In prior posts, we demonstrated how to download projections from numerous sources, calculate custom projections for your league, and compare the accuracy of different sources of projections (2013, 2014, 2015). In the latest version of our annual series, we hold the forecasters accountable and see who had the most and least accurate fantasy football projections over the last 4 years.
The R Script
You can download the R script for comparing the projections from different sources here. You can download the historical projections and performance using our Projections tool.
To compare the accuracy of the projections, we use the following metrics:
Whose Predictions Were the Best?
The results are in the table below. We compared the accuracy for projections of the following positions: QB, RB, WR, and TE. The rows represent the different sources of predictions (e.g., ESPN, CBS) and the columns represent the different measures of accuracy for the last four years and the average across years. The source with the best measure for each metric is in blue.
| Source | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | Average | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R2 | MASE | R2 | MASE | R2 | MASE | R2 | MASE | R2 | MASE | |
| Fantasy Football Analytics: Average | .670 | .545 | .567 | .635 | .618 | .577 | .626 | .553 | .620 | .578 |
| Fantasy Football Analytics: Robust Average | .667 | .549 | .561 | .636 | .613 | .581 | .628 | .554 | .617 | .580 |
| Fantasy Football Analytics: Weighted Average | .626 | .553 | – | – | ||||||
| CBS Average | .637 | .604 | .479 | .722 | .575 | .632 | .500 | .664 | .548 | .656 |
| EDS Football | .554 | .651 | .584 | .624 | .569 | .638 | ||||
| ESPN | .576 | .669 | .500 | .705 | .498 | .723 | .615 | .585 | .547 | .671 |
| FantasySharks | .529 | .673 | – | – | ||||||
| FFtoday | .661 | .551 | .550 | .646 | .530 | .659 | .546 | .626 | .572 | .621 |
| FOX Sports | .459 | .720 | .550 | .677 | .505 | .699 | ||||
| NFL.com | .551 | .650 | .505 | .709 | .518 | .692 | .582 | .632 | .539 | .671 |
| numberFire | .486 | .712 | .560 | .643 | .523 | .678 | ||||
| RTSports | .547 | .670 | – | – | ||||||
| WalterFootball | .472 | .713 | .431 | .724 | .452 | .719 | ||||
| Yahoo | .547 | .645 | .635 | .554 | .591 | .600 | ||||
Here is how the projections ranked over the last four years (based on MASE):
- Fantasy Football Analytics: Average (or Weighted Average)
- Fantasy Football Analytics: Robust Average
- Yahoo
- FFtoday
- EDS Football
- CBS Average
- RTSports
- ESPN
- NFL.com
- FantasySharks
- numberFire
- FOX Sports
- WalterFootball
Notes: CBS estimates were averaged across Jamey Eisenberg and Dave Richard. FantasyFootballNerd projections were not included because the full projections are subscription only. We did not calculate the weighted average prior to 2015. The accuracy estimates may differ slightly from those provided in prior years because a) we now use standard league scoring settings (you can see the league scoring settings we used here) and b) we are …read more
Source:: r-bloggers.com