6/27/2025 by Dylan
Key Takeaways
- The Falcon Fantasy Factory: Drafting players from the Atlanta Falcons has historically yielded the highest average fantasy points per player in our league.
- "Hit Rate" Champions: The Falcons also lead the league in "Hit Rate" (percentage of drafted players who become fantasy starters), with the Cowboys and Lions close behind.
- Offense Matters... Usually: There's a clear positive correlation between an NFL team's real-life points scored and the average fantasy points of their players drafted in our league.
- Cautionary Tales: Historically, drafting players from the Browns, Jets, and 49ers has been a statistically challenging endeavor.
Introduction: The Unspoken Bias
Every manager has their biases. Maybe you avoid players from your real-life rival's team, or perhaps you love stacking players from high-powered offenses. But do these tendencies actually pay off? Is there a statistical advantage to targeting or avoiding players from certain NFL franchises?
This deep dive looks beyond individual player talent to analyze a different factor: the helmet. We're exploring whether the NFL team a player belongs to at the time of the draft has been a reliable predictor of fantasy success—or failure—in our league's history.
The Approach: Measuring Team Impact
To quantify the fantasy value provided by each NFL team, we analyzed every draft pick from 2009 to 2024 and measured them in three key ways:
- Average Fantasy Points: What is the average season-long fantasy point total for a player drafted from a given NFL team? This measures raw production.
- Fantasy "Hit Rate": What percentage of players drafted from an NFL team become valuable fantasy starters? We define a "hit" as a QB finishing in the Top 12, or a RB/WR/TE finishing in the Top 24 at their position. This measures reliability.
- Correlation to NFL Offense: Does a team's real-life offensive success (total points scored) translate directly to better fantasy scores for the players we draft from them?
Finding #1: The Fantasy Point Powerhouses
Which NFL teams have consistently provided the most raw fantasy points for the players we've drafted? This chart shows the top and bottom 10 teams based on the average fantasy points scored per drafted player-season.
Key Observations
- Top Performers: The Atlanta Falcons lead the pack, with the Bengals, Steelers, Packers, and Cowboys rounding out a strong top five. Drafting a player from one of these teams has historically given managers a high floor of fantasy production.
- The Danger Zone: On the other end of the spectrum, the Cleveland Browns, New York Jets, and San Francisco 49ers have been fantasy wastelands, providing the lowest average point totals for our drafted players over the years.
Finding #2: The "Hit Rate" Hall of Fame
Scoring a lot of points is great, but consistently finding valuable starters is what wins championships. Our "Hit Rate" metric measures which NFL teams are most likely to produce a player who finishes as a fantasy starter (Top 12 QB, Top 24 RB/WR/TE).
Key Observations
- Falcons Fly High Again: Reinforcing their top spot, the Falcons boast a remarkable 60% hit rate—meaning 3 out of every 5 players drafted from them have become fantasy starters.
- Reliable Rosters: The Cowboys and Lions also prove to be reliable sources of talent, with hit rates over 50%. Drafting from these teams has been a statistically sound strategy.
- The Broad Middle: Many teams, including the Bengals, Saints, and Steelers, cluster in the respectable 45-50% range, showing consistent but not elite reliability.
Finding #3: Does a Good NFL Offense Equal Good Fantasy?
It's a common assumption: draft players from teams that score a lot of real-life points. We plotted every NFL team's season-long points scored against the average fantasy points of the players our league drafted from that team in that same season.
Key Observations
- A Clear Positive Correlation: The trend line confirms our intuition. Generally, the more points an NFL team scores, the more fantasy points their players provide to our league's managers. This makes targeting players on high-powered offenses a statistically sound base strategy.
- Outliers Exist: Notice the dots far above or below the red line. These represent teams whose fantasy output either significantly over-performed or under-performed their real-life offensive ranking. These are often teams with a single, dominant "fantasy superstar" on an otherwise average offense, or a high-scoring "real-life" offense that spreads the ball around too much for any one player to dominate in fantasy.
Conclusion & What This Means For You
While you should always draft the player, not the helmet, ignoring the team context is a mistake.
- Trust the Trends: Teams like the Falcons, Cowboys, and Bengals have historically been fertile ground for fantasy production and reliable starters. They can be considered "safer" pools to draft from.
- Be Wary of the Bottom-Dwellers: Drafting players from historically poor fantasy-producing teams (like the Browns and Jets) requires a stronger belief in that individual player's talent to overcome their situation. It's a higher-risk proposition.
- Target Good Offenses: When in doubt between two players, the one on the better real-life offense is often the statistically smarter choice, as a rising tide lifts all boats.