One of the most surprising aspects of ChatGPT, and specifically GPT-4, is how they can take a list of data and analyze it in almost any aspect that you want. I found the Top Fantasy Football Team Names on Bet Texas and pasted the list into ChatGPT.

Without any additional context, ChatGPT started processing and categorizing the list. It told me that the list was a series of puns that involved football players, and that most likely they were fantasy football team names. This is actually pretty remarkable. There is nothing in ChatGPT that is programmed to do this task. Just like a human, it figured out from the start that it was a list of football players since some of the names were well known, even outside of sports circles. ChatGPT was able to pick up that they were mostly puns and probably fantasy football team names.

Here’s the breakdown of the 35 fantasy football team names as analyzed by ChatGPT.

Player Puns

• Call of Jeudy (Jerry Jeudy): A play on the video game series Call of Duty.
• Hooked on a Thielen (Adam Thielen): A play on the phrase “Hooked on a Feeling,” which is a song by Blue Swede.
• Mojo Rojo Casa House (Ronald Jones): A play on Ronald Jones’s nickname “Rojo” and the term “mojo.”
• Geno 911 (Geno Smith): A pun on the TV show Reno 911!.

Movie and TV Show Puns

• Tyreeky Blinders (Tyreek Hill): A play on the TV series Peaky Blinders.
• Carrdians of the Galaxy (Derek Carr): A pun involving the Marvel movie “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
• Dude, Where’s Lamar? (Lamar Jackson): A reference to the movie “Dude, Where’s My Car?”

Music Puns

• Tua Lipa (Tua Tagovailoa): A play on the singer Dua Lipa.
• I’m Sorry Ms. Jackson (Lamar Jackson): A reference to the song “Ms. Jackson” by OutKast.
• Kittle Big Town (George Kittle): A pun on the country music group Little Big Town.

Literary or Historical Puns

• Sherlock Mahomes (Patrick Mahomes): A play on Sherlock Holmes, the detective character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
• The Mixon Administration (Joe Mixon): A nod to presidential administrations, given Joe Mixon’s last name.

Catchphrases and Popular Phrases

• Zeke and Destroy (Ezekiel Elliott): A play on the phrase “seek and destroy.”
• Bakes on a Plane (Baker Mayfield): A pun on the film title “Snakes on a Plane.”
• Rudolph the Red Zone Reindeer (Kyle Rudolph): A play on the holiday song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Not only did I get a categorical breakdown of the names, but I also got a solid rationale for each category. TIL what Peaky Blinders was. I didn’t have that TV series in my frame of reference.

Going Further

Now that we have an analysis of the list in ChatGPT, I can keep the conversation going with ChatGPT and go further. This actually the power of Generative AI. By supplying a list of names and having it do some analysis, we have primed the conversation. This analysis is now in memory and we can pull on it. According to Yahoo Fantasy Football stats, Anthony Richardson is 86% rostered on teams and was a top 5 quarterback week one. Let’s say you go sneaky and picked up Anthony Richardson on the waiver wire to replace AAron. Now, you want your team name to reflect that change in leadership. ChatGPT does not know about Anthony Richardson (yet), but we can generate new team names by using the context that we built up by interacting ChatGPT.

Using the "Catchphrases and Popular Phrases" category, generate 10 fantasy team names for the player, Anthony Richardson.

Here’s what ChatGPT returned:

1. Richardson or Bust: A play on the phrase “go big or go home,” showcasing confidence in Richardson’s performance.
2. Breaking Richardson: A play on the TV show title “Breaking Bad,” emphasizing a breakout season or game-changing performances by Anthony Richardson.
3. The Richardson Express: Based on the famous “Polar Express,” symbolizing a high-powered, unstoppable offense led by Richardson.
4. All Systems Go-Richardson: A spin on the phrase “all systems go,” implying that with Richardson, everything is in perfect order.
5. Warp Speed Richardson: Referencing the “warp speed” from Star Trek, suggesting that Richardson’s game is out of this world.
6. Live and Let Richardson: Based on the famous James Bond movie title “Live and Let Die,” emphasizing the idea that your team lives and dies by Richardson’s performance.
7. Richardson to Infinity: A play on Buzz Lightyear’s “To infinity and beyond,” highlighting the limitless potential of Anthony Richardson.
8. Locked and Richardson: A play on the term “locked and loaded,” meaning that your team is ready to go, largely thanks to Richardson.
9. May the Force Be With Richardson: Borrowed from the Star Wars catchphrase, symbolizing a wish for Richardson to be powerful and successful.
10. Unleash the Richardson: A spin on the phrase “unleash the beast,” implying that Richardson is a game-changing player who can be unleashed for dominating performances.

Okay, admittedly, I am not too impressed with any of those team names. The conversation is not done! You can keep trying.

Try the Movie and TV Show Puns category. 

ChatGPT returned, “Richardson of Anarchy” as its best team name. It’s based on the TV show “Sons of Anarchy”. Not too bad.

Try the Literary or Historical Puns category.

I love some of the options that ChatGPT returned for this type of fantasy football team name. The best one and the one that I am going to use, I mean hypothetically use, is “Richard-Sun Tzu“.

What are you learning?

I started by pasting in the fantasy football projects for week one. Mahomes is facing the Lions with a point projection of 22.46 points. This is based on last year’s matchup, but ultimately, this is what FantasyData.com wants to project. Mahomes will be without Travis Kelce, the league’s best Tight End and Patrick’s go-to option. Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts looks ready to go. He has everything stacked in his favor and is behind Mahomes in the projects with a modest 22.28 points. ChatGPT processed the data that I pasted in and let me know that it understood what I gave it for context.

Next, I am going to try to figure out which way to go. In my guide for using ChatGPT to win fantasy football, I mentioned using any additional context that you can give ChatGPT to help you make a decision. I realized that Hurts was going to play New England, in my backyard, and I know that it is supposed to rain over the weekend.

I found the weather predictions, pasted them into ChatGPT, and asked the AI to help me decide between the QBs with this additional information.

The weather forecast for the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Detroit Lions game on Thursday, September 7, 2023 at 8:20 PM ET is partly cloudy with a low around 63 degrees. The predicted daytime high is 88 degrees, and the nighttime low is 63 degrees. The forecast also calls for a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms after 7 PM. The chance of precipitation is 20%. The winds are predicted to be around 8 mph.

Google Bard about the weather for the Chiefs home opener

The weather forecast for the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots game at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, MA is mostly cloudy with a high near 80 degrees. There is a 40% chance of precipitation, with a 88% chance of rain and a 53% chance of thunderstorms. The projected daytime rain accumulation is 0.26 inches. The rain is expected to slow down during the first half and dissipate by halftime. The rain is expected to continue throughout the afternoon.

Google Bard about the weather for the New England game

Of course, it was going to be cruddy in New England. As a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, I wouldn’t put it past Bill to have some control over the weather. He had complete control over the Steelers for two decades.

ChatGPT did factor in the weather, but weighted skill and past performance higher. ChatGPT said Mahomes was a lock even without Kelce.

Mahomes seems to have the better weather conditions, which are generally more favorable for a passing game. Hurts is facing potentially trickier weather conditions, although if the ground game becomes more important due to the weather, his rushing ability could be an asset.

ChatGPT assessing Mahomes or Hurts based on weather forecasts

Why Am I Spending So Much Time With ChatGPT and Fantasy Football?

I am using Fantasy Football as a way to learn more about how to leverage ChatGPT and learn as much as I can about its limitations, what’s possible with prompt design, and how data can be used in large-language models. I will get back to blogging about important applications of Generative AI, but feel free to use what I am doing with fantasy football for your hobby. You should be thinking about how to apply this technology to your interests. Let me know what you try and what you learn. Let’s explore this together.

Why learn all of this AI if you can’t taut your fantasy football acumen over your friends, family, and coworkers? I am here today to teach you how to use the most powerful language model ever created to gain this competitive edge and WIN at fantasy football. Stop being the embassrement of your peers and go DIAMOND.

Your “Average” Approach to Fantasy Football—And Why It’s Lame

So you’ve been playing fantasy football for a while now, and you think you’ve got it all figured out, right? You’ve got your spreadsheets, your late-night ESPN sessions, and maybe you’ve even paid for some premium “expert” advice that promises to make you the Bill Belichick of your league.

News flash: That average approach might work when you’re tossing a football in the yard, but when it comes to fantasy leagues, it’s about as effective as a screen pass against the ’85 Bears. You know what I mean—predictable, easily snuffed out, and usually ending in disappointment.

Average Strategies

The Gut Instinct: Ah yes, the good ol’ “gut feeling” about a player or a match-up. Sometimes it works, and you’re the hero of the week. Other times, you’re left wondering why you didn’t just flip a coin.

The Bandwagon Jump: Your friend won last season by drafting a rookie quarterback who blew up, so you’re all in this year on the latest hot prospect. Except your “sure bet” is now on the bench, and you’re searching for scraps on the waiver wire.

The Analytics Nerd: You’ve got spreadsheets, pivot tables, and Python scripts analyzing every player’s yard after catch, and still, you lost to Terry who picked players based on their astrological signs.

What makes Fantasy Football interesting. Or, what makes it ridiculously frustrating.

Injuries: Your star player tearing an ACL doesn’t care about your spreadsheets.

Bye Weeks: Forget to adjust your lineup for bye weeks and watch your points take a nosedive.

Underperformers: Stats can’t always predict when a star player will suddenly become a benchwarmer.

Game-time decisions: You can’t always be online checking for last-minute changes. Well, maybe you can, but should you?

Meet ChatGPT—Your New Secret Weapon for Fantasy Football

I bet you’ve never heard of ChatGPT… non-stop for the past 8 months all of the time, on every channel, media outlet, and cooler conversation. I have used ChatGPT to create sophisticated chatbot applications to write a letter to my car repair shop. In all cases it has been helpful.

ChatGPT is a generative pre-trained transformer. It generates text in response to a prompt. A prompt is an input that you type in that can vary from a simple question to thousands of words of context.

Before you start planning your victory parade at the end of your season, keep in mind that ChatGPT isn’t a magical crystal ball. It’s a tool, and like any tool, it’s only as good as the person using it. But unlike your lucky rabbit’s foot or that weird pre-game ritual you have, it actually provides concrete, actionable advice.

10 ChatGPT Strategies for Dominating Your Fantasy Football League

1. Optimized Drafting: Use ChatGPT to generate a custom draft list tailored to your league’s rules and scoring system. Ask it about sleeper picks, risk factors, and team-by-team analysis for a fully optimized draft experience.
2. Real-Time Lineup Decisions: On game day, query ChatGPT for last-minute lineup adjustments based on player injuries, weather conditions, or other game-day variables that might affect player performance.
3. Trade Evaluations: Before pulling the trigger on a trade, consult ChatGPT for a data-backed analysis of the players involved, taking into account your current roster composition, the schedule ahead, and the long-term value of the trade.
4. Waiver Wire Wizardry: Each week, ask ChatGPT to identify under-the-radar players who are ripe for the picking on the waiver wire, including those who might benefit from upcoming match-ups or injuries on their teams.
5. Performance Projections: Use ChatGPT to get weekly player performance projections based on current stats, upcoming match-ups, and historical performance, helping you make informed choices for your starting lineup.
6. Bye Week Balancing: Consult ChatGPT for advice on how to navigate the tricky waters of bye weeks. Get recommendations on which free agents to pick up for one-week stints and which players are droppable for short-term roster flexibility.
7. Trending Players Analysis: Ask ChatGPT which players are trending up or down in value. Knowing who’s hot and who’s not can be crucial for trade negotiations and roster management.
8. Rest-of-Season Outlook: Midway through the season, consult ChatGPT for a “rest of season” analysis for each player on your roster. Make data-backed decisions for the second half of the season based on projected performance.
9. Social Media Sentiment Analysis: Inquire about the general sentiment around certain players based on news articles, social media, and other public opinions. Sometimes public perception can influence trade value, and you can use this to your advantage.
10. Fantasy Playoffs Strategy: When the fantasy playoffs are on the horizon, use ChatGPT to get a detailed strategy for your potential path to the championship, including which players to target in trades or on the waiver wire, and strategic advice on match-up plays.

Let’s get specific

ChatGPT doesn’t really know about your specific situation or even current data, but you can provide context that will help you rationalize a decision. In my league, Jeff is always offering me trades. I 100% assume the trades do not benefit me. This year, I am going to use ChatGPT to evaluate the trade and see which way the trade favors. In order to do that I would have to enter as much of the context as possible to have ChatGPT reason on the trade.

Trade Evaluation Example

Let’s say that I am being offered Trey Lance for Justin Fields. ChatGPT has no idea about their latest stats, so what I do is past in some stats from Fantasy Data. I tell ChatGPT that I have been offered a “fantasy football trade” and identify each player as “offered QB” and “my QB” and paste their associated stats. The 2023 season hasn’t started yet so I just pasted in their fantasy stats from the past two seasons.

ChatGPT quickly processes the pasted data (even if it not formatted well) and provides an analysis and a recommendation.

ChatGPT tells me that Jeff is trying to cheat me which is what I have always thought. NO THANK YOU, JEFF.

Based solely on the numbers provided, keeping your current Chicago QB appears to be the better option. He’s currently performing at a high level, especially when it comes to fantasy production. However, if there are other elements to this trade not provided (like additional players or picks involved), those could change the evaluation.

ChatGPT on Jeff’s Fantasy Football Trade Offer

In other words, keep your garbage, Jeff.

Step-by-Step Guide to Unfair Dominance

I assume that some startup is about to launch to make using Generative AI and Fantasy Football easier, but I still think you should explore this directly from ChatGPT. Learning how to write effective prompts, refine, and interrupt results are transferable skills. I implore you to try this out with any hobby or activity and build up this experience.

Access ChatGPT

First things first, go to the OpenAI website or wherever ChatGPT is accessible from. Sign up or log in, and you’ll be greeted with a chat interface. It may look basic, but you have just accessed a very powerful chatbot that can help you with anything. This is the blessing and curse of ChatGPT, it will speculate on anything that you type in. It is always helpful—use ChatGPT to get a rationale, clues, threads that you can research. In each case, provide as much context as possible. You can have it compare abstract things like weather data, times of day, social media posts, or whatever you can find about your players. The blessing is that it will try to make an analysis with anything that you provide.

Name Your Team

As I previously explored, ChatGPT is awesome at Generating the Perfect Fantasy Football Team Name. Try some options and get creative with your prompts and keep trying until you find some gold.

Draft Queries

Start the real work by asking questions to help with your draft. Remember to paste in specifics. Use ChatGPT to learn about drafting, strategies, and scenario planning.

• “What are PPR draft strategies?”
• “I am drafting 5th in a 10 team league, what advice to do you have?”
• “Who should I draft first in a PPR league?”
• “Tell me sleeper picks for this year’s draft.”

Weekly Line-Up Picking

Your main fantasy football management, is picking a lineup for each week of your league’s season. You will have roster of players on your bench and have to pick your starting lineup. You are going to get yourself into a lot of 50/50 situations. I have turned to Google, Twitter, and random voices on Yahoo forums to figure out who I should start.

• “Who should be my starting QB this week?”
• “Which two WRs should I start this week?”

ChatGPT will give you a rationale, a framework if you will, and might help you find which player is the better start.

Waiver Wire and Trade Assessments

On Tuesday or whenever your waiver wire opens, it’s time to consult ChatGPT again about the waiver wire or trade offers. To me, this is where you win or lose fantasy football seasons. Picking up players on the waiver wire fills in your bad draft spots and also is the place you find sleepers who are ready to perform.

• “Who are the best waiver wire picks for Week X?”
• “Should I accept this trade offer: Player A for Player B?”

Mid-Week Check-in

Check in mid-week to ask for any updates based on practice reports or unexpected player news. Paste in some news, have ChatGPT evaluate it. Paste in some of your Thursday night stats, and ask for advice. Etc.

• “Are there any must-add players before Sunday?”
• “Any of these injuries should I be concerned about?”

Real-Time Adaptations

While watching the games, keep ChatGPT handy. If your key player gets injured, ask:

• “Who should I target on the waiver wire as a replacement for my injured player?”

You’ll be first to react, leaving your league-mates bewildered and jealous.

Playoff Domination

Before your playoffs start, do a comprehensive strategy session with ChatGPT.

• “What’s my best strategy for the fantasy playoffs?”
• “Which players should I target for a strong playoff run?”

Victory Lap (Optional but Recommended)

After you’ve won your league, feel free to thank ChatGPT or ask for some epic one-liners to drop in your league’s chat to celebrate your well-earned victory. Revel in your glory—you’ve earned it!

With these strategies in hand, you’re not just playing the game—you’re gaming the system. Let your league-mates scratch their heads and wonder how you became a fantasy football oracle overnight. The answer, my friend, is ChatGPT, your unfair advantage on the road to fantasy glory.

The Problem

Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) for football is about picking a lineup of players across all of the NFL teams under a set salary cap and competing against other players doing the same thing. It’s easy right? Just pick all of the best players! Profit. Wait up. Everyone else is doing that too. The secret is to use player projections, maximize your utility of the salary cap, and add some chili pepper for your signature taste.

The Solution

Dust off your math skills and remind yourself that everything is a math problem, but others have solved them for you. An optimal DFS lineup is just an optimization problem. I am going to pick optimal DFS lineups using MATLAB and its Optimization Toolbox.

Get the Data

In order to optimize a lineup, you need to get some data. You need a table of players with their positions and score projections. I recommend getting the latest player projects from Daily Fantasy Fuel. They give you access to a table with everything that you want and they update it daily with the latest projections from Draft Kings and Fan Duel. Projections are subjective but they take into account past performance, team matchups, and weather conditions. You can adjust each row of the table with your own projections and put your thumb on the scales so to speak. Maybe you got some insider info that the Rams are not going to start Cam Akers so you adjust their projection down.

• Go to Daily Fantasy Fuel and click on “Download Projects as CSV”
• Save the file to your computer as “DFF_data.csv” into a new folder

A CSV file is just way to save data as a table. It might look intimidating if you open it up, but we are going to import the data into a nice clean table using MATLAB’s import tool.

Access MATLAB

You might have MATLAB installed on your computer, so all you have to do is open MATLAB. If you don’t have MATLAB installed, you can use MATLAB Online at matlab.mathworks.com by signing in and clicking “Open MATLAB Online (basic).”

Import the Data

First, we need to get the data into MATLAB.

• Right-click on the “Current Folder” and click “Upload Files”
• Select the CSV file that you downloaded from Daily Fantasy Fuel

Second, we need to import the data from the CSV file so we can work our fantasy magic.

• Right-click on the DFF_data.csv that we uploaded and click Open
• Click “Import Selection” and “Import Data”

These steps will bring the data into MATLAB in a nice and useable way. All of the default options will work perfectly.

Enter the Code

First, let’s create a new file for our optimizer code.

• Right-click on the Current Folder area, click New, and then Live Script
• Name it “dfs.mlx” and open it

Next, we need to get the code into MATLAB.

• Copy and paste my MATLAB code from GitHub into your new MATLAB Live Script.
• Click “Save”

The next thing that we need to do is select a “Salary Cap” and run the code.

• Change the salaryCap variable to the salary cap to optimize for. 50,000 to 60,000 is a common range.
• Click the Run button on the Live Editor tab

If everything goes to plan, MATLAB will output a table of optimal starting players based on the projected data.

Profit

There’s still some luck involved. Projections are projections. Now that you have a baseline, you can experiment by using different projections data and tweaking individual player projections.

Let me know how you do and if you made some improvements to my optimization code. Good luck.

Resources

• Source code at GitHub – https://github.com/nothans/dfs-optimizer
• Daily Fantasy Fuel – https://www.dailyfantasyfuel.com/nfl/projections/
• MATLAB – https://matlab.mathworks.com/
• Optimization Toolbox documentation – https://www.mathworks.com/help/optim/

This got me wondering about some things. I am mostly a rational person. I believe in the scientific method yet I believe my actions leading up to a football game somehow influence the outcome of a game. That is irrational… or is it?

The double-slit experiment demonstrates that light and matter can display characteristics of both classically defined waves and particles depending on observation. The observer is somehow influencing the photons in the experiment. Maybe there is something to my lucky cup or maybe humans really love finding patterns.

The 2021 NFL football season has returned with stadiums full of cheering fans. Do NFL Fans Really Affect Games? The Seattle Seahawks believe so much in their fanbase that they call them collectively, “The 12th Man”. The sound generated by this crowd reached sound levels louder than a jet engine.

So, who’s to say? But, get your act together, find your lucky tokens, watch your favorite teams, and enjoy the game. It feels much more fun being involved and connected to the outcome. Cheers.