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 Thanks again for all the questions and comments. Keep 'em coming (put "MAILBAG" in the subject line). Three issues this week:
Quick question: is there a good column (I didn't see one) discussing how Open Weeks should affect one's draft? In particular, if my RB1 has an open week in week 4, how strongly should I steer away from an RB2 (or a QB1, WR1) who has the same open week? Is there an approximate reduction in VBD points that you would apply to a player who has the same open week as another player on my team? This question gets debated frequently over on the message boards and some people have some pretty strong opinions. I won't pretend to have any revolutionary new ideas, but this is as good a time as any to recap the arguments and let you know where I stand. Some folks say: spread out the bye weeks. Try to make sure your top four or five players have different bye weeks. If you've got more than one stud on bye in a given week, you're at a real disadvantage. Some folks say: load up on a particular bye week. If a great many of your top players have the same bye, then you only have to worry about bye weeks once and you're at full strength the rest of the year. Some folks say: ignore bye weeks completely. Don't even look at them. Spread 'em out, load 'em up, who cares? Any way you slice it, everyone has one bye, so what does it matter? I should point out that almost no one would advocate using bye week considerations as anything more than a tie breaker. Regardless of which camp you fall into, you don't draft Kevan Barlow ahead of Deuce McAllister to get your byes squared away. I've never done any real analysis on this, but let's do a quick thought experiment. To keep it simple, let's concentrate on only the running backs. Say your league starts two. What's the difference between having your two starting runners on bye at the same time vs. having their byes on different weeks? If they have different byes, then your 16 games look something like this:
One game with RB1-RB3 One game with RB2-RB3 14 games with RB1-RB2 Whereas, if they have the same bye, you get this:
One game with RB3-RB4 15 games with RB1-RB2 So, if you load up the bye weeks, you're trading an RB2-RB3 game and an RB1-RB3 game for an RB1-RB2 game and an RB3-RB4 game. Broken down even further, you're trading RB3 for RB1 in one game and RB1 for RB4 in another. I tally that up -- at least theoretically -- as a win for spreading the bye weeks out. A simulation could probably be designed that would tell us, in general, how much difference it makes. I'd be willing to bet a Bryant boat that the difference would be negligible. We're talking one win per decade negligible. And yes, this is an oversimplified example. But we could design a simulation that could take entire rosters and lineup requirements into account. I'm still willing to bet it wouldn't make much difference. Personally, I ignore bye weeks. Even when drafting backups, I'd hate to miss out on a high upside player because his bye was the same week as my starter. Looking at bye weeks is something I do only if I'm drafting a backup that will very likely never play except on my starter's bye and if I have no other basis -- none at all -- for breaking a tie between that player and another one. If I were forced to choose between loading 'em up or spreading 'em out, I'd load 'em up. I'd choose that not because I believe it would win me more games, but because it's easier for me psychologically. I absolutely hate being nickeled and dimed to death. When my byes are spread out, I feel like that's what's happening to me. One more thing to consider. If your league sets up its schedule before the draft, you might make note of the weeks you play the guy you view as your toughest competition or simply the guy you most love to beat. Let's refer to this guy as "Tim S." If you are absolutely torn between two players and have no other basis for choosing between them, choose the one that does not have a bye when you're playing Tim S. Conversely, if there's a perrenial patsy in your league, say "Bill C," a guy you believe you could beat even with your second string, then draft the player who has a bye the week you're playing him.
Has there been are is there going to be a Rookie ranking sheet put out. It is very helpful for keeper leagues, (especially mine where rookies can be retained for 3 years without using a rooster spot.) It would be helpful to have a ranking that would show this years potential, but also what you guys think their future value will be. The value of rookies in non-redraft leagues is very sensitive to the nature of the keeper rules. In a straight keep-3 or keep-4 league, I'd view rookies almost exactly the way I'd view them in a redraft league. In a keep-8 or keep-10 league, rookies do demand some extra consideration. In a dynasty league or a league like yours where rookies can be kept without penalty for a long period of time, you've got to know the rookies inside and out. Right after the NFL draft, footballguys Tom Nadratowski, Chris Smith, Mark Wimer, and Jason Wood put together these articles on the rookie crop of 2003: [QB] [RB] [WR] [TE] [OL] [DL] [LB] [DB] I'll defer to those guys on the relative mertis of each of the various rookies. Rather than attempt to rank them, I thought I'd interject a bit of historical perspective on this year's rookie running back crop. What was notable about the 2003 draft, from a fantasy perspective, was the lack of first- and second-round running backs. Given that, a lot of people have advised simply passing on this year's crop and trading your rookie picks for established players or future draft picks. There were, however, 13 running backs taken in rounds three and four. These are obviously not blue-chip prospects who will provide guaranteed instant help, but should we be writing them off altogether? What can we reasonably expect from these 13 backs over the next year? The next two years? The next three years? To get some idea, I looked at all running backs drafted in rounds three and four from 1990-2000. That's a total of 82 running backs.
So if this year is in line with recent history, we can expect two of those 13 third- and fourth-round running backs to provide a good fantasy season at some point in the next three years.
I know we've beaten up breakout years for WRs. I was wondering if there's any trends working for 2nd year WRs that performed well as rookies. I honestly don't know what to make of this tidbit, but it is a stone cold fact that, in the recent past, receivers who have done well as rookies have not fared well at all in their second years. Here is a list of all wideouts since 1990 who:
The number after each receiver's name is the change in his fantasy points per game from his rookie season to his second. A positive number means he improved. A negative number means he declined.
That's four improvers against 18 decliners. On average, this group declined by 1.7 fantasy points per game. Now let's look at this from the opposite angle. Instead of starting with good rookies and looking ahead, let's start with good second-year receivers and look backward. That is, of the receivers who had good second seasons, what kinds of rookie years did they have? So we'll round up all second-year receivers who finished among the top 20 in fantasy points per game (among those who played 8 or more games).
Several of the biggest years ever by second-year receivers were turned in by players who had had very modest production a year earlier. For whatever reason -- again, I'm somewhat stumped by this -- a rookie receiver's stats alone don't tell you much about how he's likely to do in his second year. For you mathematical zealots out there, the correlation coefficient between rookie points per game and second-year points per game is .48, while the correlation between second-year points per game and third-year points per game is .67. Strange but true. |
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