Bruno Boys Fantasy Football

This time of year is for retrospective analysis, and today, I thought I’d take a look at some of the changes between this season and last in terms of rush defenses and receiving defenses (data courtesy of ESPN). Going into a new season, we always base some of our start/sit decisions during the first month or so on what we know about a defense from the previous season. After only two weeks of the 2009 season, I suggested here on A Librarian’s Touch that the Giants rush defense wasn’t quite the same force as they had been in the past - and it’s true, this season they gave up 15.66% more yards per game than in 2008. But, back in September, that seemed hard to swallow and many fantasy footballers out there shied away from starting RBs against the Giants despite their weakened rush defense.

So, this article is not only a look at some of the biggest ups and downs between 2008 and 2009, but also a reminder that it is possible for some defenses to really change things around in a season. Coaches can leave, injuries can happen, new players can be acquired - keep all of these things in mind as the off-season unravels.

Let’s take a look at the rush defense comparisons from 2009 to 2008:

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Welcome to the fantasy football postseason, my friends. I hope you all are already participants in both the Bruno Boys’ Fantasy Football Playoff Contest and my FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge. I mean they are free, there are good prizes to be won and there are quality folks to play against…what’s not to love? So, in the spirit of the fantasy playoffs, I thought I’d take a look at players who are playing over this Wild Card weekend and see what kind of defenses they are facing.

Let’s take a look at running backs first. I have them listed here first based on the ranking of the rush defense that they’ll be facing this weekend, and second by the average number of fantasy points they scored per game during the 2009 season. I’ve also included the possible number of games they could play in case that modifies your decisions at all. Don’t view this as a straight up ranking - more of a different way to analyze your lineup decisions.

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As the season is wrapping up, one of the things I’m pondering is how a player’s performance in 2009 compares to 2008, and most of all, how that affects the way we’ll draft them for the 2010 season. With PPR leagues (points per reception) becoming increasingly popular, I thought I’d take a look at RBs and WRs that have seen either a solid increase or decrease in their number of receptions between the 2008 and 2009 seasons. I’ve included the charts below and sort of a smattering of thoughts on some players.

First up, I looked at the top 40 RBs by number of receptions for this season and compared that to their 2008 receptions. I also tossed in a few other players of interest at the bottom.

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This week I’ve been thinking a lot about what the 2010 season will bring. I almost hate this time of year since I’m inevitably thinking ahead to next season, but I don’t want to waste away these last precious weeks of fantasy football with thoughts of the future; I want to savor this week’s games while I can. Football is a precious, precious thing – I mean from mid-February until the Hall of Fame Game, I can be found moping about our house with a full-on countdown until football games will be televised once again. So there’s no need to hurry through these sweet, beloved weeks, my loyal readers.

And yet, here I am wondering which players this year have seen a big rise or decline in their fantasy performance since last year, and what that might mean for 2010. So using FFToday I took a look at the current top 75 running backs and top 75 wide receivers, and I compared their fantasy points per game through Week 14 of the 2009 season to their fantasy points per game from the entire 2008 season. Now, granted there are still a few weeks left, but this should be a fairly accurate comparison, particularly since we’re looking at it from a fantasy points per game perspective. You’ll see in the charts below that I also included their current ranking within position, total fantasy points on the 2009 season, and then in the far right column, I’ve taken the difference between the 2009 and 2008 fantasy points per game. The charts are ordered based on the players with the greatest positive increase in fantasy points per game between 2008 and 2009, with rookies noted at the bottom of each chart.

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As you probably know by now, I love talking numbers when it comes to fantasy football analysis. I’m always wondering which players are on top of the rankings and if they’re the players that we all drafted highly, or if unexpected awesomeness has emerged. Earlier this season I talked about the Top 10 Running Backs at the midseason point and today I’m taking a closer look at the Top 10 RBs for the second half of the season in hopes of finding guys who are trending up as we hit the playoffs.

Thanks to FFToday, I was able to pull stats for the Top 10 RBs over the course of the season, but also the past five weeks (Weeks 9-13), and the past three weeks (Weeks 11-13). By looking at the players who are showing up in those more recent Top 10 lists, but not in the season-long Top 10 list, we can really focus in on guys who have been lighting it up lately – and figure out if they’re primed for big numbers in the final weeks of the fantasy football season.

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I’m in a lot of fantasy football leagues – despite my best efforts it grows a bit every year. Last year’s seven is now nine…yup, nine leagues. It makes even my mom shake her head in disbelief. That’s when you know it’s bad. I play in some leagues with friends, some with strangers, some with fantasy football experts, and one 96-team league (divided into 6 conferences, don’t worry, I’m not that nuts!). So suffice it to say, juggling the various leagues keep me pretty busy. But, it occurred to me the other day that I really have access to a substantial amount of data, and I started wondering if the current leaders in all of my leagues have any players in common. Are there any magic bullets this year? The “if you’ve got X, you’ve got a championship on your hands” kind of players? I tend to think that much of fantasy football success depends on weekly lineup management and less on magic bullet players…but call me intrigued nonetheless.

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We’re talking kickers today. Now don’t stop reading already. I know kickers are kind of the redheaded stepchildren of fantasy football but when you get to this point in the season, you really need to be firing on all cylinders and that includes kickers. A crappy kicker can make a difference as I recently learned when losing an important game thanks to a big fat goose egg from my kicker. What makes it worse is that the kicker, Nick Folk, sits on my roster in several different leagues. Folk hasn’t exactly been lighting things up lately with more than his fair share of missed field goals and not a ton of opportunities for extra points. So I’m in the market for a new kicker and thought I’d share with you my process of determining which kickers I’m going to target.

As you guys probably know by now, I like to base my decisions on statistics and historical patterns. What I really wanted to know was, which kickers historically had success during the end of the season and what kind of defenses did they face? I started off by looking at the top 5 kickers during Weeks 12-16 from 2004 through 2008 (data/names pulled from Sports Data Hub’s Player Statistics section). Then using total defense rankings from ESPN, I looked at the caliber of defense each of those kickers faced during those 5 weeks and did a little averaging. Details are in the chart below:

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Back in late August, I wrote a column here for the Bruno Boys about the riskiest picks in this year’s fantasy drafts. Every year, I gather an average top 100 preseason rankings from 10 or so different fantasy expert websites, and I create one average ranking for each player. Using these rankings, I was able to determine which players had the least amount of consensus from experts based on their standard deviation. These guys were then in theory the riskiest picks in the draft. In my article, I looked at a handful of the riskiest guys like Lance Moore, Felix Jones, Ahmad Bradshaw, and Matt Cassel. Now that half of the NFL season has passed, what’s happened with those risky guys?

I took a look at the top 30 riskiest players and included their overall ranking, their within position ranking, and their current within position ranking (current rankings come from FFToday based on their default scoring). It’s hard to say which sites were really the most accurate with these risky picks since I gathered top 100 rankings, which can’t really be extrapolated for this purpose (note: every year I do perform an accuracy analysis at the end of the season to find the most accurate sites; click here for last year’s results). But, we can look at whether or not the consensus was accurate. The results are as follows:

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This is the time of year when I start thinking about turkey and mashed potatoes, Thursday Night Football, holiday travel plans, and, of course, the fantasy playoffs. While I love a good league championship, I’ve never had more to play for than I do this year with my Buffalo Wild Wings All-Star Blogger League – I so want to win that trip to Miami during the Super Bowl. So, I’ve been taking a good hard look at my team to see which guys have an easy path ahead during the fantasy playoffs – and which do not. Since my team is hardly going to interest all of you, I thought I’d expand a bit and look at players from all the offensive skill positions that have a sweet stretch of match-ups for Weeks 14-16. Remember, this is a ranking for the playoffs only and you should always have your own lineup in mind when you read these names!

First up, quarterbacks. Let’s take a look at 4 guys in pretty good shape from Weeks 14-16. (Note: The opposing team’s current pass defense ranking is listed in parentheses.)
 
 

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How do you figure out which underperforming wide receivers are on the verge of breaking out and which are just barely hanging on as is? A few weeks ago a reader on my FFLibrarian blog asked if there was any research out there on fantasy points per target in 2008 vs 2009 – since I couldn’t find any, I figured why not crank out some stats for you Bruno Boys readers. So, today we’ll be looking at players that are seeing an increase in targets since last season (demonstrating that the coaching staff has confidence in that player or that their circumstances on the field have improved), but who aren’t putting up nearly as many fantasy points per target as in 2008 (indicating that they’re not living up to their potential). This should allow us to see which WRs might be worth an extra long look for the second half of the season.

On the other hand, who has seen a decrease in targets since last year but an increase in fantasy points per target? These might be guys who are doing as much as they can given their number of targets, but are primed for an overall disappointing season.

So let’s jump right in and take a look at the stats:

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