Dirty Weasel
Footballguy
Warning - SEMI-LONG POST AHEAD!
The offseason is a great time to dig deep into stats, while you wait impatiently for your upcoming draft. As years go on, it seems more and more FF'ers tend to worry about RBBC in the NFL. I have played FF for about 20 years (on and off, mostly on), and I recall hearing the same things back then. It made me wonder, "is the NFL really heading down the RBBC path, or is it just in the minds of fantasy owners?". Well, with all the time on my hands, I decided to crunch some numbers to see what they had to say about it. But, how far should I go back? How many years do I really need to make the research seem credible? After much deliberation (with myself), I chose the year 1978 as my starting point. It seemed like the right year, because that's the year the NFL switched to a 16-game schedule. But, have I bitten off more than I can chew? That's 29 years of data I need to compile! I told myself, "why not, you have 3 months before your draft day comes". I figured there were 2 main factors associated with RBBC - carries and TD's. You don't want your FF RB's losing carries to their backups, and you certainly don't want them losing TD's to them. But, how should I prepare the data so it makes sense? I figured I'd need to break it into carries and TD's first, and then overlay them on a timeline chart. I chose to chart the carries first, figuring it would be pretty easy to find the stats online. I picked http://www.pro-football-reference.com/ as my main source, and used http://www.jt-sw.com/football/pro/stats.nsf in case the first site's data seemed out of whack. So, I double-clicked on that Microsoft Excel icon and I was off and typing. After only (insert your guess here) hours I was done. I had charted every carry, by every position, in the last 29 years. As Thornton Melon said, "I felt like I gave birth to an accountant". I had the raw data in my hands now, and it was time to put it into the form of a picture. I had made line charts using Microsoft PowerPoint before, so I opened up that program and input the results (but only for RB's 1-5 on each team). It worked like a champ, and only took an hour. I now had, in front of me, a line chart showing how the carries have been distributed throughout the years. Now all I have to do is start the Excel process over for TD's, then add the results to my PowerPoint slide. But before I dig into the TD stats, I figured I'd take a day off. That's where I sit right now, typing out this post. If you have read this far, thanx for listening. And as a gift for listening to me ramble on, here are the links to the Excel and PowerPoint files:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/dudarg
http://www.sendspace.com/file/dwsyk3
Just scroll down to the flashing red arrow to download.
You can download them to your computer and do whatever best suits your needs with them. I've gone this far, so charting the TD's is something I won't give up on. I will post the files for those when I am finished.
The offseason is a great time to dig deep into stats, while you wait impatiently for your upcoming draft. As years go on, it seems more and more FF'ers tend to worry about RBBC in the NFL. I have played FF for about 20 years (on and off, mostly on), and I recall hearing the same things back then. It made me wonder, "is the NFL really heading down the RBBC path, or is it just in the minds of fantasy owners?". Well, with all the time on my hands, I decided to crunch some numbers to see what they had to say about it. But, how far should I go back? How many years do I really need to make the research seem credible? After much deliberation (with myself), I chose the year 1978 as my starting point. It seemed like the right year, because that's the year the NFL switched to a 16-game schedule. But, have I bitten off more than I can chew? That's 29 years of data I need to compile! I told myself, "why not, you have 3 months before your draft day comes". I figured there were 2 main factors associated with RBBC - carries and TD's. You don't want your FF RB's losing carries to their backups, and you certainly don't want them losing TD's to them. But, how should I prepare the data so it makes sense? I figured I'd need to break it into carries and TD's first, and then overlay them on a timeline chart. I chose to chart the carries first, figuring it would be pretty easy to find the stats online. I picked http://www.pro-football-reference.com/ as my main source, and used http://www.jt-sw.com/football/pro/stats.nsf in case the first site's data seemed out of whack. So, I double-clicked on that Microsoft Excel icon and I was off and typing. After only (insert your guess here) hours I was done. I had charted every carry, by every position, in the last 29 years. As Thornton Melon said, "I felt like I gave birth to an accountant". I had the raw data in my hands now, and it was time to put it into the form of a picture. I had made line charts using Microsoft PowerPoint before, so I opened up that program and input the results (but only for RB's 1-5 on each team). It worked like a champ, and only took an hour. I now had, in front of me, a line chart showing how the carries have been distributed throughout the years. Now all I have to do is start the Excel process over for TD's, then add the results to my PowerPoint slide. But before I dig into the TD stats, I figured I'd take a day off. That's where I sit right now, typing out this post. If you have read this far, thanx for listening. And as a gift for listening to me ramble on, here are the links to the Excel and PowerPoint files:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/dudarg
http://www.sendspace.com/file/dwsyk3
Just scroll down to the flashing red arrow to download.
You can download them to your computer and do whatever best suits your needs with them. I've gone this far, so charting the TD's is something I won't give up on. I will post the files for those when I am finished.
