Fantasy football players invest a lot of time researching statistics to try to build their ideal squad. At the core of everything is decision-making, such as which players to draft and which starting lineups to roll with for the week. All the decisions come from a fine blend of human intuition, skill and an analytical mind. Being in the driving seat, getting a taste of the general manager role, is part of the overall great experience of playing.
But could AI step up and take over the role to the point where you could let it make the decisions for you? After all, AI has remarkable data-processing and pattern-recognition capabilities. It’s used not only in sports, but also in other fields where chance plays a big part, such as online casinos. For instance, AI can help you look up blackjack strategies or gather information on RTP (return to player) and slot mechanics. If you want to use a NetBet casino bonus or rewards from other licensed operators but can’t quite make sense of the promotion’s terms, you can simply ask AI to break it all down for you.
However, AI isn’t a magician; it simply organises and presents information, which can be helpful in almost any area, including when managing a Fantasy NFL team. Below, you’ll see how it can lend a hand.
The Initial Draft
Arguably, the most important time in a Fantasy Football campaign is the draft. This is where players build their rosters, and it’s essentially the foundation for what will happen throughout the campaign. The draft involves a lot of time-consuming research, and this seems an ideal area for AI to flex its muscles.
AI could handle massive banks of player data, such as receptions, passing yards, injury history, efficiency ratings and a lot more. But where it could really shine is that it could take all those past performance metrics and start to look at the numbers adjusted for age, and how new players may fit into a system after being traded to a new team.
This is all about predictive modelling, and by feeding the neural network with volumes of information, it could project player scores, rate them and potentially seek out those which have been undervalued, as well as identify those which look likely to be drafted too high. With all this, AI could really have a strong hand in building an optimized roster.
It’s a Gamble
There are no guaranteed outcomes in Fantasy Football, of course. Even after many dedicated hours, players can’t account for things like injury or a superstar QB hitting a slump for no apparent reason. So it’s all a gamble at the end of the day, but using analytics and research is a way to try and increase the likelihood of positive outcomes.
AI is mostly useful for gathering and analysing information, but there’s no guarantee of wins, either way and even with AI, it’s planning and output of what Fantasy lineup to play isn’t going to be infallible. The beautiful thing about the NFL and really any sport is that it’s unpredictable. There’s no way that AI can account for things like a “fluke” play or a low-drafted player suddenly becoming an elite performer.
AI can’t add anything from the human side of the game as it only looks at the data, and therefore it won’t have any concept of a big rivalry match, what is at stake for a team in a particular game, player motivations, the chemistry of a squad and even any “gut” plays from a coach. Because of that, there will be information gaps.
In Season Changes
But with the right programming and prompting, AI could be used for continuous learning and, therefore, pinpoint what changes to make during the season. These real-time adjustments would obviously come from the feedback of raw data that unfolds during the NFL campaign, and should produce a higher accuracy of team selection points.
The AI system would then be able to see how much time players are spending on the field, favourable match-ups, and a wealth of other performance-related metrics. So week by week, AI could be fine-tuning an optimal lineup based on what the current data is showing, balancing it with other elements like opponent matchups and positional requirements.
It Could Make a Difference
AI certainly possesses the potential to run a Fantasy Football team, but it would need a lot of processing framework to base its decisions on. It would need some extremely smart modelling to piece everything together, to really bring those data-driven decisions to life in real-time to make its weekly picks.
But it would likely still need human oversight to fill in the blanks because intuition is a key element of any successful Fantasy Football player. It’s where the excitement, the thrill of it comes from, and few players would want to hand the reins over fully to a computer to take the fun out of it. If AI-assisted Fantasy Football became commonplace, players would no longer find an “edge” that comes from human intuition in drafting, for example. The technology would level the playing field.
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