Food for thought for Vick owners (1 Viewer)

[kal-el]

Vick has only played one game on grass this year (at Carolina) and did pretty well: 140 passing yards, 2 passing TDs, no interceptions, 48 rushing yards. But looking at the numbers over the last three years, he really seems to struggle playing on grass.

Michael Vick: 2004-2006 Seasons

SURFACE CMP ATT YDS CMP% YPA TD INT ATT YDS AVG TD

Grass 139 258 1619 53.9 6.3 8 9 75 514 6.9 0

Turf 405 741 4876 54.7 6.6 34 25 242 1855 7.7 11

Pulled these numbers off ESPN.com, which doesn't list games played on each surface. But the passing/rushing attempt numbers imply he's played about three times as many games as turf. But he has 45 TDs in the games on turf vs. just 8 on grass (none of them rushing).

This is enough for me to bench him this week (at Washington). Thought others might be interested in this data, as well.

 

[Big Score]

Before putting too much emphasis on grass = Vick struggles, I'd like to know the defenses he was going against on grass & when those games were. Falcons basically mailed in the season late last year.

 

[Knightro]

last week was one of the first weeks the skins pass D has been a presence. There isn't much of a pass rush without a blitz so IF White, Lelie, Crumpler, and Jenkins can actually catch something more than a cold, the opportunities will be there.

 

[fridayfrenzy]

I would aslo like to know the comparison between Turf Home and Turf Away.

One of the reasons he struggles is that he is playing an Away game, due to Atlanta being a Turf stadium, and it may not be because he is playing on grass.

Is he doing worse because he is playing an Away game or becuase he is playing on grass...that distinction is not made by your stats.

 

[kal-el]

Before putting too much emphasis on grass = Vick struggles, I'd like to know the defenses he was going against on grass & when those games were. Falcons basically mailed in the season late last year.

OK, I looked it up:2004San FransiscoCarolinaKansas CityDenverTampa Bay2005CarolinaMiamiChicagoTampa Bay2006Carolina10 games on grass; 31 games on turf.So he's probably played tougher than average defenses on grass. He's averaged roughly 16.2 fantasy points per game on grass vs. 18.8 points per game on turf. Maybe the tougher defenses on grass account for most of that difference, but it's enough for me to bench Vick given how close the FBG projections are QBs after the first 3-4 guys this week.

 

[kal-el]

I would aslo like to know the comparison between Turf Home and Turf Away. One of the reasons he struggles is that he is playing an Away game, due to Atlanta being a Turf stadium, and it may not be because he is playing on grass.Is he doing worse because he is playing an Away game or becuase he is playing on grass...that distinction is not made by your stats.

I'll leave that for another day. For this week, he's playing both on the road and on grass, so it's doesn't really matter which is the crucial factor.

 

[Texican]

If you can't start him against Washington - who can you start him against?

 

[kal-el]

If you can't start him against Washington - who can you start him against?

It's not that you can't start him. He's been a remarkably consistent fantasy performer this year, regardless of the qualify of the opponent. He's scored at least 15 fantasy points in all but one game.It's that the statistics seem to suggest that playing on grass tends to negatively effect his performance. I'm saying if you have another QB option, this may be a reason to go with the other option.My secondary theory on Vick is that the quality of the defense vs. QBs isn't a factor in his fantasy performance. The things that might hinder a standard QB (an agressive pass rush, in particular) could actually be a detriment to stopping Vick due to his running ability.I did a quick test of this theory by calculating the correlation between his fantasy points in each game this year vs. the average fantasy points given up to QBs this year by the defense he played that week. The resulting correlation is negative: -.05. This would seem to confirm my theory. You'd really need to look at multiple seasons of data, though, for the result to be meaningful.

 

[kal-el]

OK. Here's a slightly more sophisticated analysis. I ran a linear regression on the last three years (2004-2006) of Vick's fantasy data. I threw out week 17 for both 2004 and 2005. This covers 39 games (he's missed three games).

Depedent variable:

FP: Fantasy points scored (standard FBG scoring)

Independent variables:

DEF: Average fantasy points given up to QBs in the relevant year by the defense he played in a given week subtracted from average fantasy points scored by QBs that year.

HOME: Dummy variable for whether he played at home that week.

GRASS: Dummy variable for whether he played on grass that week.

The resulting equation is this:

FP = 19.35 - 0.18 * DEF + 1.86 * HOME - 4.10 * GRASS

Note: Vick's actual average points scored over this time period is 19.19, so the constant of 19.35 implies this is a decent model.

Implications:

1) His performance is actually negatively correlated with how well the opposing defense tends to play vs. QBs. For every fantasy point above the league average a defense gives up, Vick's performance goes DOWN by 0.18 points (and vice versa).

2) Playing at home helps: it's worth just under two fantasy points on average.

3) Playing on grass hurts--even more than playing at home helps: it costs him just over four points per game.

 

[coachjim]

In a TD heavy league (1 point per 50 yards passing and 1 point per 25 rushing yards) I am starting Hass over him the rest of the year. Vick sucks in this scenerio.

 

[Traders2001]

Meaning his WR's are dropping more passes when they play on grass, cmon those stas are ridiculous he has nt had a NFL caliber WR to throw to so far in his career.

I mean the best WR he probably ever threw to is Finneran.