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Drinen's Notebook: Thursday, November 14, 2002
Table of contents
Top 10 forwardHere were last year's top 10 RBs from weeks 11-17:
1. Marshall Faulk 2. Priest Holmes 3. Dominic Rhodes 4. Corey Dillon 5. Ahman Green 6. Stephen Davis 7. Antowain Smith 8. Anthony Thomas 9. Shaun Alexander 10. Tiki Barber I'm ranking the RBs according to fantasy points per game, and including only those who played at least four games during that seven-week stretch. If I would have told you before week 11 of last season that this group would be the top 10 for the remainder of the year, you probably wouldn't have been too surprised. None of these guys came out of nowhere. Every one of them was well-established as a fantasy starter by week 10. In fact, going into week 11, every one of them was in the top 20, except Stephen Davis, who was 21st and moving fast. In other words, the RBs who performed best during the last 7-week stretch of the year were the same RBs who performed well during the first 10 weeks. Last year was fairly typical in this regard for RBs, it's rare but not unheard of for a totally unexpected RB to take the league by storm for the last few weeks. Now contrast that with the WR situation. Here were last year's top 10 WRs from weeks 11-17:
1. Derrick Mason 2. Marvin Harrison 3. Darrell Jackson 4. Randy Moss 5. Torry Holt 6. Keenan McCardell 7. Joe Horn 8. Plaxico Burress 9. David Boston 10. Jimmy Smith Mason was ranked #34 going into week 11. Jackson was ranked #31. McCardell was #36. Burress was #43. And this was not an atypical year for WRs. It's standard for three or four (at least) WRs who did little to distinguish themselves for the first two-thirds of the year to become monsters down the stretch. To quantify the difference, I took a look at the week 11-17 top 10 at each position from 1995-2001 and noted where each of these players was ranked going into week 11. Here's the breakdown:
So from all the positions, you can expect about half of the top 10 for the rest of the year to come from the current top 10. If this is a typical year, you can expect maybe one RB to come from nowhere and post top-10 numbers from here out. For WRs, you can expect three to do so, and for QBs two. I have seen people take these kinds of trends and use them to try to project top 10s. This is a very bad idea. Just because history tells me that three WRs who look like bums right now will be top 10 material from here on out does not mean it's a good idea to try to bet on which three. The point is: seeking out sleeper WRs with upside potential is just as important now as it was at the beginning of the season.
Is Tim Brown done?Brown currently sits as the #29 WR according to total points and #33 in points per game. At this point, he deserves to be on a fantasy roster, but he looks like a marginal third receiver at best. Brown's 2002 season is looking a lot like Cris Carter's 2001. And they both happened at the same age. Carter turned 36 last year, and Brown turned 36 this year. Both were very productive at 35. That got me searching through the archives to see if other WRs hit a wall around this age.Of course, most receivers are long retired by age 36, but even among the guys who made it that long, there does seem to be some sort of wall at 36. Lots of WRs have been productive at ages 34 and 35: Frank Lewis, Charley Taylor, Cliff Branch, Art Monk, Paul Warfield, Cris Carter, Drew Hill and Irving Fryar were all top-20 fantasy WRs at 34 or 35. None of those guys was even top-30 at age 36. The only WRs to finish in the top 30 after at age 36 or later were James Lofton and Charlie Joiner. And then there's Jerry Rice, but the rules don't seem to apply to him. Just to be clear, I'm not trying to bury Tim Brown yet. He may still have a productive year or two in him. I'm just pointing out that it is not at all unprecendented for a man of his age to see a drastic drop in production with no prior warning. Despite the fact that he was a top-10 WR last year, no one should be surprised if he is finished.
In this article, I described a method of determining whether a player started stronger or finished stronger in a given season. I'm going to use that same method, but I'm not going to describe it again here. If you're interested in the details, go back and read the linked article. I defined an RB to be "old" if he was 29 or older. I defined a WR to be "old" if he was 30 or older. I looked at all RBs and WRs from 1995-2001 who played at least 8 games and who scored at least 100 fantasy points. In general, most RBs (both young and old) tend to finish the season stronger than they start it. The same is true of WRs, but to a lesser extent. Now, here's the young/old breakdown:
The WR result is not statistically significant in the official sense (i.e. given the sample size, there's a decent chance of this kind of split happening randomly), but the RB result is. It still might be a fluke, but it's an interesting one.
Week 11 RB and QB cheatsheets from down the hallStart reading here for details on these cheatsheets.
Name OPP FPPG YPG DEF Proj -------------------------------------------------- Priest Holmes buf 25.7 150 2 20.9 LaDainian Tomlinson sfo 20.6 139 0 19.1 Marshall Faulk chi 20.5 138 0 18.9 Ahman Green min 17.9 126 3 17.8 Deuce McAllister atl 20.4 131 -3 17.4 Tiki Barber was 15.6 123 -1 16.8 Charlie Garner nwe 16.6 119 2 16.8 James Stewart nyj 14.0 110 7 16.4 Fred Taylor hou 15.1 118 -2 16.0 Ricky Williams bal 16.5 119 -3 15.8 Jamal Lewis mia 14.8 115 -1 15.6 Corey Dillon cle 13.6 110 2 15.5 Travis Henry kan 17.1 104 1 14.6 Michael Bennett gnb 13.1 104 -0 14.3 Edgerrin James dal 12.6 108 -7 13.8 Duce Staley ari 11.7 97 0 13.4 Clinton Portis sea 12.6 86 7 13.1 Stephen Davis nyg 12.8 94 -2 12.7 Shaun Alexander den 16.8 95 -3 12.6 Lamar Smith tam 13.8 91 -4 12.0 Curtis Martin det 10.2 76 6 11.5 Eddie George pit 12.8 88 -4 11.4 Anthony Thomas ram 11.6 83 -4 10.7 Emmitt Smith ind 8.8 75 2 10.7 Garrison Hearst sdg 11.5 81 -4 10.7 Antowain Smith oak 11.0 77 -0 10.6 Jamel White cin 9.0 76 0 10.6 Warrick Dunn nor 11.4 74 1 10.6 Amos Zereoue ten 9.0 77 -3 10.2 Thomas Jones phi 8.9 74 -4 9.5 Michael Pittman car 7.7 77 -7 9.5 Olandis Gary sea 7.2 57 7 9.3 Kevan Barlow sdg 10.0 66 -4 8.6 T.J. Duckett nor 8.3 57 1 8.2 Marcel Shipp phi 10.5 62 -4 8.0 Moe Williams gnb 11.5 55 -0 7.7 Jerome Bettis ten 10.6 56 -3 7.4 Kevin Faulk oak 8.7 50 -0 7.0 Lamar Gordon chi 7.4 44 0 6.2 Mike Alstott car 8.0 47 -7 5.5 Stacey Mack hou 8.1 36 -2 4.9 Name OPP PYD RYD INT DEF Proj --------------------------------------------------------- Michael Vick nor 174 52 0.12 3.7 23.4 Donovan McNabb ari 226 52 0.56 -1.9 23.1 Drew Bledsoe kan 311 4 0.67 5.2 20.0 Rich Gannon nwe 321 10 0.78 -1.1 19.3 Jeff Garcia sdg 206 23 0.56 3.7 18.1 Trent Green buf 229 19 1.11 7.1 18.0 Marc Bulger chi 287 -3 0.75 6.3 17.4 Brett Favre min 249 3 0.44 4.8 16.9 Tom Brady oak 280 6 1.11 2.5 16.7 Aaron Brooks atl 233 21 1.00 -1.6 16.1 Daunte Culpepper gnb 233 29 1.56 -3.4 15.8 Mark Brunell hou 201 17 0.44 -0.4 15.6 Peyton Manning dal 271 8 1.22 -1.8 14.9 Tommy Maddox ten 240 2 1.14 6.1 14.8 Steve McNair pit 209 23 1.22 -2.5 14.4 Brian Griese sea 256 9 1.11 -3.4 14.0 Chad Pennington det 190 4 0.50 4.2 13.8 Kerry Collins was 260 0 1.00 -1.3 13.5 Jake Plummer phi 205 22 1.22 -4.5 13.5 Tim Couch cin 210 7 1.14 1.5 12.9 Quincy Carter ind 209 13 1.14 -2.4 12.8 David Carr jax 174 17 1.11 0.3 12.8 Jay Fiedler bal 215 13 1.00 -4.8 12.6 Brad Johnson car 232 2 0.62 -4.1 12.5 Kordell Stewart ten 148 14 1.25 6.1 12.2 Shane Matthews nyg 190 5 0.83 -1.2 11.3 Trent Dilfer den 197 4 1.00 -1.6 11.0 Matt Hasselbeck den 139 7 0.17 -1.6 10.6 Drew Brees sfo 185 9 1.11 -3.1 10.5 Jim Miller ram 213 1 1.00 -3.9 10.4 Chris Redman mia 172 1 0.50 -2.0 10.3 Jon Kitna cle 222 4 1.67 -2.1 10.2 Patrick Ramsey nyg 181 0 1.25 -1.2 8.8 Rodney Peete tam 208 2 0.71 -12.3 8.3 Joey Harrington nyj 172 0 1.22 -2.8 7.9
Unless otherwise noted, all stats come from football-reference.com and the disclaimer applies
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