« Z-Scores out of Whack | Main | Making Statistics Available - Copyright Issues? »
July 28, 2008
John Kitna - a Respectable Fantasy Football Pick?
I uploaded the 2008 schedule into my database and denormalized all the player-vs-team data. When I denormalize the data, it takes as an input the player's normalized value (usually between -1 and 1) and the averages for all other players. For quarterbacks, here's the results of my early testing:
+---------------+-------------+-----------+--------------+---------+ | name | sum(points) | last_seen | current_team | games07 | +---------------+-------------+-----------+--------------+---------+ | P. Manning | 183.30 | 2007 | IND | 16 | | B. Favre | 181.93 | 2007 | GB | 16 | | J. Kitna | 178.02 | 2007 | DET | 16 | | D. Anderson | 175.68 | 2007 | CLE | 16 | | D. Brees | 175.46 | 2007 | NO | 16 | | T. Romo | 174.66 | 2007 | DAL | 16 | | J. Cutler | 173.53 | 2007 | DEN | 16 | | E. Manning | 173.43 | 2007 | NYG | 16 | | T. Brady | 173.22 | 2007 | NE | 16 | | M. Hasselbeck | 172.78 | 2007 | SEA | 16 | +---------------+-------------+-----------+--------------+---------+
Yes folks, you're reading that right. John Kitna is estimated to be third in total season points. At first, this sounds crazy - the Lions are terrible. Intuitively, though, it makes some sense. The Lions have an easy schedule, especially compared to the Patriots or the Giants. While Kitna doesn't have a great record against two NFC North teams {CHI,MIN}, he actually has a respectable record against other teams. Plus, the Lions don't have much else in the Quarterback position (Drew Stanton, seriously?) so he sees a lot of playtime.
With that said, statistically speaking, Peyton Manning should absolutely be your #1 pick in the draft. The Colts have a moderately hard schedule and he's still #1 in the rankings by a considerable amount.
Posted by haydenth at July 28, 2008 11:06 PM