People have been following my writing for years. I still get calls from folks that want lineup advice (right Justin). I am not complaining - I take it as a compliment.
But I feel I owe these folks an apology.
I cut my teeth in this industry by writing only after exhaustive research. I would often research a question for a couple hours before replying to the simplest forum posting. Articles typically took six to eight hours of research and two to three hours to write.
Needless to say, that level of effort can cause burnout. And it did. So last year I quit writing. Oh, I would still write the occassional article but no more hours scouring the net for that one golden nugget that brought all my thoughts together.
And because of that, my writing was not inspired. At least I don’t believe it was. Not in the forums nor in my articles.
And while I will never go back to the schedule that cost me so many hours, what I will do is pick and choose what I want to write and then do the correct amount of research to make it work for both me and my readers.
I credit Sean Vostinar of FantasySharks.com with this revelation. It was his off the cuff remark about Running Back by Committee that caused me to actually do some research instead of just parroting the crowd. Due Dilegence and Common Falacies were the two articles spawned by that research. Both, I believe, are better than anything I have done in years.
With that in mind, and a boost from my new High Def TV that often finds itself on the Discovery Channel (especially when MythBusters is on), I have decided to take on some common myths in fantasy football. I will not promise a weekly article but will do the research required that I can promise an excellent article on each myth I tackle.
I am more than willing to research and confirm or bust any myth you, the reader, suggests. If you have a myth you want busted, shoot me an email at greg@fantasysportsgroup.com and tell me what the myth is and I will do the research and write the article - giving you credit for the suggestion. So include your name and hometown.
With that in my rearview, let’s get on to the first myth I want to bust.
Always Start Your Studs
This will be a two part article because I think there is too much to put into one piece. But before we can start we need to define who your studs are. I see two ways of approaching this. First, anyone drafted in your first two rounds should be considered a stud. Second, anyone in the top half of starters after four weeks (1/3 of the normal fantasy season) should be considered a stud.
For this first article, I will use the first definition. For the second, I will use the second.
So how do I know who was drafted in the first two rounds? Simple, I will use the MyFantasyLeague.com Draft Tracker feature. And to prevent as much confusion as possible I will use the following settings:
League Size: 12 teams
Scoring: Point per Reception
Draft Type: Redraft - Real only (no Mock Drafts)
Date Range: Only those drafts taking place after August 15
To qualify, players must be picked in at least 25% of all drafts. This gives us a sample size of well over 600 drafts to use. In 2007, the following players met this criteria (remember, we are only looking at the first two rounds of a 12-team draft):
The PRnk is Positional Rank — where that player finished, by position, at the end of the year. As you can see, all three quarterbacks finished in the top 10. The running backs weren’t so lucky due to an unusual number of injuries and the deeper pool of players. Wide receivers were pretty consistent to their preseason rankings with the exception of Marvin Harrison who was injured.
Regardless of methodology, the Always Start Your Studs myth would require you to start your first two draft picks at least four games into the season — barring injury. So I did a very quick look at the first four games. To determine if a player had a quality start, a good start or a sub-par start, I used this criteria.
Your top player must finish in the top 12 to be a quality start. Since there are only 12 QB starters each week, that position can only be quality or sub-par.
Since most leagues start a minimum of 24 RBs and 24 WRs, anything in the top 12 would be a quality start, anything between 13 and 24 would be a good start and anything under 25 would be a sub-par start. I will not count games where the player was on bye or missed the game due to injury. I will count games where the player played, but did not finish.
Now I realize you don’t want your first draft pick scoring 24th best at his position. But that would still be a viable score when considering starters.
There are two ways to measure these starts — week to week by looking at ranking (the most accurate way) or by using the average weekly score for the 12th ranked and 24th ranked players at each position. I will do both but the initial analysis of the first four weeks will use the former method to save time.
Using that method, a quarterback must score 21.557 points to be considered a quality start. A running back must score at least 17.253 points for a quality start and 13.336 points for a good start. A wide receiver must score 18.392 points for a quality start and 15.467 for a good start.
There were three quarterbacks, 16 running backs and five wide receivers taken in the first 24 picks, on average, in last year’s drafts. Every draft is different — please remember that these numbers are based on average draft position in real drafts.
Quarterbacks
Last year, Peyton Manning, Carson Palmer and Tom Brady were considered the Crème de la Crème of quarterbacks. Out of 12 possible games, 10 met the standard for quality starts. Brady was four for four while Manning and Palmer were both three for four. The worst game was in week four — Palmer was held under 14 points. Half of the games exceeded 30 points making this look like the myth is a fact.
Running Backs
This is where the myth falls apart. Out of 16 running backs there were four games missed to injury and two more due to byes. That leaves 58 games to verify. Just under half were what you would expect from your stud running backs. Twenty-eight times these running backs finished above the average for a quality start. Another 10 times they finished in the range of a good start. But a full 20 times they were out of the money and six games they were out of your lineup due to injury or bye. Looks like maybe the myth is busted. But we still need to delve deeper.
Wide Receivers
Five players met this criteria and in fairness, the receiver position is traditionally more erratic than most. And it shows up in the numbers. There were 20 games to consider. Of them, only nine met the quality start criteria. And only one was a good start. Half of all the games were sub-par. Five were single digit outings with two failing to top even five points. The most consistent of the top five receivers drafted was the most inconsistent star receiver in the NFL — Chad Johnson had three quality starts and just one sub-par outing.
But were these games predictable. Hard to tell. Defensive rankings are not stagnant — they change throughout the season. The best I can do is look at the final rankings and then see if the poor games aligned with good defenses.
To do this I will tier the defenses. The top third, middle third and bottom third based on fantasy points allowed to the individual positions. Once again, MyFantasyLeague makes this relatively easy. This is a better determiner of whether the defense is a good one than looking at yards allowed which is how the NFL ranks defenses.
And when I do this, I will look at the weekly ranking, rather than using a year end average, to determine if the player had a quality start, good start or sub-par outing. Also, I will use the top 24 players drafted for the first four weeks but starting in week five I will look at the top four quarterbacks and top eight running backs and receivers. This will drop the stud player pool from 24 to 20 but will also be based on each week’s YTD rankings which will allow for injured players to fall out of the lists. Again I will not count bye weeks or weeks in which players do not appear. But I will count weeks in which stud players play but do not finish the game.
These results will appear in the second part of this article.
Tags: Fantasy Football, myths
