New IDP theory I'm kicking around.. (1 Viewer)

[Jayrod]

After watching the Skins-Giants game last night and looking at my IDP league scoring, I noticed one of my leaguemates (luckily not against me this week) has Portis and London Fletcher-Baker both on his team.

As many of you know, Baker had 12-5 which was good for 40 points in our league. However Portis struggled a bit and never found the end zone and put up only 10 pts. It dawned on me that the success of Fletcher was directly associated with the struggles of Portis.

Therefore, my question is, what if we attempted to tie a LB to the primary offensive player from his same team and develop a sort of hedged bet for consistancy?

I've seen articles and threads on using two WR's from the same team, a WR/QB combo, a QB/RB combo and a WR/RB combo. Why not look at LB/RB & LB/QB combos as well? I think just as a high powered offense with balancing games from a QB & RB can help with consistancy in weekly scoring, even moreso, pairing that offensive player with a defensive player could possibly be safer....

As far as criteria, I'd limit my selection to a team that had a single primary offensive player and a primary MLB or ILB. If a team has multiple threats on offense, it would allow for less of a correlation and if we were looking at DB's, DL or OLB's, there is too much at play to expect consistant correlations as well.

A list of combos I'd like to watch this year are:

primary list

Washington - Portis & Fletcher-Baker

San Francisco - Gore & Willis

New Orleans - Brees & Vilma

Cincy - Palmer & Rivers

Baltimore - McGahee/Rice & Lewis

Houston - Schaub & Ryans

Buffalo - Lynch & Pozlusny

other possibilities

St. Louis - Jackson & Witherspoon

Seattle - Hasselbeck & Tatupu

Chicago - Forte & Urlacher

Minnesota - Peterson & Henderson

Kansas City - L. Johnson & D. Johnson

Denver - Cutler & DJ Williams

Let me know what you guys think and if I missed any good combos (I went team by team, so I don't think so....but I've been wrong before). Any and all input would be great as I'm going to take a good look at this this year.

I plan to run some numbers on last year as well and will develop some actual #'s criteria for past analysis and try to apply to this year as we go along, watching the groups above. But since I just thought of this last night and I'm leaving for the weekend, it might be next week before I get anything done.

 

[Jene Bramel]

It'll be interesting to see how your numbers come out. I see a couple of potential confounding factors.

First, I'm not sure the number and nature of a LBs tackle opportunities are tied closely enough to the success of a team's RB to make a clear correlation. There may be something in the middle ranks worth watching, but I'd guess the good talents will be successful and poor talents will struggle -- relatively -- regardless of RB success.

Second, and this is probably the larger rub, even if there is a small correlation, you'll have to reliably predict which RBs will struggle (or do very well) prior to your starting decision. That brings in another entire layer of potential variance to the discussion.

Certainly not trying to discourage you. Asking these kinds of questions often leads to other good questions, regardless of what you find. Looking forward to seeing if there's something in your analysis.

 

[mmarsian]

Interesting...and at first glance makes perfect sense.

If the stud RB/QB of Team 1 is struggling, then it stands to reason that the whole offense as a whole is struggling. By induction, that leads us to believe that Team 1's defense will have more work thrust upon them, with a huge possibility of the majority of the added work being on running plays since one could safely assume that the other team (Team 2) will have scored, or will be scoring, more than Team 1.

I would still lean on this being slightly more "bankable" with RB/LB correlations as a team that is down and getting run on will most likely have to be throwing the ball profusely towards the end of the game and, fantasy-wise at least, that could up those stats. Not running, though.

 

[Jayrod]

It'll be interesting to see how your numbers come out. I see a couple of potential confounding factors.

First, I'm not sure the number and nature of a LBs tackle opportunities are tied closely enough to the success of a team's RB to make a clear correlation. There may be something in the middle ranks worth watching, but I'd guess the good talents will be successful and poor talents will struggle -- relatively -- regardless of RB success.

Second, and this is probably the larger rub, even if there is a small correlation, you'll have to reliably predict which RBs will struggle (or do very well) prior to your starting decision. That brings in another entire layer of potential variance to the discussion.

Certainly not trying to discourage you. Asking these kinds of questions often leads to other good questions, regardless of what you find. Looking forward to seeing if there's something in your analysis.

This won't be useful for start/sit decisions, but for roster/drafting decisions. The point would be to find consistancy throughout the season. If the LB is up, the RB is down and vice versa from week to week. I'm probably going to be looking at standard deviations among the combined scores over a season and compare to combos of similarly ranked players on seperate teams to see if the standard deviation is greater among teammates than among non-teammates. Much like the offensive "same team" articles I've seen from the FBG staff.And for now it is simply a theory. I'll test it out. Could be nothing, but it could be a nice piece of info to have for future drafts/roster decisions if there is something here.

 

[trader jake]

In larger leagues I've tried to add the kicker of my QB later on to combat red zone issues (Eli Manning and John Carney from last night being a decent example).

Concerning the OP: I would guess that there would be a stronger correlation between RB/LB than QB/LB consistency. Teams run more when they are ahead (more RB points, less LB points - or flip that) but when they are behind they tend to pass more. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Terps2002]

In larger leagues I've tried to add the kicker of my QB later on to combat red zone issues (Eli Manning and John Carney from last night being a decent example).Concerning the OP: I would guess that there would be a stronger correlation between RB/LB than QB/LB consistency. Teams run more when they are ahead (more RB points, less LB points - or flip that) but when they are behind they tend to pass more. Just my 2 cents.

ssBy my count Eli attempted passes on 17 plays in the second half, with the Giants only attempting to run the ball on 13 plays in the second half. Also if you take out their last series when they were milking the clock and rushed three times in a row, the ratio is 17 passes to 10 rushes.The Giants had more rushing attempts in the first half. The Giants only attempted 8 more rushes in the game then the Redskins did.I believe the reason for Fetchers numbers are first he is a sideline to sideline LB. Second, B Jacobs is a between the tackles runner. Third, the Wash def line was over matched. Finally, the Giants worked the middle of the field alot with S Smith, M Hedgecock, Jacobs, Toomer and D Ward in the short passing game.