Does Pre-Season Matter?
(page 2)
Here are the formulas I obtained by combining both of those
together:
|
|
Formula |
|
% of Rushing Plays |
16.9% + 0.337 x Previous Year + 0.291 x Pre-Season |
|
Plays per Game |
30.8 + 0.404 x Previous Year + 0.084 x Pre-Season |
|
Yards per Carry |
2.33 + 0.295 x Previous Year + 0.144 x Pre-Season |
|
Yards per Pass Attempt |
2.86 + 0.359 x Previous Year + 0.214 x Pre-Season |
|
% of Rushing Touchdowns |
28.9% + 0.168 x Previous Year + 0.082 x Pre-Season |
|
Touchdowns per Game |
0.81 + 0.444 x Previous Year + 0.234 x Pre-Season |
As you can see, the coefficients for pre-season statistics are all
lower than for the previous year’s statistics but they are still
pretty important. To make it easier to understand the impact of
pre-season statistics, the following table compares the average
error of the above formula (Combined column) to the average change
in statistics from one year to another (Previous Year column) and to
the average change between pre-season and regular season statistics
(Pre-Season column):
|
|
Previous Year |
Pre-Season |
Combined |
|
% of Rushing Plays |
9.7% |
10.3% |
7.9% |
|
Plays per Game |
4.2% |
6.1% |
3.6% |
|
Yards per Carry |
9.8% |
13.7% |
7.6% |
|
Yards per Pass Attempt |
11.5% |
14.2% |
9.2% |
|
% of Rushing Touchdowns |
28.0% |
48.5% |
21.5% |
|
Touchdowns per Game |
22.9% |
31.6% |
18.7% |
As you can see, by using the above formulas, our projections are
quite a bit more accurate than if someone was simply using either
the previous year’s regular season statistics or the pre-season
statistics. Now the question many of you are probably asking
yourself by now is: how useful can this be for fantasy football
projections? To answer that question I used the formulas found
earlier to predict fantasy points for every team’s quarterbacks in
the past four seasons. On average, the formulas were off by 34.7
points or 13.8% while the average change from the previous year
is 42.1 points or 16.7%. My formulas gave a more accurate
number of fantasy points 58.1% of the time. If we look at
team rushing fantasy points, the formula gave a more accurate number
of fantasy points 61.9% of the time
In conclusion, pre-season statistics do mean something but you have
to know which statistics to look at. When watching pre-season games
it is always interesting to see which players look good and which
don’t but if you want to gain information for your fantasy leagues,
focus on the system that each team is using and whether they run or
pass more often than they did last year. After the third week of
pre-season I will publish a chart of the projected passing and
rushing statistics for each team based on these formulas.
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