A Novel Approach

4 months ago

Believe it or not, we are finally on the verge of the NFL regular season. The Baltimore Ravens face off against the Kansas City Chiefs tonight down in Arrowhead Stadium. My guess is more people are going to concerned about whether not Taylor Swift is in attendance than they are about the Chiefs.

Despite their Superbowl victory last year, I have been saying for a while now that the Chiefs are over rated. Their play has been inconsistent and I think a lot of their victories have come down to luck versus actually being good. Either that or some charity on behalf of the officials. I'm not entirely ruling that out either.

Mahomes is great, no question. Is he as good as he used to be? No. Does he get coddled by the refs? Yes. I still honestly believe if the Lions had been able to make it past San Francisco, they would have likely been able to easily beat Kansas City in the Superbowl.

Once we get the excitement of tonight out of the way, things really heat up tomorrow when the NFL heads down to Sao Paulo Brazil for the Packers/Eagles game. We are fairly used to NFL games being played across the pond in the UK or Europe by now, but this move to South America is certainly a leap. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out and how well it is or isn't received by the populace.

Meanwhile, I have more important things to worry about. No matter what the people of South America think about American Football, my fantasy league kicks into full gear tonight and I have to decide what players to keep in my roster and which ones to move to the bench.

I was kicking around the idea the other day of letting some form of AI determine my starting lineup for me. I have seen things where you can have AI help with your draft, but since that is completed already, that doesn't really impact me.

It seems like I always play the wrong players from week to week. I thought it might be cool if you could just enter your roster, say which week it was, and have the "AI" tell you which players to play. I was talking to @mrsbozz about it the other day and I mentioned that people in the league might get mad if I did that. She pointed out, how would they know unless you told them.

In fact, anyone in the league could be using AI for the competition and none of us would ever know. Given the amount of chance involved in games, I have a great deal of doubt that even the best AI right now could run the table in a fantasy league. If that were to happen, it would be pure luck or coincidence, not because of some algorithmic assumption.

It actually looks like I don't have any players playing until Sunday in my league, so I still have a bit of time to decide what I am going to do. With the games starting after 8 PM tonight and tomorrow night, there is a good chance I won't be awake to see them finish up!

What are your thoughts on using AI to help with my fantasy league. Have you seen a tool like that? How accurate do you think it would be? Would you use it? I'm curious to know your thoughts!