NFL: Examining the In-Season Correlation of Defensive Performance

Published on: 10th October, 2009

Riddle me this: If many a fantasy analyst proclaim that it’s very difficult to predict how a defense will do before the season, then how much stock should we put into early-season performance? Think about it. Is it at all likely that said defense will perform up to those ...

NFL: Regression to the Mean, Sample Size, and In-Season Projections

Published on: 12th September, 2009

What if I told you that Adrian Peterson isn’t as good as his stats say? My reasoning is the Curse of the Leading Rusher. You’ve never heard of it before, but it’s an obvious trend. Since 1980, the NFL’s leading rusher has seen his rushing yards fall by 489 ...

2009 Fantasy Football Projections: Peyton Manning’s Downfall

Published on: 10th August, 2009

It’s the middle of August, a time in which many fantasy football owners start to produce their rankings and cheat sheets. Some resort to intuition, while some take an expert’s rankings and tweak them. Others use hours and hours of research to create their rankings. I’ll use projections. ...

Size Does Matter: How an NFL Player’s Height and Weight Affects Performance

Published on: 16th July, 2009

Every year, it seems like a few talented college players are being snubbed out of the NFL because their measurables, in NFL draft speak—height and weight, for example—are poor. To wit: • Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting in 2007—the second-highest ever for a ...

NFL Aging Curves by Position: Rookie QBs, Third-Year WRs, and Age 30 RBs

Published on: 10th July, 2009

They say age ain’t nothing but a number. Twenty-one, 26, 31—what’s the significance? Is age merely just a number, or a baseline for seasonal performance? How can we quantify this? Aging curves—also called aging patterns or age factors—show the relative performance of a group of players for each ...

How NFL Statistics Lead to Wins, Pt. 3: Salary Cap Efficiency Since 2000

Published on: 20th June, 2009

Even an incompetent owner can spend money. It takes an intelligent one, on the other hand, to spend that money efficiently. In a time when multi-billion-dollar entities are going bankrupt, teams are looking to spend less money on free agent signings and draft picks. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, ...