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| Should Brian Urlacher be taken ahead of Antonio Gates? Obvious -- or is it? |
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Editor's Note: When I revisited this BDDM piece to update the tables with the
2006 season data, I was reminded of one of life's great lessons-- nothing
ever stays the same.
Analysis
quickly revealed that the trends in the NFL have once again shifted,
particularly on the offensive side of the ball. The leveling off of quality
tight ends coupled with the de-emphasis of individual running backs has
significantly shifted the fantasy football draft paradigms.
Does this
mean that last year's BDDM was flawed? Absolutely not! Rather, it highlights the strength of the BDDM: it is
flexible and perceptive enough to spot the shift in NFL trends and translate
them into a workable draft method for you!
So while
other sites will still be hashing out the same old advice, you'll know
better!
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This Fantasy Forecast® will deal with a question that is becoming more and more relevant
these days. With the explosion of Individual Defensive Player (IDP) leagues,
many owners are confused as to the appropriate time to draft a defensive
player. Should Brian Urlacher
be taken ahead of Antonio Gates?
Should Julius Peppers
be grabbed ahead of your WR2? Ahead of your WR3? Heck, where should any position be drafted as compared
to any other position?
To answer that question, we'll
draw on one of our industry innovations: Consistency Rankings. Let's take a look at how consistent
every position player is (excluding kickers, since many studies have proven
that kickers should be drafted last, period), the range of their scoring
and their relative value. In order to gauge the relative value of positions,
for this data sample we've chosen to look only at players who started at least eight games
(so we're essentially looking at players who would likely be chosen in the
early-to-middle rounds of most fantasy drafts):
Consistency Ratings (“CR”)
by Year and Position
|
Pos
|
2002
|
2003
|
2004
|
2005
|
2006
|
|
DB
|
26.49
|
30.24
|
30.59
|
28.24
|
29.40
|
|
DL
|
34.15
|
35.93
|
37.86
|
35.25
|
36.56
|
|
LB
|
34.70
|
35.59
|
35.22
|
35.57
|
33.33
|
|
QB
|
27.53
|
34.46
|
35.07
|
31.02
|
33.56
|
|
RB
|
70.30
|
80.82
|
71.35
|
69.62
|
74.28
|
|
TE
|
57.27
|
67.68
|
81.71
|
77.18
|
67.88
|
|
WR
|
36.57
|
43.33
|
39.37
|
42.72
|
40.19
|
(The lower the CR, the more consistent the position)
- Table 1 -
The first thing that
jumps out of these numbers is the fact that the two most "stable"
positions in 2006 were QB (offense) and DB (defense) while the least stable is RB.
Interesting! The fact that RB was the least consistent position in 2006 makes
intuitive sense, given the growing number of running back by committee (RBBC)
situations in the NFL.
