Top 10 RBs (1 Viewer)

[AB in DC]

I'd take issue with any set of rankings that give Addai and Rudi Johnson the same odds at finishing in the top ten.

I understand what abrecher was trying to do, and I think he did a solid job projecting within the confines of that system. It's the system that's the problem of course.

Nothing wrong with the system -- like I said, I just happen to be down on Rudi Johnson this year. Bump him up to 0.5 or whatever and it's the same thing.

 

[dgreen]

Not to take anything from your research, but over the years I have concluded that Top 10 RB come from "the land of good health."

There were 78 times that a RB had 350 touches in the past 10 years. 66 of them ranked in the Top 10. The lowest ranking of a guy with 350 touches in that time was 19th. On average, that group of RBs ranked 6th. Overall, in that 10 year stretch, a guy with 350 touches was Top 10 85% of the time.

So to reverse engineer this, we need to identify guys that have solid health in situations that can support a RB getting 350 touches.

I'm interested in who those guys 29 guys were who finished #31+ the previous year.

I'd be happy to list whatever you want, but where in my initial statement did I mention anything about 29 guys ranking #31+ the previous year?

I think maybe that request was for me. In my original post, there are 29 RBs that came from 31+ in year n-1 to top 10 in year n. They are listed in the first post. There are 12 nams under 31-50 and 17 more under 50+.

 

[nygiants56]

Select 5 from:

Only injury will prevent top three from making it again

1 Shaun Alexander

2 Larry Johnson

3 LaDainian Tomlinson

4 Tiki Barber - Tough to leave off - law of averages for a down year is only reason for him to not make the cut

5 Edgerrin James - Arz ain't Indy

6 Clinton Portis - Talent & opportunity, he's likely to repeat

7 Rudi Johnson - Perry steals enough to knock him out of top 10

8 Lamont Jordan - No competition for touches

9 Thomas Jones - Benson gets enough to knock him out of top ten

10 Mike Anderson - Obvious

Select 2 from:

11 Steven Jackson - It's his team now

12 Warrick Dunn

13 Willis McGahee

14 Reuben Droughns

15 Willie Parker

16 Corey Dillon

17 Domanick Davis

18 Brian Westbrook - If he stays healthy, hell be top 10

19 Cadillac Williams

20 Chris Brown

Select 2 from:

21 Julius Jones - Just a hunch, but I think Parcells will use him a ton

22 Tatum Bell

23 Ronnie Brown - Workload is all his

24 DeShaun Foster

25 Jamal Lewis

26 Stephen Davis

27 Ricky Williams

28 Mewelde Moore

29 Curtis Martin

30 Sam Gado

Select 1 rookie:

Reggie Bush

Deangelo Williams - Foster always gets hurt, perfect spot for Williams to put up stats

Laurence Maroney

LenDale White

Maurice Drew

Jerious Norwood

Brian Calhoun

good list, but a bit confusing:you say 'if' Westy stays healthy he belongs there, yet you're already assuming Foster DOES get hurt and Williams WILL be in the top 10?!

you could make the case that Droughns and/or McGahee belong ahead of Westy, both will see 300+ carries and plenty of receptions, and ALL goalline carries.

you could also argue that Maroney only has Dillon in front of him, a RB on the wrong side of 30 with a lot of 'mileage' .

If you think Foster is an injury waiting to happen, well, what about White playing behind Chris Brown!? Travis Henry was a poor signing by Tenn. and could be a cap casualty, which puts White as one guy almost certain to see plenty of action in 2006 once Brown gets hurt.

great list tho, I totally agree Barber could slip down , out of the top 10.

 

[Chase Stuart]

I'd take issue with any set of rankings that give Addai and Rudi Johnson the same odds at finishing in the top ten.

I understand what abrecher was trying to do, and I think he did a solid job projecting within the confines of that system. It's the system that's the problem of course.

Nothing wrong with the system -- like I said, I just happen to be down on Rudi Johnson this year. Bump him up to 0.5 or whatever and it's the same thing.

Nothing wrong with a system where you input one piece of data (last year's stats) and it projects a certain number of people with worse data to do better than a large number of people with better data?Using previous end of year results in a manner like this is extremely misleading at best. I know most people don't take it seriously (including you I'd imagine), but breaking down last year's rankings into tiers and projecting off of historical norms is no way to do fantasy projections.

 

[AB in DC]

Nothing wrong with a system where you input one piece of data (last year's stats) and it projects a certain number of people with worse data to do better than a large number of people with better data?

I'm not projecting anything -- I'm estimating probabilities, which are done on a player-by-player basis, not on "inputing" anything. Are you saying that any system that predicts some players to be better in 2006 than in 2005 is faulty? That's absurd.

Using previous end of year results in a manner like this is extremely misleading at best. I know most people don't take it seriously (including you I'd imagine), but breaking down last year's rankings into tiers and projecting off of historical norms is no way to do fantasy projections.

This is just AVT in another guise. Project your players, but compare to historical norms to see if your numbers make sense. That's all I'm doing.

 

[Chase Stuart]

Nothing wrong with a system where you input one piece of data (last year's stats) and it projects a certain number of people with worse data to do better than a large number of people with better data?

I'm not projecting anything -- I'm estimating probabilities, which are done on a player-by-player basis, not on "inputing" anything. Are you saying that any system that predicts some players to be better in 2006 than in 2005 is faulty? That's absurd.

The faulty part is predicting some players to be better only because they were worse in 2005. This system, by definition, will always predict some players to do better based on nothing more than their weaker numbers the previous year. Certainly you don't want your 2006 projections to mirror the 2005 end of year rankings, but that point isn't in dispute.

Using previous end of year results in a manner like this is extremely misleading at best. I know most people don't take it seriously (including you I'd imagine), but breaking down last year's rankings into tiers and projecting off of historical norms is no way to do fantasy projections.

This is just AVT in another guise. Project your players, but compare to historical norms to see if your numbers make sense. That's all I'm doing.

You say 'This is just AVT in another guise' as if that's a good thing. As a starting point, do you agree that year N's end of year stats should not mirror your year N+1 projections?

 

[dgreen]

The faulty part is predicting some players to be better only because they were worse in 2005.

Who's doing that? We can study historical data to see that certain trends tend to happen in RB rankings. Based on that info, we can further study which situations lead to these tendancies. Once we determine possible causes for the trend, we can then look for current situations that resemble those causes. Once you've identified a few players that appear to be in similar situations, you can use that as a legitimate reason to bump up your projections because you now see something about that player you may not have seen before.

 

[AB in DC]

The faulty part is predicting some players to be better only because they were worse in 2005.

That's not what I'm doing.

As a starting point, do you agree that year N's end of year stats should not mirror your year N+1 projections?

This seems obvious. What I try to do is take year N's ppg stats, adjust to account for (a) changes in talent/experience, supporting cast/coaching, and opportunity for N+1, (b) anything unusual that happened in N that isn't likely to occur again. Then I try to compare against historical trends to see if I'm working with the right order of magnitude; if my projections seems off from past history, I go back and figure out what I missed or what I over- or under-estimated, or whether N+1 may really be a lot different from recent history.

 

[Chase Stuart]

The faulty part is predicting some players to be better only because they were worse in 2005.

Who's doing that? We can study historical data to see that certain trends tend to happen in RB rankings. Based on that info, we can further study which situations lead to these tendancies. Once we determine possible causes for the trend, we can then look for current situations that resemble those causes. Once you've identified a few players that appear to be in similar situations, you can use that as a legitimate reason to bump up your projections because you now see something about that player you may not have seen before.

You had me until that last sentence. Let me throw a softball back at you: the last three years, the top pre-season backup RB has averaged 1,593 total yards and 14 total TDs. (Larry Johnson, Willie McGahee and Moe Williams). It seems likely that a RB considered a backup right now will finish the year in the top 10. So, will you project a current backup RB in your top 10? That would be studying historical data to see that certain trends tend to happen. Once you identify a few players that appear to be in similar situations, you can use that as a legitimate reason to bump up your projections.

 

[Chase Stuart]

The faulty part is predicting some players to be better only because they were worse in 2005.

That's not what I'm doing.

As a starting point, do you agree that year N's end of year stats should not mirror your year N+1 projections?

This seems obvious. What I try to do is take year N's ppg stats, adjust to account for (a) changes in talent/experience, supporting cast/coaching, and opportunity for N+1, (b) anything unusual that happened in N that isn't likely to occur again. Then I try to compare against historical trends to see if I'm working with the right order of magnitude; if my projections seems off from past history, I go back and figure out what I missed or what I over- or under-estimated, or whether N+1 may really be a lot different from recent history.

That sounds like a very good system. I'd imagine that you've had a lot of success with it.

 

[AB in DC]

Let me throw a softball back at you: the last three years, the top pre-season backup RB has averaged 1,593 total yards and 14 total TDs. (Larry Johnson, Willie McGahee and Moe Williams). It seems likely that a RB considered a backup right now will finish the year in the top 10. So, will you project a current backup RB in your top 10?

Not to speak for dgreen, but I don't predict injuries to starters except in very rare cases. For RBs, that would be DeShaun Foster and probably no one else.

 

[Chase Stuart]

Let me throw a softball back at you: the last three years, the top pre-season backup RB has averaged 1,593 total yards and 14 total TDs. (Larry Johnson, Willie McGahee and Moe Williams). It seems likely that a RB considered a backup right now will finish the year in the top 10. So, will you project a current backup RB in your top 10?

Not to speak for dgreen, but I don't predict injuries to starters except in very rare cases. For RBs, that would be DeShaun Foster and probably no one else.

It's easy to see why you shouldn't predict an injury because it's incredibly difficult to be accurate. It's harder to see why you shouldn't use stuff like "2 RBs from the 21-30 rank will make the top 10" because it's only regular old difficult to be accurate. Your projections shouldn't be designed to mirror old trends like "1 backup RB will make the top 10" or trends like "2 RBs from X-Y ranks will make the top 10."

 

[cstu]

Not to take anything from your research, but over the years I have concluded that Top 10 RB come from "the land of good health."

There were 78 times that a RB had 350 touches in the past 10 years. 66 of them ranked in the Top 10. The lowest ranking of a guy with 350 touches in that time was 19th. On average, that group of RBs ranked 6th. Overall, in that 10 year stretch, a guy with 350 touches was Top 10 85% of the time.

So to reverse engineer this, we need to identify guys that have solid health in situations that can support a RB getting 350 touches.

I'm interested in who those guys 29 guys were who finished #31+ the previous year.

I'd be happy to list whatever you want, but where in my initial statement did I mention anything about 29 guys ranking #31+ the previous year?

I think maybe that request was for me. In my original post, there are 29 RBs that came from 31+ in year n-1 to top 10 in year n. They are listed in the first post. There are 12 nams under 31-50 and 17 more under 50+.

Somehow I overlooked that.

 

[dgreen]

The faulty part is predicting some players to be better only because they were worse in 2005.

Who's doing that? We can study historical data to see that certain trends tend to happen in RB rankings. Based on that info, we can further study which situations lead to these tendancies. Once we determine possible causes for the trend, we can then look for current situations that resemble those causes. Once you've identified a few players that appear to be in similar situations, you can use that as a legitimate reason to bump up your projections because you now see something about that player you may not have seen before.

You had me until that last sentence. Let me throw a softball back at you: the last three years, the top pre-season backup RB has averaged 1,593 total yards and 14 total TDs. (Larry Johnson, Willie McGahee and Moe Williams). It seems likely that a RB considered a backup right now will finish the year in the top 10. So, will you project a current backup RB in your top 10?

A current backup? No chance. The results of your study require a cause that is highly unpredictable. There are three keys here: (1) Finding a trend, (2) determining if the cause is predictable, and (3) identifying the current players that fit the scenario.You may not find anything. You may go through 15 trends that don't produce a predictable cause or an indentifiable player that matches the situation. So, you through out that trend as just being something interesting and move on to finding another one.

That would be studying historical data to see that certain trends tend to happen. Once you identify a few players that appear to be in similar situations, you can use that as a legitimate reason to bump up your projections.

Even with your highly unpredictable example, I think this still holds true. You can still bump some guys. I'm not saying you catapult Ladell Betts from 45th to 7th. You don't have to find major bumps up. You can use the knowledge that a preseason backup jumps into the top 10 every year and try to target some backups, depending on roster size, to snag later in the draft. You may hit, you may miss. But, in a deep enough draft, someone is going to hit. I'd want that person to be me and I'd like to what I can to find that guy.I think I may look at some of this differently because play in a fairly deep (30+ roster) contract league. If you are in a 15-round redraft, I can see the hesitation.