It’s time to bring the 2023 season to a close.
Here’s the plan: Do a run-through on Fantasy Championships Won, somehow don’t undermine the whole concept of FGW, and then announce the winners. Simple, right?
The framework for Fantasy Championships Won is fairly straightforward:
Playoff Odds (by dFGW) * Week 16 FGW Win % * Week 17 FGW Win %
I know what you’re thinkin’. Where’s Week 15?
It would be simpler if all fantasy leagues had a 6-team playoff – I believe that is the most common format, and I don’t think many people would disagree with that. Without the data behind that, though, I’m left approximating the impact of Week 15. Some leagues will have Week 15 as a regular season week (4-team playoffs and leagues with Week 18 championships), some leagues will have it as a playoff week in a 6-team format, some will even have a two-week-per-round fantasy playoff format.
I leave Week 15 as a regular season week because it’s a fair enough proxy for both “it’s the playoffs” and “it’s the regular season” formats. Here’s an example how:
Imagine you had a player with a dFGW of 0.12 for Week 15. That’s an increase in win percentage in that week from 50% to 62%.
In a standard playoff format, the player is increasing the advancement rate for his team by 12% – but only if the team is playing in the first round. With four teams playing in the first round in a 6-team format, that means it’s usually only 1/3 of teams active. It’s less than that for 6-team playoffs in a 14-team league. This drops the advance rate improvement to 4%, potentially dropped even more.
There’s a whole process to determining odds of making the fantasy playoffs. A player with a dFGW of 1.5 will have raised his team’s win expectation from 7.5 (0.500 record) to 9 – but you can’t just assume the team’s record will be 9-6 and thus in the playoffs. You have to consider the odds the team goes 10-5, 9-6, 8-7, 7-8 or worse, etc.
Without digging into that calculation, as well, in a Week 15 = regular season format, a dFGW score of 0.12 increases your chances of making a 4-team playoff starting in Week 16 by about 2%.
This 2% number is difference than the 4% number, obviously. If you guess the rate of 6-team playoff leagues is 50%, that means the “real” value for 0.12 dFGW in Week 15 should be about 3%. So we’d be off by 1%. This value would then be smaller for players with FGW numbers closer to zero, which is the vast majority of players.
The method isn’t perfect, but we’re not far off. Now, before every read is far off from the rest of this article, let’s get to the awards.
If you want a look at the Week 17 stats, here’s the link for my last FantasyPros FGW article of the season:
Playoff MVP
CeeDee Lamb with the huge playoffs takes the Playoff MVP award. CeeDee was the top player in all of fantasy in Week 17, and had a great Week 16 as well. He was so good that he gave you almost double the chances of winning your title as Christian McCaffrey.
Lamb’s playoffs were so good that I almost renamed the award the CeeDee Lamb Mint Jelly Bowl. Crap, that’s a better name than Davante Adams Apple Pie, isn’t it…
The next closest challenged to Lamb was Kyren Williams. ARSB and Puka Nacua also beat out McCaffrey, which is pretty ridiculous considering how far off the radar Nacua was to start the year.
Playoff LVP
Austin Ekeler, following in his teammate’s footsteps, decided that the Playoff LVP needs to stay in Los Angeles.
Ekeler becomes the first player to win two…Coby (?) Awards. While his numbers would be a bit different for dynasty formats, he has nearly cancelled the goodwill of 2022 for those rosters already.
Tony Pollard would have been a deserving pick for Playoff LVP, ironically as Lamb’s teammate.
Regular Season MVP
The award with essentially no suspense this year – partly because it was earned in Week 15 – was the Regular Season MVP Award.
Congrats to Christian McCaffrey for making us all wonder how ridiculous his scores would have been in 2019. If anyone has percent started data for years before 2021, let me know.
McCaffrey not only finished by extending a lead over Tyreek Hill, but he more than doubled the FGW scores of everyone outside the top 3. More than tripled anyone outside the top 8. What a year for the volume hog in San Fran.
Regular Season LVP
For another award that surprised no one, Najee Harris brought in the LVP award by a comfortable margin.
Winning by 0.28, he did the rare thing by actually extending his LVP lead in the last few weeks of the regular season. Usually players with seasons like Najee’s are getting benched by Week 13. Not Mr. Harris, he was still getting trotted out and was trotting all over your chances of winning each week.
One other takeaway from looking at this list – I’m pretty sure the baseline expectation for starting fantasy running backs will be coming down a bit next year.
Maximum ROI
Finally giving me a legitimate excuse for ditching the Plate of Promise award name, Ky(lo)ren Williams takes home the Maximum ROI award.
The list below shows excluded players, as well – McCaffrey and Lamb as first rounders are not eligible for Max ROI, while CeeDee already won an award. Still, nobody would disagree with Kyren being worthy of some hardware after this fantasy season. What a stud.
Maximum DOI
As bad as Najee had to be to earn LVP, he at least outscored replacement running backs for the most part this year. Joe Burrow, on the other hand, did not outscore replacement QBs, then required you to use replacement QB. He’s our winner of the Allen Robinson Bear Pelt.
Burrow’s closest challenger was actually Nick Chubb, whose chances of helping your fantasy team snapped like a cheese stick in Week 2.
If you drafted Joe Burrow, and you had more than 6 wins, good job. You outperformed expectations.
Wasted Value Champion
With an official award for it this year, Cole Kmet gets the Wasted Value award and gets to name it after himself.
This one is a real upset – De’Von Achane had the biggest benched week ever in Week 3 (scoring around 50 points with 0% started), and Gabe Davis did everything he could do to get you to bench him on his good weeks.
Kmet, despite how TE looked this year, was only started 4.04 times in the average fantasy league. A lot of his points did not come in those weeks, either.
The Sand Worm is a promotional piece for the board game Kemet: Blood and Sand. I imagine a Sand Worm would make a nice centerpiece.
That’s All, Folks
Fun fact for 2023:
In 2021, 5 players had a benched-FGW score of 0.5 or higher. In 2022, 9 players hit that mark. In 2023, a whopping 22 players checked that particular box of missed opportunity.
2023 was a crazy year. Hopefully you won a championship or two – but if not, there’s a saying I heard this year that might ease the paid a bit. Everything is either a good time or a good story. This fantasy year was nothing if not a good story.
I put together a YouTube clip video that some of you might enjoy. Warning: It’s a bit Byron-heavy and most of the funny fantasy insights come a bit later in the video. Link to that is below.
Enjoy the offseason, keep an eye for more one-off articles from Byron-Cobalt.com, and I’ll see you again in the preseason.
Byron Cobalt's Lazy Analysis 
Hey Byron,
Love your fantasy content… Especially this “Fantasy Games Won” series.
I was wondering if you have the season-long Total FGW data publicly (or privately) available for the last 3-4 seasons. My hope is to plot on the x-axis ADP (or auction price) with FGW on the y-axis to help discern which rounds / ranges are best to target certain positions.
I considered doing a similar analysis with fppg over replacement on the y, but I think your FGW would be much better.
Just comparing your EOY FGW results with preseason ADPs, it seems like we consistently undervalue QBs and TEs. Outside of Kelce, it’s not common to use a 1st on these positions. I’m wondering if FGW is revealing a consistent inefficiency in how we evaluate guys.
I would love to sift through the data, but if that’s not possible, I appreciate all of your work!
-Andrew
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Hi Andrew, check your email!
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