What is “Expected Fantasy Points”?

Simply put, its a players “weighted fantasy opportunities”.

Have you ever wondered:
“How much is each Red Zone target worth compared to a non-red zone target?”
"What about Rush Attempt versus Red Zone Rush Attempt?
Who would you rather have?

• WR A who has 90 Targets but only 6 Red Zone targets, or
• WR B who has 78 Targets and 9 Red Zone Targets?

Who is the better fantasy asset?

Well, I looked at the last 4 years of Points per:

• Pass Attempt
• Rush Attempt
• Target

For each position, and included both Red Zone stats, and non Red Zone stats, to then created formulas to determine the expected points each person should have scored, based on their opportunities (touches). I also included PPG position rank given that better players produce more per touch than average players.

Simplified Example:

Over the last 4 years, the PPG QB1 averaged:

• 1.23 points per Red Zone Pass Attempt
• 2.08 points per Red Zone Rush Attempt
• .41 points per Green Zone Pass Attempt
• .54 points per Green Zone Rush Attempts

Through Week 10, Jalen Hurts (QB1) has:

• 30 Red Zone Pass Attempts
• 28 Red Zone Rush Attempts
• 275 Green Zone Pass Attempts
• 60 Green Zone Rush Attempts

Given this data, we can expect that Jalen Hurts SHOULD HAVE produced around 233 points with this workload. He has actually produced 213 points. About 92% of his expected points. If he continues his workload, I see no reason he couldn’t average 25 PPG rest of season… Basically its not a fluke!

How to use this:

You can view this report like a “Weighted Touches” report. It tells you who is getting the opportunities, and not just opportunities but the high qualify opportunities! (red zone).

Hopefully this will help identify players who in fantasy points are outproducing what we would expect from their opportunities, and are LIKELY to see negative regression (Possible Sell-High Candidates!).

Also this will help identify players who are getting the opportunities which SHOULD lead to higher fantasy production (Possible Buy-Low!) if their current level of opportunities continues.

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Back-Testing Model 2022: Expected Points: Full 2022 Season

Evaluating this model, I compared the correlations of Actual Points vs my “Expected Points” for 2022 and got these results:

• QB: .96 correlation
• RB: .98 correlation
• WR: .92 correlation
• TE: .91 correlation (removing Taysom Hill).

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Expected Points: Weeks 8-10

Expected Points: Full 2023 Season