Senior Editor and Founder John T. Georgopoulos is a 15-year veteran of the fantasy sports industry. He has written for several national fantasy magazines and has appeared on sports talk stations around the country.
John has also been a six-time finalist for various Fantasy Sports Writer Association (FSWA) awards; his Fantasy Forecast column was awarded the 2006 Best Fantasy Football In-Season Series by the FSWA.
Fantasy Football Forecast®: Bounce Back Candidates
Jay Cutler, Bears
There’s
an old fantasy football adage which stipulates the following: championships are never won in the first
round; they can only be lost in the first round. I am a firm believer in
this piece of ancient wisdom (believed to have been brought down from the mount
by Moses) — last year, it wasn’t the selection of Adrian Peterson in the first that brought you that elusive fantasy
trophy, but rather Ricky Williams in
the twelfth.
Heading
into a draft, every fantasy owner has a list of players that he feels will have
bounce-back seasons. Some of the players on the list are coming off an injury
(see Wes Welker), some have switched
teams (see Ladanian Tomlinson) and
still others will be playing in a new system (see Eddie Royal) or with a new teammate who will elevate their stats
(see Chad Henne). While the
preparation of a “bounce-back list” is a sound strategy, it is largely driven
by human intuition. As a computer geek, I find that prospect worrisome— isn’t
there some way to inject some cold, hard logic into the process?
Enter Mighty Max, the SportsGrumblings.comsupercomputer to add some order to the chaos. I asked Max
to see if there was some way we could use formula to find two or three players
who had a high probability of a bounce-back season. Here are some of the
criteria we used to whittle down the pool of candidates:
·Minimum of three
years in the league
·Considered
“draft-worthy”
·Increasing fantasy
production from 2006-2008
·Performance in 2009
below that of 2008 (but above position average)
We want
to look at four-year veterans, because anything less than that is not enough to
establish a reputation for being productive; “draft-worthy” would mean players
likely to be on a fantasy roster; increasing fantasy production would indicate
a positive fantasy reputation; a drop-off in production last year would
indicate a devaluing in fantasy owners’ eyes; and finally, we want to make sure
that they have not hit the infamous “wall” for their position.
Max
chugged through the data and came up with the following:
