Chapter 3: Data Collection & Sources

Building a reliable fantasy football analytics system begins with high-quality data collection. The Ronin system aggregates data from multiple official and third-party sources to create a comprehensive player database spanning 10 seasons of NFL production.

Primary data sources include official NFL statistics (nfl.com), which provide play-by-play data, game logs, and season totals. This data forms the backbone of our statistical models and includes every measurable event from each NFL game.

Secondary sources include advanced metrics providers that offer data not available in traditional box scores — metrics like air yards, target share, snap counts, route participation, and pressure rates. These advanced metrics provide deeper insight into player usage and efficiency.

Data quality is paramount. The Ronin pipeline includes automated validation checks that flag anomalies, missing values, and statistical outliers. Each data point is cross-referenced against multiple sources to ensure accuracy before being fed into the projection models.

The historical database contains over 2,300 player-season records, 320 team-season records, and millions of individual play-level data points. This depth of data enables the ensemble models to identify patterns that would be invisible in smaller datasets.