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Strength of Schedule
(page 2)

There is one factor that is rarely looked at and that I believe is much more important than projected strength of schedule and that is the previous season’s strength of schedule. To go back to our example of Adrian Peterson, instead of giving him a boost because 12 of his first 15 opponents in 2009 were below average in run defense in 2008, would it not make more sense to look at the opponents he faced in 2008 and see if his stats were inflated because of an easier schedule?

The following charts are very similar to the ones shown previously but in this case they will show the three teams who had the easiest and hardest schedules in 2008 based on 2008 statistics:

As you can see these numbers vary much more than the ones shown previously and it is quite normal because instead of applying the formulas that only take into account 20% to 30% of the 2008 statistics we can use 2008 statistics at 100%. The difference is quite remarkable between the teams with the easiest schedules and the teams with the hardest schedules. Chad Pennington for example had 264 fantasy points but he faced defenses that allow 6.6% more points than the league average. On the other hand, Joe Flacco had 223 fantasy points but he faced defenses that allow 8% less than the league average. Had they faced the same opponents, Pennington and Flacco probably would have ended the season with a very similar number of fantasy points or at the very least a much smaller difference than 41 points.

2009 opponents still do matter but as we showed previously, you can only take into account 20% o 30% of the previous year’s statistics. The best measure for strength of schedule is therefore if you divide the two sets of multipliers together. That number will show how much easier or harder a team’s strength of schedule is compared to the year before but by giving much more importance to the 2008 strength of schedule since we don’t know which defenses will be good or bad in 2009.

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