You’re Killing Me! Index

You’re Killing Me Index

So this last weekend, the wife and I had a cookout and I was talking to a couple friends who read this blog. I got some good feedback, including that a lot of times my posts are simply too long. Looking back, yeah, that’s probably true. The good news is that I have a short post for today! Today, in keeping with the draft prep theme here, I’m introducing the “You’re Killing Me!” index. I’ve talked a lot so far about the importance of average weekly scoring consistency and how standard deviation can tell you a lot about that. While a high standard deviation points to a lot of scoring fluctuation, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A high standard deviation can mean average weeks mixed in with great weeks.

What I want to do today is show some of the more universally drafted guys who killed their teams more often than not, but ended up with decent looking per game average numbers. To do this, I took the average weekly of a starting level player (Top 12 QB, Top 24 RB, Top 24 WR, Top 12 TE). Any player who scored 4 points less than the average starting level player in at least 8 weeks gets mentioned in the charts below. So if the average starting QB scored 22.7 points per week last year (they did), then guys who scored 18 or less at least 8 times are listed below. I tried to keep the list to guys who would be started in a lot of leagues and not list everyone.  So this isn’t very scientific and is super subjective, but it can give you second thoughts when thinking of drafting a guy just based on last year’s numbers alone. There’s a few thoughts with each position as well.

Thanks for reading everyone!

QB:

Player	Number of Weeks Below 18 Points
Alex Smith	10
Colin Kaepernick	9
Ryan Tannehill	8
Philip Rivers	8
Joe Flacco	8
Ryan Fitzpatrick	8
Andy Dalton	8

I know you’re not going to really rely on most of these guys, but I have advocated for Tannehill and Rivers a lot in this space. I still like them in a platoon for your team. People keep drafting Flacco and Dalton like they’re any good though. Please stop.

RB:

Player	Number of Weeks Below 8 Points
Shane Vereen	12
LeGarrette Blount	11
Chris Johnson	11
Trent Richardson	9
Reggie Bush	9
Frank Gore	8
Chris Ivory	8
Steven Jackson	8
Andre Williams	8
Terrance West	8

Not a lot to see here. If the only takeaway here is that Trent Richardson is bad and is not to be drafted this year, then that’s enough. Blount probably shows up because of the time in Pittsburgh where he wasn’t used much. The surprise to me was Vereen. He was more effective when Rashad Jennings went down, but he’s never going to have a big role on this team. Reggie Bush and Frank Gore are on new teams now, but I’m not really high on either.

WR:

Player	Number of Weeks Below 8 Points
Pierre Garcon	12.00
Markus Wheaton	12.00
Dwayne Bowe	12.00
Cordarrelle Patterson	12.00
Andre Johnson	11.00
Vincent Jackson	11.00
Larry Fitzgerald	11.00
Anquan Boldin	10.00
Kendall Wright	10.00
Kenny Stills	10.00
Keenan Allen	10.00
Jordan Matthews	9.00
Steve Smith	9.00
Sammy Watkins	9.00
Percy Harvin	9.00
Brandon Marshall	8.00
Eric Decker	8.00
Marques Colston	8.00

Percy Harvin is another guy I wish we’d all just move on from. He’s questionable half the time, and not very good when he does play. Patterson and Garcon were probably the biggest WR busts last year. I don’t really see Patterson picking it back up, but I’d be willing to gamble on Garcon as my third WR. Allen was another surprise bomb. He still got plenty of targets and picked it up at the end of the season. I’m giving him a mulligan for last year and will draft him as a WR2 confidently. Johnson and Fitzgerald had abysmal QB situations, but I don’t think either are starting caliber at this point, even Johnson in Indy. Both are more depth than anything. Marshall and Decker now have a QB (Fitzgerald) in the QB Killing Me list. This probably won’t go well for anyone.

TE:

Player	Number of Weeks Below 22.7 Points
Vernon Davis	11
Jared Cook	10
Owen Daniels	10
Charles Clay	9
Larry Donnell	8
Heath Miller	8
Zach Ertz	8
Jordan Cameron	8

I would say that it’s surprising to see Davis, Clay and Cameron on this list, but TE was so bad last year that nothing really surprises. I’m just surprised this list wasn’t bigger.