Week 6 of the NFL season is here. Two of my fantasy teams are doing very well. My dynasty team... not so much.
Normally this is the time when I would be digging into every waiver possibility, working through trades and trying to figure out how to rescue the season — or at least make the right moves for next year. This year, I simply don't have the time to do that much manual research.
Boy, do I miss The Machine.
I used The Machine to give me probability-based guidance for every decision a fantasy team manager can make — preseason moves, drafting players, recommending lineups, evaluating waivers and trades — and then run those possibilities through an entire simulated season to determine which decisions gave my team the best chance to win.
I'm determined to have it back for next NFL season.
The Machine Is Coming Back Together
When I first announced the return of The Machine in August, this was still largely a recovery and reconstruction project. ASL still has the original code, mathematics and accumulated knowledge behind the product, but we needed to bring the pieces into modern technology.
Since then, the visible rebuild has moved quickly:
- August — The rebuild begins. Rate My Team came back first. The basic approach was established early: rebuild the customer-facing product first, then reconnect the live leagues, projections, mathematics and automation underneath it.
- Early September — Overview and lineups. Next came Home, probability charts, My Account, Lineup Recommendations, Starters and Backups, and related weekly lineup tools.
- September 19 — Waivers. Waiver Analysis, Waiver Recommendations and Drop Recommendations returned, including the foundation for The Machine to search available players and evaluate potential roster moves.
- September 26 — Trades. Trade Analysis, Trade Finder and Trade Judge came back onto the screen.
- October 10 — The Draft Room. Your Draft and Simulated Draft returned, bringing back The Machine's approach of evaluating draft choices in the context of your entire league and championship probability.
- Now — Projections. We have moved into the family of screens that connects individual player projections to weekly lineups, the regular season, playoff seeding and ultimately the probability of winning the championship.
That is becoming a substantial portion of the original product.
See What The Machine Was Designed to Do
If you never used the original Machine — or haven't seen it in a decade — this is probably a good point to step back and look at the product as a whole.
In 2014, I created a presentation for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association that walks through many of The Machine's most important features. The interface is obviously old, but the underlying idea is exactly what we are working to bring back and ultimately improve.
Inside The Machine's Season Calculator
This week we focused on the pages that expose inner workings of The Machine's Season Calculator
At the heart of The Machine is a Season Calculator. The Season Calculator factors in the current state of the league, its configuration and rules, and the player projections. It converts the projections into individual player fantasy-point probability distributions and carries those possibilities through the rest of the fantasy season.
The Season Calculator progression looks like this:
Player Projections → Player Probability Distributions → Weekly Lineup Probability Distributions → Regular Season Outcome Probability Distributions → Playoff Seeding and Result Probabilities → Championship Win Probabilities
That is where this week's rebuilt projection pages fit in. They provide a window into the calculations The Machine performs as it moves from individual players, to weekly teams, to the regular season, to the playoffs and ultimately to each team's probability of winning the championship.
We are rebuilding The Machine with both Classic (dark) and Fresh (light) presentations. For this update, I am showing the Classic screens. Classic currently provides the clearest visual connection to the original Machine while we continue refining the newer Fresh presentation.
Player Performance
The Player Performance page is where those calculations begin.
By default, The Machine blends projections from multiple sources evenly, but you can customize the blend based on which providers you favor most.
The screen also lets you compare players by position, fantasy-team status, individual weeks and season totals. Keeper and dynasty leagues can extend that view into future seasons.
Player Projections
Click a player's name and Fantasy Trend goes deeper. It places each projection source, the blended projection and the player's actual fantasy results on the same weekly chart. Beneath that is a detailed statistics grid showing the underlying passing, rushing, receiving, kicking or defensive projections.
Player Projection Trends and Stats
But The Machine does not stop with the player's projected fantasy points. The Season Calculator converts those player forecasts into probability distributions and begins carrying them through the league.
Starters and Backups
The Starters and Backups page represents The Machine's estimate of each team's strength for a future week.
The calculation starts with individual player probability distributions, but The Machine does not simply assume today's starter will still be the starter several weeks from now. Injuries, depth-chart changes and future matchups can all affect which player ultimately fills a starting position.
For example, you might have a top-tier QB1 and a solid QB2. Your QB1 may be the likely starter, but there is some chance he gets injured, or a future matchup may make your QB2 the better choice. The Machine combines those possibilities into a probability distribution for the starting slot itself.
It does the same across the roster, then combines those starting-slot distributions to create a weekly team-performance probability distribution.
We originally rebuilt this page alongside Lineup Recommendations because the two are closely related. I am showing it again here because its role becomes much clearer when viewed as part of the Season Calculator flow.
Estimated Weekly Starters and Backups
Starter Slot Probability Distribution Accounting for Injury Probability and Available Backups and Waivers
Regular Season
From there, the Season Calculator moves from weekly team performance to the league schedule.
For every future matchup, The Machine compares the probability distributions of the two teams and calculates each team's probability of winning. It then carries those probabilities through the remaining schedule.
The Regular Season page exposes the next level of that calculation. Depending on the league format, it shows probability distributions for wins, fantasy points or victory points across the remainder of the season.
Regular Season Win Projections
Regular Season Wins Probability Distributions
Playoffs
The Season Calculator then carries those possibilities through playoffs.
The Playoffs page shows the playoff calculations from playoff seeding, through postseason matches and ultimately to the championship.
Playoff Fantasy Point, Seeding and Win Projections
Playoff Seeding Probabilities
Playoff Champion Probabilities
Summary
These pages are not simply reports. Together, they expose much of the calculation chain operating inside The Machine:
Player Projections → Player Probability Distributions → Starting-Slot Probability Distributions → Weekly Team Probability Distributions → Regular-Season Outcomes → Playoff Seeding and Matchups → Championship Probability
That entire chain becomes especially important when The Machine evaluates a decision.
Suppose it is considering a waiver pickup or trade. The Machine can create a new version of the league with that transaction applied, run the Season Calculator again, and compare the resulting championship probability with the current league state.
That is the real purpose of all these calculations.
The Machine is not simply asking:
Which player projects for more fantasy points?
It is asking:
Which decision gives my team the best chance to win the championship?
That second question has always been the heart of The Machine.
Next Up — Preseason Features
Next, we move into The Machine's preseason planning tools — keeper and dynasty decisions, preseason trades, roster planning and draft preparation.
After that comes the final major page group: the League Setup pages, which let you adjust any rules, rosters, schedules, scoring or other league details that aren't fully captured by the league provider integrations.
Then we move behind the screens and start rebuilding The Machinery — the mathematical engine, Season Calculator and decision logic that make all of those pages work together.
Finally, we will connect The Machine to live league data, player data and projection feeds — and The Machine will be at your service once again.
You can follow the rebuild yourself at TheMachine.run.
The Machine is coming — and the path from player projection to championship probability is back on the screen.
