ESPNStatsInfo: Elias Says NFL players threw... Projecting Mid-Tier WR's - 12 Team PPR League - Sports Fans Picks - Sports Fans Picks. Picks in the first few rounds tend to rely heavily on draft position and how the players are falling to you. Generally, in these rounds, there is a pretty good consensus on the range of pick positions a player should be chosen within. Beginning in about round 4, WR rankings start to increasingly vary. Data, math, etc.: Final Predraft Tiers and Rankings - Visualized (Standard) I've updated my charts as of today's rankings (August 25th, 2013).
As always, thanks to fantasypros for their great data. Draft Strategy Part 3: Rounds 4-7 and WR/QB tiers. This is the third in my series of Fantasy Football Strategy Pieces.
If you’ve missed the first two you can find them listed below… Part1. Fantasy Football Draft Cheat Sheet: Risk Profiles. Why You Can Wait On a QB. You hear a variation of it every year: “[X Position] is super deep this season, you can wait to grab a [player that plays X position.]”
This year’s deep position is quarterback. As J.J. noted earlier, Tony Romo, who threw for nearly 5,000 yards last year, is the 12th QB being drafted, on average. The shmuck in your league who waits until the 9th round to land a starting QB could still be picking up a guy who threw for more than 300 yards a game. Fantasy Football: The Contrarian - Agility Scores. Share by Email Like the rest of the diehard NFL world, I was transfixed by the NFL Combine.
Just as fascinating as the events themselves are the competing theories as to what we should be looking at. Fantasy Football: The Contrarian - Vision Yards. Share by Email At this point everyone is familiar with PFF’s Elusive Rating, one of the best football stat innovations and a great tool for fantasy prediction.
The Elusive Rating focuses on yards after contact and forced missed tackles, cornerstone attributes of the workhorse back. Intuitively, it makes sense to think of yards after contact as being solely the result of a running back’s skill, but yards before contact are highly contextual. A team’s blocking and the down-and-distance situation might have more of an impact than player ability. Signature Stats Snapshot - Elusive Rating. Fantasy Football: The Contrarian - Agility Scores.
Fantasy Football: The Contrarian - Agility Scores and Breakout RBs. Share by Email In Part One of this series we looked at the strong correlation between Agility Scores – a RB’s combined time in the short shuttle and 3 cone drill – and Vision Yards.
Data, math, etc.: PPR draft tiers and clustering algorithms. As promised, here is my analysis for PPR leagues.
To summarize my model, I take the average ranking from all 37 experts with updated rankings from fantasypros' PPR list, plot them in one dimensional space, and using a gaussian mixture model clustering algorithm to determine natural tiers of players. Pre-draft tiers (via clustering on 59 expert rankings) Quarter Backs: My model for tiering QB’s is simple.
I take the average rankings of 59 experts provided by fantasypros, plot them in one-dimenstional space, and apply a guassian mixture model clustering algorithm to discover the natural tiers. 2012 Fantasy Football Consistency Graphics. Fantasy Football Draft Cheat Sheet: Risk Profiles. The Colts Had A Lot Of Rookies Play A Lot Of Snaps In 2012. Best Case/Worst Case: RBs - Offseason Low Down.
Retaining starters and free agent activity: Training camp edition. With three weeks remaining until the start of NFL training camps (and having just returned from the beach), this seems like a good time to update DRAFTMETRICS analysis of returning starters and free agent activity.
To refresh your memory, this analysis reports the number of games started by players still with their 2012 team as well games started by players acquired through free agency or other means in the offseason. The proposition put forth here is that having experienced players is a good thing and it is even better if continuity is enhanced by the players gaining that experience with your team. DRAFTMETRICS acknowledges that the number of game started is far from a perfect way of evaluating experience, particularly the quality of the 2012 starters. The Myth of Overworked Running Backs. One of the most frequent mistakes made by fantasy football owners is assuming all correlations are due to a causal effect.
Lots of things in life are related, yet have no effect on one another. The old notion that great running teams win football games is an illusion based on a misunderstanding of the correlation/causation distinction, for example. Yes, winning teams average more rushing yards than losing teams, but that’s because teams that are already winning run the ball late in games.
In reality, they usually gain the lead by passing the football effectively. A prevalent fantasy football “truism” is the idea that overworked running backs struggle in subsequent seasons. The graph above shows you just how silly some of this analysis can get. In reality, though, running backs who garner a large number of carries in a season are generally more likely to see a drop in production and health in the following year, but this information is both insignificant and irrelevant.
2nd-year RBs: Lamar Miller - Going Deep. Sunday, June 23, 2013 Headlined by Trent Richardson, Doug Martin, and sixth-round supersteal Alfred Morris, the 2012 running back class produced a generous number of quality long-term prospects. 2nd-year RBs: David Wilson - Going Deep. Sunday, June 23, 2013 Leading up to 2013 training camp, I'm using NFL Game Rewind to take an extended look at each of the following second-year running backs: Lamar Miller, David Wilson, Vick Ballard, Bryce Brown, Bernard Pierce, Ronnie Hillman, Daryl Richardson, Robert Turbin, Isaiah Pead, and LaMichael James.
My Miller writeup can be found at this link. This is Part 2 in a 10-Part Series. David Wilson. Five Years of PFF Grades: Top 10 Wide Receivers. Share by Email It’s been five seasons since PFF opened its doors and tackled the subject of performance-based evaluation in the NFL. We’ve seen many breathtaking performances, whether it be over a year or in an individual game, but we’ve never really looked back on things in a longer sense.
So consider that something we’re rectifying. We’ve added up the grades each player has earned over the past five seasons and then normalized their performance on every snap based on the position they lined up. Quarterback Stats: 2011 Regular Season - FF Today. 2013 Free-Agent Book: Reggie Bush. An introduction: Last year, I put together free-agent books from the perspective of a player agent for four different players, starting with Mike Wallace before moving on to Matt Flynn, Mario Williams, and Arian Foster. This year, I’ll be doing the same for three players, starting today with Reggie Bush. For those who weren’t around last year, these articles are designed to be smaller versions of the “books” that agents like Drew Rosenhaus or Scott Boras might prepare on behalf of their veteran free agents as they’re about to hit the market.
Normally, my goal is to present an accurate depiction of the league and its constituency; that’s not the case here. In these articles, my goal is simply to sell the player as best I can to a potential team. I won’t flat-out lie about the player’s strengths or statistics, but if I can distort the numbers to make the player look better, I’m happy to do so. Future Shock Very simply, the game has changed.
84-Day NFL Warning: The Still-Rolling (Still Somehow Overlooked) Andre Johnson. Using Advanced Stats to Identify Breakout WRs. Best of the Rest: The All-(Remaining)-Free-Agent Team. 2013 Offensive Line Rankings - Matchups. You'll notice 2012 Run and Pass Block Rankings listed before each lineup projection. The first number is via Pro Football Focus. The second number is Football Outsiders ' 2012 rating. All Under 4: Interesting Stats from 2012 - Offensive Fantasy Football.
The Most Inconsistent Usable Players of 2012 ‹ The Late Round QuarterbackThe Late Round Quarterback. Understanding Wide Receiver Volatility ‹ The Late Round QuarterbackThe Late Round Quarterback. Fantasy Football: The Verdict On Vernon Davis ‹ Forensic Fantasy. After news broke that Michael Crabtree tore his Achilles tendon, the San Francisco 49ers offense has become the hot topic of the week. The wide receiver situation is far from settled (and probably won’t be resolved for awhile), but one thing is for certain: I am getting more excited for the 2013 fantasy football outlook of Vernon Davis.
The term “freak” is thrown around quite often when people describe players in the National Football League and well, that’s because it takes a special athlete to play in the NFL. Reconsidering Vernon Davis. Raise your hand if you've ever been burned by Vernon Davis . Fantasy Football: Assessing Torrey Smith ‹ Forensic Fantasy. Loading ... Ranking the best front offices among the NFL's top tier of teams - NFL - CBSSports.com News, Rumors, Scores, Stats, Fantasy.