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John Tierney | Archive | Email |
Staff Writer

The Reality Of Fantasy
2/3/00

Within the microcosm of fantasy football there is a swirl of myth, legend and conjecture. Participants argue about draft strategies and choices. They believe in miracle years and dynamic trends, which appear to take shape over the course of a season. They also think the numbers of years a player has in the league has something to do with their performance in any given season. It is this last belief that some of the people in my league swear by and the most prevalent fallacy is that of the, "Three Year Break Out Receiver." To investigate, research and prove, or disprove, this myth empirically was going to require a great deal of statistical information. Patience, to grind the raw data to some useable form and an unbiased examination of the facts to be fair in the analysis of the information. Though the emphasis of this research is on fact, it may be good to look at the fantasy of Hollywood to gain some perspective.

In the 1947 movie, "Magic Town", Jimmy Stewart is in search of the perfect small community in America. His search for this town begins because he is an ace independent pollster without the resources to compete with the giant Gallup Poll Company. After digging through national demographics like a mole he discovers the town of Grandview. Grandview is located in Middle America USA and he moves there to seek fame and fortune. The catch is that he must keep his mission and identity secret to insure accurate results. A short time after his arrival he finds success and sees a future with endless potential. More of this story later, but the source of the resource pool is always a question when trying to understand even elementary statistics. There must be some form of randomness. It must be large enough to insure accurate results and it must be pure enough to dilute any pollution in the source pool. In short, the data must be gathered fairly and without prejudice.

To meet all of the requirements of a computer generated version of "Grandview" a pool of 109 quarterbacks, wide receivers and tight ends were garnered from the files of the NFL. The pool was separated into smaller ponds labeled, "Elite" and, "Random." The elite players were selected from the list of top ten receivers and quarterbacks drafted from two performance based leagues over the last five years, while the random group was selected from a list of all active players in the NFL. The elite lists of QB's and wide outs were 12 and 21 respectively the random groups had 51 receivers and 25 gunslingers. The names of the elite included Jerry Rice, Chris Carter, Steve Young, Brett Favre and Herman Moore. The names of the random selections included some big names like Randy Moss and Jeff George, but most of the players had names like Billy Joe Holbert, Mat Reem, and Pete Gonzalez. Most of the random selects had NFL experience, but were hardly players that end up on any reasonable draft list. Still, all of the ponds were large enough to assure fairly accurate results and diversity in attaining the results. The first group to be examined was the plethora of receivers in the NFL.

There appeared to be a fairly wide gap between the performance of the elite crew and their counter parts during the early years of their development. During their first year in the league the elite group had a respectable 562 yards while the other guys had only 155. Even if the bench sitters were removed from the sample, the elite crew was still out gaining the others by more then 160 yards. The gap stayed about the same in total yards during the second year as both groups increased in the low 20th percentile. The critical third year appeared to be the great earthquake to widen the spread between the two groups. During their third year the elite group gained a total of 893 yards receiving while the random group only had 448 yards. On the surface it would appear the three-year theory is not myth, but fact. Only by looking deeper can this be confirmed or denied.

Take into account that few of these receivers had a 1,000-yard season during their first three years. If this variable is considered, the number of years it takes for one of the elite receivers to have a true break out year is 4.066 while the average wide out in the NFL breaks out in 3.923 years. Although three years appears to be an indicator for great expectations, four years is when a receiver goes from potentially good to consistently great during the peak of their career. This conclusion seems to become more concrete when the total TD's per season of each of the groups is added to the mix. In their third year of action the elite group had a very respectable 9 TD's while the random pool had only 3 TD's for an entire season. Receivers seem to get better with age, but is this because of their growing individual talent, or is it the combination of the receiver and the quarterback?

This became a nagging question and had top be explored. Using the same categories as the receivers QB stats for the first season appeared to be very close. The anointed ones had 806 yards, 7 TD's to 791 yards and 5 TD's for the random sample. It was in their second year that the distance between the two groups grew significantly as the elite signal callers threw for twice the yardage at 2,323 yards and almost twice the number of TD's. What was interesting was that during their third year the gap, once again, shrank. The separation in yards computed out to 2,490 for the elite group and 2,355 for the random bunch of slingers. The separation in TD's still favored the elite as they threw for more then a third more TD's at 15 total for the season. This merging of the figures may be due to the shrinking pool of random quarterbacks, as the group shrank by almost half over a three year period, but the years it takes for a top rookie QB to emerge would indicate that this three year development for any quarterback is normal. The break out year for the best in the NFL is 3.5, while their colleges develop in 3.1 years. It seems that either a top quarterback will begin starting by their third year, or they may never break out. (Ten of the players in the random pool will probably never have a break out year.) Still, these are numbers being used to describe the success, or failure, of a human being and they fail to ignore variables, existing in the real world.

In the world of, "Magic Town", the perfect town develops into a not so perfect town. Stewart's character forgets to include the variables of falling in love, having people discover his true purpose and identity and the reactions of his test subjects in the real world. All of these factors began to skew his results and ruin his neat statistical pictures. Such is the world of the National Football League.

Four months of physical abuse, constant pressure and mental adjustments during every year takes its toll on both the mind and body and none of it is predictable. The number of questions to be answered is endless. Is there truly a quantifiable "special" relationship between some receivers and quarterbacks? If there is, how come some of these relationships of productivity ebb while some individuals grow regardless of the person tossing or catching? Could Jerry Rice have reached the pinnacles of success if he had had Billy Joe Toliver as his main howitzer, or could the presence of Rice made Billy Joe something beyond the below average signal caller he is today? Is it a lock that Kevin Johnson and Tim Couch will grow at a rate similar to that of Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison? Of course not! There is no such thing as "guaranteed" in the world of football and statistics. Jimmy Stewart discovered this fact and it was not until he accepted life exactly as it was offered that he began to truly find success and the girl of his dreams.

In the real world of fantasy football there is no Magic Town as the town is always under construction, modification and the forces of nature. An old college friend used to tell me, when observing my struggles with statistics class... "There is no such thing as probability. The world is a 50/50 proposition. Either an event is going to happen, or it is not going to happen." As angry as I used to get trying to explain the concept of reliability intervals, I always saw the truth in his logic. No matter how good a player has been they are one tackle, one drink, one drive, one heart beat away from losing their careers and creating a vast hole in any fantasy team. Though Grandview USA may not exist, it can always be attempted in the world of the fantasy league. After all, either Randy Moss will have a great year, or he won't. In life, like statistics, reality can be stranger then the truth.