disagree with the different soul mates idea, but I’m also not a Hollywood celebrity.)
PPR 10-Team Position Tier Benchmarks
Same deal here, but for PPR instead of standard scoring.
Again, keep in mind that there is so much week-to-week variability, you shouldn’t expect your top performers to average these amounts. Even Rob Gronkowski in 2011 had a couple of down games which brought his averages down. Rather, you should be asking: how many weeks has this guy earned my team Tier 1 points (or Tier 2 or Flex)?
Think of these numbers as a reference for you throughout the season. There’s admittedly nothing earth shattering in here, but just having a better way to rate the players on your team will help you make decisions — it’s definitely not going to hurt.
We’ll talk about this in more detail on our upcoming Fantasy Outliers Podcast where we aim to give you weekly data-driven — and expert interpreted — weekly waiver wire, start/sit, and strategic advice. Join us. We’re a startup and we’re having lots of fun.
