question on ranking/projection points (1 Viewer)

[ninerfanatic492000]

Norton has Derrick ranked at 41, yet he has projected him to score more than many of the players rated ahead of him in the 30's. so i guess my question is when were his projections made in correlation to his rankings? if the projections were made roughly in the same time the rankings were released the rankings would have to be different. i 've noticed the same discrepancies like this before(not only Norton i mean), is there a date stamp on the projections that i've been overlooking? or are the projections like the max potential for each player and the rankings moreso where they think the player will actually produce?

 

[John Norton]

I won't speak for anyone else but this is my point of view. Rankings and projections are two different animals. Thus there is no need or intention to necessarily make them "match". Most often they do align pretty closely but this is not something that I pay any attention to. There are reasons why some players don't align. Projections represent an educated guess of how a team's production will be divided and nothing more. Rankings represent among other things, consistency, upside and confidence in a player.

Using your example of Johnson. He should be the Chiefs leading tackler so at this point I have him projected as such. However, I have never been a fan of his and don't have a lot of confidence in his ability to be consistent from week to week or to out produce his projected numbers. Thus he is lower in my rankings.

Actually the difference is relatively small. Johnson is #33 in the projections and 41 in the rankings.

Hope this answers your question.

 

[Jene Bramel]

I do one full set of projections after the draft (that aren't published on the site) to force myself to look at old trends and the new surrounding cast of each defense with a (hopefully) objective eye. Then I break each position into tiers, based on upside and a fair amount of gut feel. Somewhere in the middle, the rank list meets.

As John said, that reflects a level of confidence that a given player might meet the high side of his projection, takes into account injury risks, competitive situations, etc. I'll second his point that, at one point in the rank list eight spots of difference in raw ranking means little whereas two or three spots may make a major difference in others.

It's not a perfect system unfortunately. Bloom and I have been talking more and more about tiers and break points in the past couple of seasons. We've used the general LB1, DL2, etc gestalt on the podcasts as a result. We're also in the process of writing a series of conversational articles about ranking each IDP position, using tiers as the basis for the discussion. We're hoping it's a worthwhile look into both the process itself and where the break points in our consensus rank lists might lie.

 

[ninerfanatic492000]

good enuff, i had been wondering if the rankings were more the 'gut' feeling. i just used Derrick as an example, the question came about b/c a leaguemte was bragging that a particular keeper of of his was higher on the ranks than mine of same position. when we clicked to see each's projections my guys were slightly higher. so now i moreso use both ranks/projections and been using the proj as max potential.

just wanted to confirm before upcoming draft