Haibo Does Data: Week 14 – Play the Hand You're Dealt

Hello everyone - welcome to Week 14 of the column! For more insights, be sure to check out our weekly Haibo Does Data video by clicking on Fantasy Resources above and Haibo Does Data.

Card players, gamers, and gamblers across the years have all had an adage – you play the hand you’re dealt. Sometimes it can be great – but sometimes it can be terrible. And it is up to you and your skill to play with whatever fate deals you. As we approach the end of the season, we were thinking the same thing. What if instead of picking your SmashCards – they were assigned to you. Can you build the best team to take advantage of a randomly selected set of SmashCards?

So we wanted to issue a challenge to our users. For this week, in one of your Weekly Tournament lineups, see if you can build a lineup using these 4 SmashCards:

And see if you can beat the lineup we set on the Haibo Does Data video this week. We’ll mail a special signed SmashCard to the top 3 lineups with this set of cards this week! (Week 15)

Summary Metrics

This past week, we had over 2,500 different lineups across our Fantasy Frenzy and Beginner Battle weekly tournaments, league play, and single player campaign modes. When we aggregate all of the data across those lineups, these were the most selected players.

Players by Position

Far and away the most popular player was Saquon Barkley. Over half of all lineups played in SmashUp had Barkley in them. Coming in with historic rushing numbers and playing a poor run defense, users expected Barkley to have a huge week. That didn’t really materialize as he rushed for 124 yards with no catches and no touchdowns alongside a 2pt conversion. It’s a testament to how good he is that a 100+ rushing yard week and a 14.4 fantasy point week is “bad” for him.

Looking at SmashCards, here are the top 10 played cards last week.

Top 10 SmashCards

Not too much to talk about here. If you’ve been following along with Haibo Does Data this season, you’ll see that most of these top cards are the usual suspects that we’ve seen week over week. We do continue to see the rise in popularity of the lineup cards – as 3 of the 5 made the top 10 this week in Ride or Die, Hellacious Halfbacks, and Home Field Advantage.

Let’s take a look at the top played combos.

Top Played Combos

These are the most popular combos that users played between SmashCards and players. One new data point we’re adding is the number of points each combo scored. Users really went all in on Saquon this week. Not only did over half of the lineups include Barkley but 6 of the top 7 played combos involved Saquon. As he didn’t have a big game (which again, is an insane statement to make for a 124yd performance), none of these combos really panned out. Bruising Bellcow was solid as he did have 20 carries, but 21.6 points for Hall of Fame RB considering the cost is not great. What was great is if you played Ja’Marr Chase and any cards around him. He had a huge game! 191 total yards, 2 touchdowns – 31pts as a baseline. If you had Chase and paired him with any cards, congratulations – you probably did pretty well for yourself! He has another great matchup against the Titans this week so I would expect to see a lot more Chase combos in the top 10 next week.

And now, we’re on to Week 15! Set your lineups before games start and good luck!