Does Weather Impact Fantasy Football Performance?
In the competitive world of fantasy football, where every decision can tip the scales between triumph and setback, the question of how weather conditions affect player performance emerges. This article sets out to explore the real impact of weather—rain, snow, temperature, and wind—on player performance. Through the lens of data analysis and machine learning models, we delve into whether these elements are mere background noise or if they hold measurable sway over fantasy fortunes.
This article was inspired by Matt DiSorbo’s article, Whether Weather Really Matters, which takes a broader look at changing game trends with respect to the weather.
Fantasy Points & Weather
Generally speaking, it is important to first search for potential correlations between weather metrics and fantasy points (PPR). Below, I have plotted fantasy points against wind speeds, by position. We see there is really no correlation here, as the distributions of points are fairly random for every position.
Next, I plotted fantasy points against temperature, by position. Again, we see no correlation.
Next, I created box plots to show fantasy points against rain (binary), by position. We see that all positions have slightly better performance in conditions with no rain, which checks out with intuition. We can quantify exactly how big of an impact rain has on players by programming a linear regression model to predict fantasy points using weather metrics. After doing this, we can isolate rainy conditions like so — on average, the presence of rain in a game corresponds to an increase/decrease of:
- -2.1 points for QBs
- -0.2 points for RBs
- -1.3 points for WRs
- -0.6 points for TEs
Let’s repeat this process for snow. We see similar results, barring TEs — we actually see a slight increase in fantasy performance at this position when snow is present. Using our linear regression model, we can determine — on average, the presence of snow in a game corresponds to an increase/decrease of:
- -0.5 points for QBs
- -1.1 points for RBs
- -1.1 points for WRs
- 0.7 points for TEs
The Severity of Weather
To this point, we’ve seen a slight impact on player fantasy performance due to rain and snow conditions, but it hasn’t been much to write home about. Let’s take a closer look at the data.
To do so, we will look at the distributions of fantasy points by weather severity, by position. This will allow us to observe more nuanced aspects of the data rather than just searching for a basic correlation.
When looking at the distribution of QB fantasy points by wind severity, we see there is a clear shift towards poorer performance as wind speeds climb past 20 mph. At lower wind speeds, QBs average 15-20 points, while at higher speeds, the average shifts closer to 10 points.
Replicating this for WRs, we see a similar, but less severe pattern. As wind speed increases, the average WR performance decreases.
*The visual for TEs mirrors this one, so I chose not to include it.
When we do this for RBs, we see different results. This time, as wind speeds approach the high 20s, RB fantasy performance increases, as the average points per game shifts closer to 20 points. This is likely due to teams keeping the ball on the ground more when the wind is stronger.
* This distribution-based approach doesn’t reveal any additional trends for temperature, so the visuals will not be included.
Lastly, we observed that rain and snow affect fantasy performance, but we don’t have an easy way to measure rain/snow severity to test these findings further. For the purpose of this article, to test this, we will assume that high wind speeds + rain = harder rain, and the same for snow. While this logic is in no way foolproof, it will help us break down performance by precipitation severity.
Plotting these distributions out, we see strong effects on WRs and TEs, as they more often have poor performances when it is raining (blue) than not (red). The severity of this trend grows as wind speeds increase, or assumedly as rain falls harder.
In other words, the plots below show that as rain falls harder, WRs and TEs are more likely to have performances of less than 10 fantasy points.
*The same results hold true for snow, although the plots are not included in the article.
These trends hold for QBs, as wind speeds climb to 20 mph and higher.
In other words, when there is heavy rain (which we quantify as rain and 20+ mph winds), QBs are more likely to score 15 points or less.
We again see an inverse relationship with RBs, for as the rain severity goes up, so does the likelihood that RBs score more fantasy points. In fact, as rain severity increases, we see a change of nearly five fantasy points in the mean for RB performance.
*Again, these trends for RB and QB performance with rain severity are the same for snow severity, although the snow severity plots are not included in this article.
Conclusion
In conclusion, weather does affect fantasy performance. We see trends in performance as the severity of wind, rain, and snow change. While it may not be a massive game changer, if weather conditions are severe, it could amount to as much as five fantasy points, on average, by position. Be sure to keep this in mind next season as weekly weather reports roll in!
As always, if you have questions, feel free to comment or reach out on Twitter!