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. If you are targeting receiver in round 4, you either want to get a sure fire pick that will deliver most weeks (Marques Colston), or you will want to grab a guy that may not be as safe of a pick, but has tremendous upside (Dwayne Bowe). You should not waste this high of a pick on a guy with a low ceiling and low upside (Anquan Boldin), even if they are the number one receiver for their respective NFL team.
I have taken the liberty of projecting stats for receivers I have regularly seen drafted from rounds 4-11, and then compiled consensus projection data from 8 different respectable sources online. Biggest Projection Differences – Josh Gordon Golden Tate TY Hilton. 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.
Unfortunately I don't have time to write my insights, but I hope the charts can help you draft! I will scribble notes as I can, or as people bring up things in discussion: - There are now 23 solid running backs, as Miller, Sproles, and Lacy have emerged from preseason as viable producers. . - Quarterback situation of the top 12 did not change.
Good luck drafting! (protip: left click image > right click > "open image in new tab") Standard format tiers: Tier 1: Adrian Peterson (RB1), Doug Martin (RB2), Jamaal Charles (RB3), C.J. Tier 2: Alfred Morris (RB10), Dez Bryant (WR2), A.J. Tier 3: Julio Jones (WR5), Demaryius Thomas (WR6), Steven Jackson (RB12), Drew Brees (QB1), Aaron Rodgers (QB2), Stevan Ridley (RB13), Chris Johnson (RB14), Larry Fitzgerald (WR7), Maurice Jones-Drew (RB15) 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 Part 2 So here we are….. 3 rounds down, and we have 2 Running backs and a top tier Receiver.
Now what? The next 4 rounds are critical, if not more critical than your first round selections. These rounds are a good time to snag an upper echelon Quarterback (preferably later in rounds 6 or 7), a couple receivers, another runner, or even a tight end. Sure these rounds are important and sometimes nerve racking, but that is what you have your cheat sheet, tiers, and draft plan for. This is the best time to look at your tiers, and in a sense snag best available players at the thinnest positions.
Since we are talking about tiers so much I may as well provide you with my Wide Receiver Tiers now: Showing 1 to 10 of 12 entries Round 4 Best Available. File Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images Answer: It depends what pick you are on. Round 5 Depth, Flex time Round 6-7 RB2- MJD (rd2) 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. But here at NumberFire, we like to use things like numbers and math. “Deep” is a subjective term, and an inexact one at that. A quick note: J.J. has actually written a book about the strategy behind waiting to draft a quarterback late in your draft. Value Relative to Position One obvious factor affecting quarterback value is supply and demand. Last year, the 15th-best fantasy quarterback, Eli Manning, gave owners 66.5 percent of the production that the top fantasy QB, Drew Brees, did. Opportunity Costs. 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. Do the times mean anything, or don’t they? When watching the Combine, most of the time is spent on the 40 yard dash and very little on the short shuttle or 3 cone drill. While there is much about sports that is counterintuitive, the idea that explosive agility wouldn’t translate to the NFL gridiron is incredibly difficult to rationalize.
In order to see if there was a connection, I went back to 2003 and added the short shuttle and 3 cone times for all runners who participated in both drills. A Shocking Result A RB’s Agility Score explained roughly 25% of the variance in Vision Yards. To add context, let’s consider a RB’s Speed Score, the metric popularized by Football Outsiders which has recently correlated fairly strongly with a RB’s NFL success. Elite Times Mediocre and Poor Times. 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. However, an analysis of the three years for which PFF has data suggested RBs might be more responsible for this part of their performance than it seems at first glance. For ease of discussion, I’m going to refer to this component as Vision Yards (because Vision-and-Lateral-Explosiveness-Plus-First-Step-Quickness Yards doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue). Adrian Peterson should not be selected No. 1 overall. Adrian Peterson is a metronome. 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. In addition, we determined that explosive lateral agility is a trait that NFL teams often take advantage of in the passing game. Moreover, this is a phenomenon which extends to workhorse backs and 3rd down specialists alike. Now that the Combine is long gone, it’s time to root for our favorite prospect to land on our hometown team and begin plotting our draft strategy for young backs. Before we look at rookies, however, let’s look at second year players who could be in line for a breakout. While runners with great lateral agility often excel in accruing Vision Yards, it can take a while for the game to slow down.
Before this analysis, I was only high on one of these players. Delone Carter did not impress as a rookie, but could emerge as the starter over Donald Brown now that Addai has been released. 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. The result is well defined tiers and beautiful visualizations. This analysis is for 1 point PPR leagues. I've had requests for 0.5 point PPR as well, but unfortunately, there's no data available for that.
If you are so inclined, just average these results with my other ones for a good approxmation. Quarterbacks remained unchanged, so for QB's, I refer you to my previous post. PPR Running Backs: Here is the vertical plot of RB's: Already we can see very similar structure to the standard format. In a 12 player league, at least two teams will get left out with their RB2 outside this tier. Here we illustrate the variance of each players rank with the grey bars. PPR Wide Receivers: PPR Tight Ends: Pre-draft tiers (via clustering on 59 expert rankings) | data, math, etc.
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. This is what you get: The first thing I noticed was the substantial drop off after Tony Romo, who is the #12 QB. This partially why people are advocating delaying your QB pick this year — because in a 12 man league, even if you have the worst starting QB in your league (Romo), you’re not that far behind.
If you are in a 14+ person or 2 QB league, you might want to think twice before passing on Romo for Eli Manning or Roethlisberger. The grey bars are the standard deviations for each player. Here is my QB tier list. Wide Receivers: Let’s apply the same thing to WR’s. You can see some visible drop offs here: Thomas-Fitzgerald, Jackson-Colston, Smith-Shorts. Yet another confirmation of the “Calvin Johnson is his own tier” theory. Running Backs: 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.
For example, in this analysis: Still, though, this analysis does give some insight as to the experience level of each NFL team. So far in the offseason, players accounting for over 17% of 2012 starts have moved onto a different team. The Myth of Overworked Running Backs | Fantasy Football. 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.
There are numerous studies out there detailing how running backs struggle when coming off a season with 350 carries, or 370 carries, or however many carries is necessary for the study to make sense. The graph above shows you just how silly some of this analysis can get.
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. Leading up to training camp, I'm going to use NFL Game Rewind to take an extended look at each of the following second-year backs: Lamar Miller, David Wilson, Vick Ballard, Bryce Brown, Bernard Pierce, Ronnie Hillman, Daryl Richardson, Robert Turbin, Isaiah Pead, and LaMichael James. I'm bypassing Richardson, Martin, and Morris because each received high-volume 2012 workloads, and we pretty much know they are now first-round fantasy football picks. Lamar Miller Before diving into Miller's first-year game tape, I went back and watched five of his heaviest-workload college games to get a stronger feel for the kind of runner he was before he entered the pros.
Miller's rookie year consisted of 57 touches as he was slow to learn the playbook and failed to endear himself in pass protection. 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 I couldn't get enough of David Wilson coming out of Virginia Tech. Wilson wound up touching the football 75 times on offense as a rookie. I first reexamined the fumble that essentially got Wilson benched. Of course, Wilson exacerbated his problems by dropping a pass on his very next opportunity for an offensive touch. Fumbling is fixable -- and Wilson did so after Week 1 -- but another concern I had with his rookie-year tape was a raw, almost wild playing style with a lot of improvisation that made Wilson a boom-or-bust back.
Wilson ran poor pass routes. 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.
It was a more complicated process than that, but you didn’t come here to hear me yap about “process”. So, after previously looking at the Top 10 edge rushers, here are the Top 10 graded wide receivers of the PFF era. (Players had to have participated in at least three seasons to qualify) 1. Johnson has been so relentlessly efficient, that you almost take for granted what he produces and are rarely blown away by him. 2. At the rate Johnson is going it won’t be long before he tops this list. 3. 4.
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. Please keep that in mind when reading these next three pieces. Thanks! Future Shock. 84-Day NFL Warning: The Still-Rolling (Still Somehow Overlooked) Andre Johnson. Using Advanced Stats to Identify Breakout WRs | Fantasy Football. Best of the Rest: The All-(Remaining)-Free-Agent Team. 2013 Offensive Line Rankings - Matchups. 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. Reconsidering Vernon Davis | Fantasy Football. Fantasy Football: Assessing Torrey Smith ‹ Forensic Fantasy. Ranking the best front offices among the NFL's top tier of teams - NFL - CBSSports.com News, Rumors, Scores, Stats, Fantasy.