Expected Playoff Games Played

Photo: Dale Zanine, USA Today Sports

In postseason fantasy football, predicting the correct number of games played for each team is crucial. This article, now in its eighth year, uses statistics to do just that. If you're interested in checking out past results, click any or all of the following links to previous installments:

• 2014
• 2015
• 2016
• 2017
• 2018
• 2019
• 2020

Long story short with respect to methodology, I collect data from various sources (Football Outsiders, FiveThirtyEight, ESPN, Vegas Insider, Pro Football Reference and Pro Football Focus) and do some math to estimate each playoff team's probability of playing exactly one game, exactly two games, exactly three games, or exactly four games. (If you want to explore the gory methodological details, click on any or all of the above links.)

EXPECTED PLAYOFF GAMES PLAYED

Below is a table showing all probabilities for each of the 14 playoff teams, both in terms of normal postseason fantasy rules (EXP G) and "Super Bowl counts double" rules (ADJ EXP G):

The main takeaway for playoff fantasy is that drafting Chiefs is a potential cheat code. Their 2.70 Expected Games is the highest since I've been doing these calculations. To boot, my math has only projected two previous teams for 3.00 or more Adjusted Expected Games -- 2016 Patriots (3.05) and 2019 Ravens (3.09) -- and both of those teams were 14-2 juggernauts almost guaranteed to play three games in the previous playoff format. (The Patriots did. The Ravens did not.)

Of course, everyone in your playoff fantasy league will be targeting Chiefs, so perhaps there's a sneakier edge to be found somewhere on the table. In that case, I'll hang my hat on drafting Cowboys and 49ers in hopes of emerging from Wild Card weekend with either the NFC 3-seed with an outsized probability of playing four playoff games ... or the team that upsets them. Not to mention the actual football of it all, what with both Dallas and San Francisco having multiple offensive playmakers.

PROJECTED PLAYOFF FANTASY POINTS

For the vast majority of non-running backs, I've used the player's scoring average along with their expected game totals above to calculate the expected FFPC points for both standard (Points) and "Super Bowl counts double" (Adjusted Points) contests. (Exceptions are indicated by asterisks.) For running backs, the position has been and remains so beset by uncertainty because of injuries, COVID, etc., that only 5 of the 14 playoff backfields -- Buffalo, Cincinnati, Dallas, Green Bay, and New England -- have in-season scoring averages that are reliable for playoff projection purposes. In my best attempt to resolve this, I've used Footballguys' Snap Counts tool to do some research about what each team's backfield timeshare is likely to look like in the playoffs, and have adjusted running back averages accordingly. (They're also indicated by asterisks.) With all of that said, my 2021 playoff fantasy projections are displayed in the table below:

Good luck in all your postseason fantasy endeavors!

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