Use Standings Breakdown to Combat Luck in Fantasy Football

One of the frustrating things about fantasy football is the amount of luck involved in the game. To illustrate this point, I am going to use two of my teams this season to point out how unfair fantasy football is for most people.

In League A, a 14-team, H2H with some bonus points for yardage, I am third in the league in scoring yet find myself in a five-way tie for eighth place with a 2-4 record after six weeks. Here's how that happened:

Week 1 - Tied for third with 60 points and lost
Week 2 - Finished 12th with 36 points and lost
Week 3 - Finished third with 60 points and lost
Week 4 - Finished fifth with 52 points and lost
Week 5 - Tied for fifth with 52 points and won
Week 6 - Led the league with 83 points and won

With average luck, this team should be 5-1. Even with poor luck this team should be no worse than 3-3. Instead I find myself needing to go 5-2 the remainder of the year to have a good shot of making our deep playoffs.

Contrast that with League B, a 12-team H2H with minimal yardage points, six points for QB TDs and screwy scoring for defense. Here, despite being 10th in points scored, this team leads its division with a 4-2 record and is tied for the third-best mark in the league. Here's how that happened:

Week 1 - Tied for fourth with 53 points and won
Week 2 - Finished last with 31 points and lost
Week 3 - Finished ninth with 30 points and lost
Week 4 - Finished fifth with 54 points and won
Week 5 - Finished second with 63 points and won
Week 6 - Finished eighth with 44 points and won

On the surface, that does not seem too lucky, with only one week finishing with a win where a loss was deserved. However, luck manifested itself in other ways. In Week 6, I got to play versus the team that owned Peyton Manning while he was on a bye. In Week 5, I faced the team missing Matt Forte on bye, whose owner also left Ahmad Bradshaw (17 points) and Kellen Winslow (16) on his bench. In Week 4, I picked up a replacement defense, which delivered 20 points. My regular defense, the Steelers, gave me nine points the first three weeks combined.

And the good fortune continues in that league this week. The matchup is against the team that has scored the third most points in the league, yet I get to face him in the bye week of Maurice Jones-Drew. It will be the third straight week I face a team missing its first-round pick. The following week, I face the team second in the league in scoring but I will play him in a week where five of the players in his lineup this week are on bye, including Ben Roethlisberger and Randy Moss.

That's pretty lucky. But we are conditioned to think there is nothing to be done about this problem, that it is just the way it is with H2H leagues. But there is another way.

CBS Sports has a feature called Standings Breakdown, which gives your team's record versus all of the teams in the league as if you played them each week of the season. This is a pretty good indication of how good your team is, as it negates the advantage of playing a team when its best player is on a bye (because they will eventually play you when your top dog is sidelined, too) while also negating the advantage of being fortunate enough to play a team in the one week when it did not score many points.

Using the Standings Breakdown method, my team in League A has a 53-23-2 mark so far this season, good for a .692 winning percentage. In a 13-week season, a team with a .692 winning percentage would finish 9-4. Remember, this is the team that is 2-4.

Meanwhile, my team in League B has a 31-34-1 record, good for a .477 winning percentage. Over a 13-game season, a team with a .477 winning percentage would finish 6-7. Recall that this is the team that is 4-2.

The Standings Breakdown method of calculating wins and losses is an excellent way to keep the H2H format that many people like while also eliminating a good portion of the luck that others of us find so frustrating with fantasy football. And it has the added advantage of being superior to just using total points, as it rewards the teams that put up good point totals on a weekly basis, rather than the squads who went crazy with points in a couple of weeks during the season.

Meanwhile, if the fantasy football regular season ended after last week's games, I would be going to the playoffs in one of my two leagues. But it would be the wrong one. Some might note that it seems as if in the big picture, my luck has evened out, as I make the playoffs in as many leagues as I should in this example.

But the problem with that is the team that made the playoffs would likely get smoked in the first round, as both teams would be playing at full strength. And the team that was good enough to win will instead be sitting home due to rotten luck.