It's time once again for our preseason series on True Fantasy Points (TFP), which enters its fourth season on Footballguys. Readers can consult previous years for a more thorough explanation of the methodology (2015, 2016, 2017), but the basic idea underlying the system is that, although most fantasy football players are aware of regression to the mean, most don't know how to adjust projections for small sample sizes mathematically. For example, most know that DeShaun Watson's stratospheric per-attempt stats last season must come back down to Earth, but most simply guess at how much they'll fall. (More on that later.)
With the hard part done (i.e., making the above calculations), the rest is easy. It's just multiplying these "true" rate stats by David Dodds' volume projections in order to obtain stat totals, and then applying Footballguys' standard scoring system to said stat totals. The final result is TFP, which can be thought of as an answer to the question, "How many fantasy points would a player score if we could mathemagically eliminate luck from the equation?"
But why ask the question in the first place? Well, it's so that you can properly value players in your draft(s). A player whose TFP is lower than Dodds' standard point projection is likely being selected earlier than they should be, and vice versa.
Speaking of which, below is a table showing Dodds' projections, TFP, and their difference for 25 starting quarterbacks returning to their 2017 team:
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Dodds' Stats | True Stats | Points | |||||||
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Quarterback
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Team | Yards | TDs | INTs | Yards | TDs | INTs | Dodds | TFP | Diff |
| PHI | 3579 | 26 | 9 | 3393 | 23 | 12 | 301.0 | 276.5 | +24.4 | |
| DET | 4031 | 26 | 11 | 3900 | 24 | 13 | 313.3 | 295.9 | +17.4 | |
| LAR | 4011 | 25 | 12 | 3773 | 24 | 13 | 304.4 | 288.2 | +16.1 | |
| KC | 3883 | 25 | 15 | 3764 | 23 | 13 | 304.6 | 291.6 | +13.0 | |
| IND | 3646 | 26 | 14 | 3527 | 24 | 13 | 306.8 | 294.3 | +12.5 | |
| JAX | 3469 | 23 | 13 | 3421 | 21 | 14 | 290.1 | 280.1 | +9.9 | |
| MIA | 3567 | 23 | 15 | 3522 | 21 | 13 | 273.4 | 265.2 | +8.2 | |
| OAK | 3727 | 24 | 12 | 3591 | 25 | 12 | 282.0 | 278.3 | +3.6 | |
| ATL | 4184 | 23 | 13 | 3989 | 25 | 12 | 304.2 | 300.8 | +3.4 | |
| PIT | 4135 | 29 | 13 | 4234 | 27 | 14 | 312.0 | 310.1 | +1.8 | |
| NO | 4229 | 29 | 11 | 4215 | 29 | 13 | 321.4 | 320.5 | +0.9 | |
| DAL | 3306 | 24 | 14 | 3433 | 22 | 11 | 298.7 | 298.4 | +0.3 | |
| TB | 3230 | 20 | 11 | 3284 | 20 | Photos provided by Imagn Images
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