Back in the day, I used to get totally geeked whenever a new NFL season rolled around for one reason and one reason only: new football cards.

I had this stupid infatuation with collecting as many Chad Pennington cards as humanly possible. Sure, he had the shoulder of a papier-mâché glass window, but I was young and impressionable. Y'all ain't gotta judge, yo. There were obviously others, but Chadwick was my main boo.

Anyway, whenever I wasn't learning about useless things such as fractions (when will I ever use these when I'm a grown up?), I would be pouring over my football cards. Sorting them in descending order by passing yards, by NFL team, by collegiate team, anything. Just so I could spend as much time as possible obsessing over these fancy pieces of paper.

If this seems mildly obsessive, you're right! Congrats! Was it essential to my survival? Absolutely not! But I do think it was fun and provided me some serious utility in the form of entertainment. This is how I view advanced stats.

Some people are able to find success in daily fantasy football without ever studying advanced analytics. Therefore, they are not a necessity.

I, however, am very much not one of these people, so I rely on advanced analytics in an attempt to give myself some sort of an edge over the competition. Oh, and they're pretty fun to dink around with, too. I'm easily entertained.

First, I want to go through numberFire's metrics, which you have access to as a premium subscriber for both teams and players. Second, we'll go through why these are useful as I feel as though that is the aspect that people overlook most often.

This isn't to say that these are the only metrics you can use. There are tons of metrics you can find elsewhere, but I've found these to be the ones that are most useful for me. As you become more comfortable with the NFL, you'll be able to add into your research, but this is a good starting point.