Second year Quarterbacks

Analyzing Fantasy Football Trends:

Second year Quarterback play

     When looking at statistical trends in Fantasy Football, it is important to analysis only the relevant data and throw away potential outliers that are not consistent with the players your are trying to analysis. In other words, for this specific analysis, the players Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and Drew Brees are taken out of the equation. These quarterbacks are statistically some of the greatest of all time and thus their statistical growth between their first and second years would be unfair to compare to the developing quarterbacks in the league that have uncertain futures. Is it possible that guys like Andrew Luck, Nick Foles, and Russell Wilson end up with careers like the Mannings and Bradys of the world? It certainly is, but it’s much more likely that the majority of these quarterbacks will be average statistically comparable to guys like Matt Ryan, and Andy Dalton. Additionally, guys like Sam Bradford and Matt Stafford are also omitted from this analysis as there first few years as starters were plagued injury making them outlier cases. However, guys like Nick Foles and Colin Kaepernick will be considered is this particular study with their first season being counted as when they were starters for more than 7 games and were not majorly impacted by injury. Lastly, it is important to realize that Football is a fickle game and therefore statistics are more relevant when looking at trends that happened most recently to today’s game. Thus, the following quarterbacks being analyzed are all players that have played for only 7 season or less.

Note: Statistics are taken from Espn.com Statistics and info. Fantasy points are based on Yahoo scoring system and only games where quarterback has attempted 15 or more pass attempts will count in this analysis. 

Fantasy points first year starter 

Fantasy points second year starter

Differential between first and second year

Advanced Fantasy points differential statistics

Conclusion:

     According to the graphs shown, the average Quarterback will improve their fantasy score by 1.255 points per game while 25% of quarterbacks improve by more than 2.66 points per game. So while the stats indicate that quarterbacks don’t actually decrease in fantasy production on a per game basis, the growth isn’t really significant in my opinion. Consider that Geno Smith averaged 13.42 points per game. If he improves his fantasy production by 2.66 points per game, he’d be at 16.08 points per game, worse than Alex Smith’s production last year. Similarly, Ej Manuel averaged 14.25 points per game last year. If he were to increase his fantasy production by 2.66 points per game, he would average 16.92 points per game. This, according to this statistical analysis, is probably his ceiling which is around Tony Romo level. In both Geno’s case, and Manuel’s case, to reach this production they would have to have growth better than 75% of the quarterbacks listed in this study. I wouldn’t invest even a late round pick on either quarterback unless it were a two quarterback league as both have a ceiling of a low end starter.