10 Big Predictions for Fantasy Football in 2017, According to A.I.
The brightest stars, biggest busts, best quarterbacks, and more!
The 2017 NFL season starts September 7, which means a new season of fantasy football for the 75 million of you who play. With so many competitors out there — including all your friends, who are otherwise lovely but must be ground into dust by your fantasy football juggernaut. Let us help you with your total domination.
Inverse partnered with Unanimous A.I. to enlist a swarm of 50 of our football fans/Inverse readers to predict everything you’ll need to know to rock your fantasy football season. This use of so-called swarm intelligence has produced some scarily accurate results in the past, so let’s take a quick look at how it works. As you can see in the animation below, each participant controlled a little golden magnet and used it to drag the puck toward the answer they thought was the most likely outcome. Also, the closer a user puts the magnet to the puck, the greater the pulling force. This is where our swarm of users began to form a hive-mind. As the user sees the puck move toward an outcome, it triggers a psychological response. The user starts to readjust their decision-making, building toward a consensus.
To read more about how Unanimous A.I. uses “swarm intelligence” to reach scarily accurate predictions, check out our previous article on how Unanimous A.I. uses “swarm intelligence” to make predictions.
With that said, let’s get into this year’s group-think predictions for the 2017 NFL fantasy football season.
Who will be 2017’s top fantasy performers?
The swarm picked Arizona Cardinals running back David Johnson as the top fantasy prospect for the coming season. For more on that pick and two more predictions on the best fantasy picks, read this post.
Who will be the biggest busts?
The swarm is down on a couple of Washington’s top players, including wide receiver Terrelle Pryor Sr. For more thoughts on why and two more bust predictions, you can head here.
How will the NFL’s top quarterbacks do?
While we can feel decently confident the likes of Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers will put up their customary fantasy numbers, other quarterbacks are more uncertain prospects. For this and another prediction on which signal-caller you should add to your squad, you’ll want to read this.
And a Couple Bonus Predictions
Tampa Bay Buccaneer Jameis Winston and Tennessee Titan Marcus Mariota have been on parallel paths going back to college, when they traded off Heisman victories and Mariota’s Oregon Ducks routed Winston’s Florida State Seminoles in a national semifinal. Mariota had the better rookie season, but Winston’s more pro-friendly game has long made him the slightly preferred player among observers. The swarm is especially bullish, feeling very confident he will outpace Mariota as the top fantasy prospect in 2017.
And finally, when asked about who will do best for a new team, the swarm seemed to waver between Terrelle Pryor, its pick for biggest wide receiver bust, and Danny Woodhead, its pick for best pass-catching running back. It’s probably a good sign for the swarm’s consistency that it ultimately went with Woodhead.
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