Ultimate Fantasy Football Strategy - Strength of Schedule Article

Strength of Schedule

Strength of schedule is one of the many factors that fantasy football players often include in their player rankings to try and get an edge over their opponents. One of the problems with strength of schedule however is that there is so much parity in the NFL that a bad run defense can become one of the best ones in the following year. This article will consider statistics from the past four seasons and will try and determine whether or not strength of schedule is one of the factors worth worrying about in fantasy football.

The first step for this analysis was to determine how much defensive statistics vary from year to year. In order to do this I used the “points allowed by position” statistics which tell us how many fantasy points each team allowed to quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers in a given season. The goal was to find the degree of correlation between the points each team allowed in two consecutive seasons. Using statistics from 2003 through 2007 here are the formulas that predict the most accurately each team’s points allowed by position for the next season:

	Formula
QB	Next Year Pts Allowed = 214 + 0.223 x Previous Year Pts Allowed
RB	Next Year Pts Allowed = 303 + 0.196 x Previous Year Pts Allowed
WR	Next Year Pts Allowed = 400 + 0.230 x Previous Year Pts Allowed

These formulas show us that it is very difficult to predict how defenses will perform in the upcoming season as only 20% to 25% of the previous year’s statistics help us predict next year’s statistics. For example, the Cleveland Browns were the worst passing defense last season by allowing 333 fantasy points to opposing quarterbacks but according to the above formula you can expect them to allow only 288 in 2008. For those who doubt these formulas, of the ten defenses that allowed the most fantasy points to quarterbacks in 2006 only two remained in the bottom ten in 2007 and three were in the top ten.

The next step was to use these numbers and determine each team’s strength of schedule by position for the 2008 season. The following charts show the three easiest and the three hardest schedules for each position as well as the multiplier which shows how much easier or harder their schedule is compared to the league average:

Easiest Schedules
QB		RB		WR
WAS	1.008	MIN	1.017	WAS	1.016
PHI	1.007	CAR	1.015	SF	1.015
TB	1.007	NO	1.015	NYG	1.009

Hardest Schedules
QB		RB		WR
SD	0.989	CIN	0.980	SD	0.985
NE	0.991	NYG	0.983	NO	0.988
DEN	0.993	PIT	0.983	DEN	0.989

These numbers show us that the difference is less than 4% between the teams with the easiest schedules and the teams with the hardest schedules. For example the Minnesota Vikings have the easiest schedule for running backs but we can expect the defenses they will face to allow only 1.7% more fantasy points to running backs than the league average. This means that if you project Adrian Peterson to have 300 fantasy points, his easier schedule would mean you can expect him to have 305 fantasy points. There are so many factors in fantasy football and fantasy players try and include as many as possible in their rankings but I believe these statistics show that projected strength of schedule is one that is almost negligible.