Martin Schmidt has written another Keeping Score column for the New York Times. In “Numbers Often Lie When It Comes to Football” Marty makes a point we make in the ninth chapter of The Wages of Wins. Unlike baseball and basketball, the statistics tracked for players in the NFL are often not about the individual athlete’s talent and effort, but the team that happens to be around the player. Consequently, as noted here a few weeks ago, we see a great deal of inconsistency in NFL performance. And as Marty notes, that is not good news for fantasy football players.
– DJ
1 response so far ↓
Travis // August 27, 2006 at 7:37 am
I know from experience that Marty is correct regarding his comments of fantasy football and its inconsistency from year to year. Last year I took Jamal Lewis with my first pick (which happened to be the first pick in our league) and at the time was very confident that I was going to ride Lewis to our leagues $500 payout at the end of the season. As the season progressed and as Lewis kept putting up lackluster numbers I refused to bench him in hopes that he would have his break out game. Much to my chagrin he never did much of anything for me and by the time I was finally willing to admit defeat I had already lost any shot at winning our league’s payout. This year I took last season’s TD leader and MVP Shaun Alexander with my first pick in hopes that his stats will at least be similar to what they were last year. Being as how Alexander is another year older and has lost two Pro-Bowl linemen I have some worries that Alexander is going to be this years version of Jamal Lewis.