PlayThisGuy! Blog

Below is a Q&A with Nick who’s been using PlayThisGuy! for the past 2 seasons.

I started playing 13 years ago.  My first year playing was 1998 and I was the victim that year of a guy who was a fan of the Minnesota Vikings so he had Randall Cunningham, rookie Randy Moss, Chris Carter, and Robert Smith all on his roster.  The Vikings broke the NFL record for points that year, and my starting quarterback was Kordell Stewart of the Steelers.   Now I usually play in 1 or 2 leagues a year.

I heard an interview on NPR last year about PlayThisGuy! and was intrigued by the concept of holding rankings to an accuracy standard.  There was also an article on PlayThisGuy! in the Wall Street Journal that mentioned the variety of rankings and lists from “experts” who would produce weekly lists.  But, up until then I wasn’t aware of anything that would keep a tally of which experts were producing lists that ended up being compared to their results.  PlayThisGuy! was the first site to compare rankings from different sources and hold them up against real-life NFL results to determine which lists were likely to be most accurate.

For me, the two most beneficial aspects of the site are the consensus draft rankings and the weekly smart rankings by position.  The draft list from PlayThisGuy.com was great because I knew it would even out any wild outliers that may be in any other individual draft rankings.  I mostly use it as a tool to help me in our live player selection.  The truth is that most lists are fairly similar as far as who are amongst the first few picks, but as you get into the later rounds, it was nice having something that assisted me in not having a bad “draft reach”… the moment when you know someone has made a pick that is way out of line for the position in which the player was selected.  In a competitive fantasy league where the participants are experienced and know what they are doing, even one bad “draft reach” can be so detrimental that it’s difficult to overcome over the course of the year.

The thing about the site that is the most helpful to me are the weekly SMART Rankings.  As years have passed I have had less time to pour over lists of players and think about fantasy football.  The weekly smart rankings determine whose predictions are most likely to be accurate and then rank players according to likeliness of accurate prediction.  There’s no need to check out lists from multiple sources because the SMART Rankings look at multiple sources for you and pulls out the most accurate ones to make a list.  It’s been a big time saver for me, and has led me to good results over last season and so far this season.

Mostly I use the site on a weekly basis to see the overall rankings by position and consider adjusting my fantasy lineup accordingly.  If unhappy with my lineup or in need of a player, I sometimes look at the wire waivers rankings to see about who amongst the potential pool of free agents would be a good pickup for the remainder of the season.

Do you use PlayThisGuy! in an interesting way?  If so please let us know.