The not-so-triumphant return

Hey there. Been a while.

I won't get too heavily into what's been keeping me away from here. Don't worry, it's nothing drastic -- I'm not dying, I'm not in prison, I'm not getting married. I've just been busier at my job than ever before and I just didn't have the energy to try and keep up a blog when I went home in the evenings. I can't guarantee that I will now, but I'd like to still post occasionally, when the mood strikes me, which has been rare as of late. Just don't expect three to four posts per week, like I used to do.

In the meantime, if you're new here, or relatively new, you might have missed out on some of my crude attempts at analysis over the past few years. Now that fantasy football season is nearly upon us again (and I actually work for a company that produces fantasy sports magazines, though not in that department), all the tired old theories are being trotted out again as to why a player will have a better/worse season in 2010. So I thought I'd take a little time to refresh you on what I think on such matters, backed up by more than just selective memory and wishful thinking.

Here are my two most significant findings for you to keep in mind this fantasy football season:

1) The running game has virtually no effect (statistically, at least) on the passing game and vice versa. Don't believe it when someone says, "Running back X will have a great season now that quarterback Y is on his team!" This is often quoted when a RB does have a good year when a new QB arrives (or an old QB does well) and never mentioned when a RB has a bad year with a good QB (or a QB has a bad year with a good RB). For the statement to be true, it must apply in a majority, if not all cases. I got into it a little bit with someone on the PFR blog lately but decided to bow out since my research was a little crusty and spread out.

And here is that old, crusty research! Enjoy!

http://jasonwinter.blogspot.com/2009/06/can-brett-help-adrian.html
http://jasonwinter.blogspot.com/2009/06/brett-adrian-part-2.html
http://jasonwinter.blogspot.com/2009/06/you-cant-un-learn-things.html
http://jasonwinter.blogspot.com/2009/07/non-statistical-opinion-on-great-debate.html

If you can only read one, read the second one. It contains most of the significant data.

2) A wide receiver's performance has nothing to do with other wide receivers on his team. Larry Fitzgerald will probably see his numbers drop this year, but it won't be because Anquan Boldin left. The absence of Kurt Warner will have a much bigger effect. A complimentary wide receiver (or good-hands tight end) has little to no effect on a player's stats. I covered that concept here:

http://jasonwinter.blogspot.com/2009/07/does-great-fantasy-receiver-need-2.html
http://jasonwinter.blogspot.com/2009/07/revisiting-receivers.html

When it comes to premises like these, I still think it's a case of people just trying to sound smarter than they are or, in the case of fantasy football, trying to make it seem like they're getting a great or emergent player as a great draft pick. Don't buy into it. Remember, Matt Forte was supposed to have an awesome year once the Bears landed Jay Cutler.

Oh yeah, speaking of Jay Cutler...

http://jasonwinter.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-broncos-are-6-0.html

And here's one last fun little Cutler/Kyle Orton comparison:

Broncos' #1 QB passer ratings:
2008 (Cutler): 86.0
2009 (Orton): 86.8

Bears' #1 QB passer ratings:
2008 (Orton): 79.6
2009 (Cutler): 76.8

Still think that was a good deal, Bears fans?

An Emmy-winning performance

While there's little outright complaining, there seems to be an undercurrent of mild grousing about the Vikings "only" beating the Lions 27-10 on Sunday and not putting the game out of reach until the 4th quarter. In fact, it seems like the Vikings always struggle with the Lions, despite coming out on top in each of the last five meetings between the teams.

My opinion is that a 17-point win is a 17-point win. The Vikings played just fine in Sunday's game, even if it took a while to make the game a pseudo-laugher. Consider some of the other games this past week that matched two teams where one was thought to be clearly superior than the other and yet barely eked out a win:

Miami 25, Tampa Bay 23
New Orleans 28, St. Louis 23

and a few that rank as outright upsets:

Washington 27, Denver 17
Cincinnati 18, Pittsburgh 12
Carolina 28, Atlanta 19
Green Bay 17, Dallas 7

And arguably the New England/Indianapolis and San Diego/Philadelphia games. Against those, I'll take a 27-10 victory any day.

* After the Vikings, my favorite three offenses to watch this season are, in order: Miami (love the Wildcat), New Orleans (for its sheer firepower), and -- wait for it -- Cleveland.

Watching the Browns' "offense" is like watching a good disaster movie, but without the obligatory hot chick. (I will still watch The Day After Tomorrow just to see Emmy Rossum.) I honestly think that Brady Quinn still has some potential in the league and could be a nice pickup for a team (possibly a team in purple) in a couple years when he finishes out his rookie contract, but the combination of terrible play calling (even MNF resident cheerleader Jon Gruden was criticizing the 827th one-yard route the Browns called last night), terrible receivers, and terrible offensive line play give him zero chance to succeed. Until that changes, the Browns offer better comedy than anything Jay Leno can provide on late-night TV.

* 20 carries for 41 yards Thursday for Matt Forte, making his season average 3.4 yards per carry. Good thing Jay Cutler will improve the running game in Chicago!

* Sorry, I'm still thinking of Emmy Rossum. I have to go now...

Why the Broncos are 6-0

The simple answer is, of course, "Their amazing defense and a really lucky play against Cincinnati." But consider the following two quarterbacks, each with the same number of pass attempts:

Quarterback A: 4,526 passing yards, 25 TDs, 18 Interceptions, 86.0 passer rating, 6.8 adjusted yards per attempt

Quarterback B: 3,937 passing yards, 24 TDs, 16 Interceptions, 79.6 passer rating, 6.0 adjusted yards per attempt

Which one is better? Quarterback A, but not by a large amount.

Now, suppose my team has quarterback B. I'll trade him to you for quarterback A. Not a good deal for you, but, depending on circumstances, maybe one you would make...

Oh, and I'll also throw in two first-round draft picks and a third-rounder. Can you toss me a fifth-rounder, maybe, just to even things out a bit?

I bet you're taking that deal.

Quarterback A's stat line belongs to Jay Cutler in 2008. B's stat line is Kyle Orton's stat line in 2008, adjusted to have the same number of attempts as Cutler. The reason Cutler's numbers looked better in 2008 was solely because of his high number of attempts. Plug Orton in for another 200-odd attempts in 2008, and his numbers start to look like Cutler's.

When the deal was made, I was skeptical of both sides. The conventional wisdom of Cutler as a franchise quarterback still lingered in my brain, despite my certainty that his "big numbers" were more the result of his number of pass attempts. Orton, meanwhile, while not great, was reasonably efficient in 2008, few people could dispute that he enjoyed a better receiving corps (Brandon Marshall and Eddie Royal) in Denver than Orton did (Devin Hester and Greg Olson/Matt Forte) in Chicago.

(The Vikings also were supposedly interested in Cutler, and he probably would have been an upgrade over Tarvaris Jackson and Sage Rosenfels, but I was hoping we wouldn't give up the house to acquire him.)

Admittedly, we're only looking at one season's worth of stats here, but that's about all we can do. Orton was awful in his rookie year, starting for the Bears in place of the injured Rex Grossman, and played sparingly in his second year. For Cutler, one year looks pretty much like the other. I'm too lazy to compute all sorts of advanced stats, but his passer rating his first four years in the league (counting this one) are 88.5, 88.1, 86.0, and 86.9. Decent, but not something I'd want to give up three high draft picks and a reasonable quarterback for.

So far, Cutler's performed reasonably well (the opener in Green Bay aside), but he's still looking like about the same passer he was in Denver -- willing to put it up all the time, but interception-prone. Meanwhile, we do harp on Denver's defense, and it's amazing, but Orton has nine touchdowns versus just one interception and a passer rating over 100. I don't think he's that good, but far too many people were just thinking of him as subpar, if not outright bad, going into this season.

But hey, look at how much Cutler is helping the Bears' running game. Matt Forte's 3.4 yards per carry is clearly the result of improved quarterback play.

So the next time you hear someone say Denver's just having a good season because of their defense, know that that's just part of the story. For years, it seemed like the Broncos could make any running back into a 1,000-yard back. Nowadays, maybe they can make any quarterback into a Pro Bowler...

You can't un-learn things

Now that I've done a fair job of establishing that there's no link (or maybe a slight negative link) between a team's passing proficiency and their running game's yards per carry, I can't help but notice claims to the exact opposite all over the place. And by "all over the place," I mean two places where I generally go for better-than-average football analysis and commentary. I still like these sources and I don't really blame them for holding to a thought process that I would also have believed just a few months ago, but it's difficult for me to pass them by without dying a little on the inside.

Yesterday, Daily Norseman posited that:

I think it's fair to say Peterson would see a bump in his yards per carry average with Favre as the team's starter

While the free pdf download of FootballGuys' fantasy football magazine (a great deal, and only 21 MB!), when discussing Matt Forte and the effect Jay Cutler will have on his numbers, asks, on page 111:

1. Will the running game improve with Jay Cutler under center?

And responds with only the following information:

Yards per carry average for all seven Denver RBs last year = 5.17
Yards per carry for Matt Forte last year = 3.9

This, to me, is an egregious oversight by a group of people who should know better. Putting aside the question of whether it's an erroneous assumption, it's a classic case of small sample size. If the Vikings traded for Drew Brees, I could just as easily ask:

Will the Vikings' running game decline with Drew Brees under center?

And respond:

Yards per carry average for all New Orleans RBs last year = 4.15
Yards per carry for Adrian Peterson last year = 4.85

So, clearly, adding Drew Brees will make Adrian Peterson's YPC worse, just as Cutler will make Forte's better. It has nothing to do with any of the involved teams' offensive line, quality of their backs, play calling, run-blocking scheme -- which, it should be noted, Denver has been superb at for years, long before Jay Cutler took over at quarterback -- nope, it's entirely because Drew Brees/Jay Cutler was at quarterback. End of discussion.

(Note that both of these analyses use straight yards per carry as the measuring stick, not the consistency of the back from carry to carry, which is still possibly related to quarterbacking.)

And while I haven't looked over every player's description, the entry for Ryan Grant (page 113) leaves me scratching my head in a number of ways:

There is always a chance that the Grant we saw in 2007 was the anomaly. Without a Hall of Fame quarterback in the backfield, defenses were able to concentrate more on Grant and lessened his impact.

No, not only do we have the "quarterback affects running back's performance" myth to deal with, but there's also the "Brett Favre makes everything better" myth. Aaron Rodgers threw for 4,000 yards and 28 TDs last year. Maybe for the first part of the year, teams concentrated on shutting down Grant, because they didn't know what they'd be getting from Rodgers. By about midseason, though, if you weren't paying attention to Rodgers, he was going to kill you. Grant's disappointing season might also have had something to do with the Packers' defense being so bad as to necessitate the abandonment of the running game earlier than they would have liked.

There's probably more like this in the FG analysis of running backs, and maybe for other positions. It's still a great resource that I heartily recommend, but don't buy into the notion that Matt Forte, or any other back, will have a great season because of improved quarterbacking.

Vikings free-agent thoughts (and yawns)

When I saw the headline "Vikings sign WR Holt," I almost did cartwheels at the notion that the team had signed Torry Holt.

Unfortunately, not so much.

Maybe Glenn Holt can at least be better than Maurice Hicks (shouldn't be hard) as a kick returner. Playing for Cincinnati for the past three years should have given him plenty of experience at running back kicks, given the Bengals' defense. And if the Bengals want to pay $1.4 million for the services of Naufahu Tahi for 2009, they're welcome to him.

Then of course, there are still the prominent Jay Cutler-to-the-Vikings -- or Lions or Bears or just about any other team with a marginally sane head coach who doesn't go out of his way to alienate his star player. Say what you will about Brad Childress, he at least understands that Adrian Peterson is the reason he's still employed.

Trent Dilfer is apparently not of the opinion that the Vikings should try to acquire Cutler, prompting Dave Myers of the Winona Daily News to quip, "either Dilfer hasn’t seen the Minnesota passing attack since Randy Moss left town; he doesn’t actually hear his own words once they leave his mouth; or he’s simply #@%* nuts."

(Dave Myers, however, does not know that you only use "either" when comparing two options, not three. His editor apparently doesn't know, either.)

Darren Sharper signed with the Saints? Man, I really haven't been paying attention. Here's hoping Tyrell Johnson's up to the challenge of starting in the secondary.

Really, this guy's only going to be 33 this season, and has been fantastic every year of his career except last year. Why hasn't anyone signed him yet? What am I missing? You'd stink if you played for the 2008 Rams, too.