Way back in October I predicted that Drew Brees would pass Dan Marino’s single-season passing record from 1984.

Although he’s slowed down in recent weeks, Brees is still on pace.  Through 14 games in 1984, Dan Marino had 4,340 yards. Drew Brees has 4,332 yards.

Only 8 yards behind.

Marino finished his season well with 404 and 340 yards in the final two games.  Below is a graph comparing the two players’ cumulative yardage totals over the course of their seasons:

You can see that Brees has just recently fallen to Marino’s pace while he has been solidly ahead of it for most of the year.

Back in October, I estimated Drew Brees would end up with 5,111 yards, just 27 yards ahead of the record.  He has an easy matchup this week with the Lions, but a tough one against the Panthers to finish the season.

It should be a close one.

A lot of improvements have been added to the site within the past few weeks, and I would like to highlight them all here.  Most of them relate to the Lineup Calculator and the saved teams that come with a membership.

Dashboard

Now you can quickly see all of your bye week players and injured players for the upcoming week for all of your teams in the dashboard on your user page.

This makes it a lot easier to spot problems with a lineup and reduce the chance of accidentally starting a player who won’t score you points that week.  This feature is only available for members.

Sortable Custom Projections For All Players

Embedded within the Lineup Calculator is the option to display the projected points for every player for every week. It’s at the bottom of the page below the roster table.

These projections are based on the league settings that you can customize.  The column headers are sortable to make it easy to find the best player for any week.

User Interface Improvements

For members with multiple teams saved, there is now a drop-down list of all of your saved teams for quick access within the Lineup Calculator. If you’re viewing one team with the Lineup Calculator you can quickly switch to a different team without going back to your user page.

Also, there were several speed improvements so it’s now faster to load the Lineup Calculator and to add and drop players.

Additional Settings Values

By request, I’ve added some more scoring values to the customizable settings.  For instance, you can now have 5 yds/pt for running backs and -4 pts for an interception.

Next year, there will be even more options like defense scoring, return yards, negative points for missed field goals, and distance-TD bonuses.

Bug Fixes

The biggest fix is that there was a bug that caused extra players to appear within a lineup. It was annoying because it took extra work to remove those players. This bug is completely fixed now.

Help Section

There is now a lengthy help page that answers common questions and describes how to use the tools.

For instance, the meaning behind the color shading in the Lineup Calculator is described here:

http://fantasyfootballcalculator.com/help#player_views

Contact Form

If you have suggestions, complaints, or would like to share a success story, you can now easily do that through the contact page.  The email address of FFCalc@gmail.com still works, but there’s now an easy form to fill out to make it a little easier for you.

Don’t Miss Out

There’s still plenty of time to take advantage of these improvements.  Whether you have a team struggling to make the playoffs or you’re trying to find players to score big for your championship game, these tools can help you. Check out the membership page to see everything that’s available.

At the beginning of the season I mentioned that I was in an expert league organized by Junkyard Jake. At the time I thought my draft went very well.  There was a huge run on running backs, so I picked up a lot of other quality players.

We’re almost halfway through the season and I’m proud to say that I’m winning the league at the moment.  My team is 6-1 so far, mostly riding the coattails of Drew Brees and the surprising Steve Slaton.

Good

Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers have obviously both been amazing.  It might be time to trade one of them though and shore up another position.

My flier pick of Steve Slaton paid off big time.  Definitely great value for a 13th-round pick.

Bad

As I feared, Westbrook got injured and unfortunately my waiver priority was low and I couldn’t pick up Buckhalter.  Luckily, Steve Slaton has been a fantastic fill-in.

Santonio Holmes has been a disappointment.  Not officially a bust yet, but my patience is wearing thin with him.

Future

I think I can hang on to first place throughout the rest of the season, although I’ll probably try to trade one of my QBs since I have depth there.  The league has an interesting 3-division structure, so the playoffs should be a lot of fun.  The league is very competitive, so I expect that it will be tough to win the whole championship.

Everyone knows that it’s important to protect the quarterback.  Teams spend millions of dollars on the best offensive linemen in hopes that they will give their quarterback enough time to tear up the opposing secondary.

Since passing is so important in the NFL today, how can we measure the effectiveness of protecting the quarterback?

Sacks and Win Percentage

As a simplistic measure, let’s use sacks as a measure of protecting the quarterback.  Below is a plot of win percentage for every quarterback in the league that’s played at least 4 games versus their average sacks per game:

There seems to be a clear trend that fewer sacks per game improves a team’s chances of winning.  The R-squared value for that trend is 0.29, which isn’t large, but is significant as far as football statistics go.

Sacks and QB-Rating

On the other hand, there is no correlation between sacks per game and quarterback rating:

On the extremes here are Kerry Collins with only 1 sack in 7 games with a 74.2 QB rating and J.T. O’Sullivan with a bone-crushing 29 sacks in 7 games and a 75.5 QB rating.

Using sacks per game may not be the best measure of how well an offensive line protects the quarterback.  I used it here because it’s the easiest to measure. A statistic that incorporates sacks, hurries, and knock-downs would be a better indicator of how well a quarterback is protected.

Quarterbacks Perform Independent of O-Line?

If J.T. O’Sullivan were traded to Tennesee and played behind their offensive line, would he be transformed into a superstar?  I don’t think so.  My guess is that his QB rating would have a slight but negligible increase.

This isn’t a conclusive study, but I think this indicates that a quarterback’s performance is almost entirely independent of their offensive line.  There are a lot of uncontrolled variables here such as the quality of the rest of the offense and the strength of schedule, but I’m not too surprised by this result.

O-Line and Running Backs

What about Frank Gore?  Would his yards per carry increase if he were traded to Tennesee?  I bet it would. Running backs seem to be more interchangeable than quarterbacks and depend more on their offensive line.

Sacks allowed is somehow related to win probability, but perhaps not through quarterback performance.  I’ll look into the effect of offensive line on the running game in a later post.  There is probably a reason that teams invest heavily in offensive lines, and there should be a way to measure how effective that strategy is.

(Follow-up 12/19: Drew Brees is still close to Marino’s record.)

In my last post, I outlined four players on track to break records this year.  In just two short weeks, however, that list was cut down to one:

Drew Brees

Brees is holding steady at 332 yards per game, which will give him 5,315 for the season if he can continue that pace.  But can he?

The Saints have had an easy schedule so far.  He’s already lit-up the league-worst Broncos for 421 yards, and  the toughest pass defense he’s seen so far was Washington, the 13th best in the league.

Adjusting for Strength of Schedule

The graph below shows Brees’ passing yards versus his opponent’s defensive passing rank.  The blue dots show his actual performance in the past six games and the red dots show his predicted performance for the next 10 games.

As you can see, not only has he faced a lot of bad defenses, he’s scheduled to play even more bad defenses including San Diego (31), Detroit (30), and Atlanta twice (24).  He only has three games against above average defenses: Carolina twice (2) and Green Bay (7).

Adjusting his average yards per game for opponent difficulty, he is projected to finish the year with 5,111 yards.  That’s a hair more than Marino’s 5,084 yards in 1984.

Conclusion

Drew Brees has played a cream-puff schedule so far and has a cream-puff schedule ahead of him.

After adjusting for strength of schedule, he is on pace to break Dan Marino’s single-season passing record, but just barely.

Don’t expect a big game from him this week against Carolina, but he will stay within reach of Marino’s record down the stretch.

It’s difficult to know when to sell high on a player. They may continue to perform well or they may just be on a hot streak.

However, when a player is on pace to break an NFL record, that might signal that they will drop off soon.  So far this season, there are four quarterbacks and receivers on track to break single-season records.

The fact that no running backs are at record-setting pace indicates that the league is continuing its new passing trend that I wrote about earlier.

Here are the outstanding passers and receivers so far. The projections below are their per game averages multiplied by 16 games:

Passing Yards

NFL Record: 5,084 (Dan Marino)

Both Brees and Cutler have looked good so far, but there is a good chance they will slow down to less Marino-like paces.

Receiving Yards

NFL Record: 1,848 (Jerry Rice)

Obviously Marshall’s performance is closely tied to Cutler’s above, and they’re both on track for big seasons. However, just one or two bad games will throw them off this pace.

No Running Backs

It’s not surprising that after only four weeks some players are above record-setting pace. What is surprising though is that they are all in the passing game. Running backs are completely absent.

The leading running back in the league is Michael Turner, who has 422 yards through 4 games. That’s only on pace for 1,688 yards, which is well off the record of 2,105 yards.

Sell High or Let It Ride?

Is it time to sell high on Brees, Cutler, Marshall, and Jennings? Or do some of them have a legitimate chance at maintaining their pace?

Perhaps Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall can knock off the passing and receiving yardage records similar to how Brady and Moss broke the single-season touchdown records last year.

However, if you think they are more likely to slow down, then now is the time to trade them away.

Here’s a look at some key stats from week 3:

Earnest Graham stopped by the Bears

Earnest Graham had averaged 8.3 yards per carry through week 2. Against the Bears, however, he got shut down and averaged a measly 1.3 ypc. He would have done even worse had they not gone into overtime because he had only eight yards on 10 carries through four quarters.

Although Chicago successfully stopped the run, they did leave the door open for Griese to throw for 403 yards and maneuver a win. That may signal to future opponents that they have to respect the Tampa Bay passing game and leave some holes open for Graham.

Unexpected quarterback standouts

Would you have guessed that the top four quarterbacks of week 3 (through Sunday) ranked by QB rating would be:

1. J.T. O’Sullivan (123.3)
2. Matt Ryan (120.6)
3. Chad Pennington (113.8)
4. Jason Campbell (112.2)

[Edit: Philip Rivers had a 130.0 rating against the Jets on Monday night]

Also throw in Ronnie Brown’s perfect 158.3 QB rating against the Patriots, which tops the list of surprising performances this week.

The worst quarterbacking of the week was done by Derek Anderson who put up a 22.9 QB rating. That wasn’t the kind of game he needed to keep Brady Quinn on the bench.

Philly D holds strong

Despite facing Steven Jackson, Marion Barber, and Willie Parker this year, Philadelphia’s rushing defense is the best in the league and has allowed only 45 rushing yards per game and just one rushing TD.

The Eagles face off against the Bears in week 4, and it looks like they will give Matt Forte a tough time. No running back has more than 63 yards against them.

How bad is Detroit?

There are now public calls by the Lions’ Vice Chairman for Matt Millen to leave. Is it really that bad though?

Let’s see… their rushing defense is last in the league allowing 207 yards per game.

Their passing defense is only the 23rd worst in the league, but every quarterback they’ve faced so far is in their first year as a starter (Ryan, Rodgers, O’Sullivan).

The offense has struggled equally with the 4th-worst rushing attack in the league. Also, Kitna leads the league in interceptions (5) and has been sacked the second most in the league (12).

The Lions have a bye this week, but the Bears will be eagerly waiting for them in week 5.

Most fantasy leagues are among friends and done either entirely for fun or for a small cash prize.

On the other side of the spectrum are the big tournaments like the WCOFF and FFOC.

This year I’m competing in the million-dollar Fantasy Football Open Championship. Now, I’m probably premature in writing an article about how to win a league like this (because I haven’t), but I’ve found that I’ve had to approach this league differently than normal leagues.

I am doing well so far and I’m 4-0 in the preliminary 10-team league. Each week is a head-to-head matchup, and then if your total points are in the top half of the league that week you get another win.

Here are five tips that I plan to follow this season in the FFOC:

1. Draft well

The draft is important in every league, but it’s especially important in the FFOC because there is no trading allowed during the season. Since there’s no trading, it’s important to draft well at every position.

Just drafting the best player available won’t necessarily work. You really need depth all around. My depth is best at quarterback (Brees, Roethlisberger, Rodgers) and running back (Westbrook, Graham, Forte, Brown).

2. Identify key weeks

Sometimes the league specifies a unique ranking system that could affect how you play the game. In the FFOC, the overall winner is determined by the total score of this equation:

(Average of weeks 1 through 9) + (Average of weeks 10 through 15) + (Week 16)

With this weighting system, games during weeks 10 to 15 are valued 50% more than those in weeks 1 to 9, while week 16 is valued nine times more than a game in weeks 1 to 9. Also, week 10 is the league championship game that determines who goes on to the national tournament.

Whichever tournament you’re in, you need to target players with good matchups in key scoring weeks and avoid players with byes on those weeks. My only problem is Earnest Graham’s bye in week 10, but Forte should fill in nicely.

3. Start players with upside

Looking at the overall standings, the top teams have started all the right studs in both weeks so far. When deciding between two similar players, pick the one that seems more likely to hit it big. For instance, start Chris Johnson over Thomas Jones even though Jones might be the safer pick.

When you’re playing against thousands of other teams, you’re not going to get to the top by playing it safe. Winning a big tournament is going to take a bit of luck anyways, so it makes sense to take some calculated risks.

4. Be diligent with free agents

You can’t let any worthwhile free agent slip away. When you’re playing for a million dollars, it’s worth the time to stay up-to-date on every transaction going on in the NFL.

5. Spend wisely

Although it’s important to watch for valuable free agents, don’t spend frivolously. The last couple years have featured breakout players late in the season. If there’s a cap to free agent spending like there is in FFOC, don’t spend all your cash too soon. Just because a player has a great week 1 game doesn’t mean they can produce all year long.

Conclusion

Again, these are just a few ways that I’ll be approaching my major tournament differently than my other leagues. I haven’t won any tournaments yet, but I hope that following these tips will change that.

If you’re not in a big tournament this year, I highly encourage joinging one next year. It’s a lot of fun playing with so much on the line.

It can be addictive to track live game stats on a Sunday during football season. When you’re in multiple leagues, nearly every play counts for or against you.

While most league hosting websites offer free live stats, Yahoo still charges for them with their StatTracker product.

Fortunately, if you don’t feel like paying for live stats, there is an alternative. It is a Greasemonkey script for Firefox called Yahoo Fantasy Football Free Stats. This is part of a screen shot from my team yesterday using the Free Stats program:

The upside is that it’s free. The downside is that it doesn’t calculate fantasy points. It just displays raw stats. That’s one big advantage StatTracker has. Still, it’s better than clicking on every game score within your team list and searching for their stats.

To use this program, you need Firefox with the Greasemonkey add-on installed. This program is not supported by Yahoo (or Fantasy Football Calculator).

If you’re a Firefox user who has decided not to buy StatTracker, give this program a try. It’s guaranteed to save you time every Sunday.

Tom Brady’s injury is devastating to the teams that drafted him. The effect is a net loss of 14 to 20 fantasy points per week.

That number was calculated by looking at the predicted fantasy points per game for quarterbacks before the Brady injury:

Tom Brady was expected to produce about 26 fantasy points per game; a lot more than any other quarterback.

Decent Backup

The effect of his injury depends on who you have to replace him. If you have a decent replacement or were able to pick up Matt Cassel, then your new QB will probably average 12 fantasy points per game. It’s still early to tell what Cassel will do, but with a great team surrounding him he’ll still be a solid replacement.

In this scenario with a decent backup, the net loss is 14 points per game due to Tom Brady’s injury. That’s a lot.

Waiver Wire

Unfortunately, that’s the best-case scenario for most fantasy owners. If you weren’t fast enough to grab Cassel and you didn’t draft a good backup then you’re looking at pulling someone from the free agent pool.

In general, there will be better players on the waiver wire in smaller leagues than in larger ones. Assuming there were two QBs drafted per team, a 10-team league will have the 20th-best QB available, such as Jon Kitna.

If you can grab the 20th-best QB, then your net loss from Brady’s injury is 17 points per week.

For a 12-team league the 24th-best QB, Matt Ryan, should be available and the net loss is 19 points per week.

For a 14-team league the 28th-best QB, Jamarcus Russell, should be available and the net loss is 20 points per week.

Ouch.

Trade! Trade! Trade!

If you think you can spot every team in your league 14 to 20 points per week and still make the playoffs, you’re dreaming.

To have any shot at winning, you need to get more points per game into your starting lineup. That means taking a risk and sacrificing depth at other positions. Package up your backup running backs and wide receivers to upgrade at quarterback.

The only exception is if you got lucky and had an amazing draft and the rest of your team can make up for the loss at quarterback. If you drafted Michael Turner and Willie Parker, who are both outperforming their ADP, then you can probably limp along with a scrub at QB.

All the other unlucky Brady owners, however, need to start looking for teams to trade with. It’s going to take a lot of work to get back into playoff contention.