Should you draft a player lower because he has a tough schedule? Should you sit a player because he has a tough opponent that week?
If those things really matter, you would expect this to somehow show up in the gamelogs with some correlation; players should have more high performances againt bad defenses, and vice versa.
I collected the gamelogs of 10 receivers last year who each played 16 games. I matched all their games against the pass defense of the opposing team last year.
EG: Julio Jones in his first game last season played against Philly, who allowed 4308 yards all season (#30 out of 32) and scored 169 yards; the next game he played against Carolina who allowed 3847 yards and he scored only 64 yards. That looks exactly like what you expect; if you play a team with a worse defense, you expect to score more, and against a good defense you expect fewer yards.
Except that's not what you see if you look at multiple players, or only in a very minor way:
What I did was:
- of course it's hard to compare a 1600 yard season to a 900 yard season, so I converted all game yards to a percentage by dividing by the average of that player
- maybe some of these WRs had a very tough schedule, so I converted the defense allowed yards to a percentage in a similar way
So now you see tough defenses on the left, and easy defenses on the right; you see top individual performances at the top (Shepard week 7 against Atlanta), and bad at the bottom (Evans week 9 against Carolina). There is some correlation, but this is not something I can sit my studs on or play a lesser player because "he will feast" against a lesser defense. It just doesn't matter enough.
I did a similar exercise with yards/catch to see if that mattered, and if anything it made the correlation less. And remember that this is after the season, when at least we have some data on the defense. To predict this before a season makes it even harder and less useful.
TL/DR; schedule doesn't matter for sit/start, and even less for drafting. The old mantra holds: play your studs.
If those things really matter, you would expect this to somehow show up in the gamelogs with some correlation; players should have more high performances againt bad defenses, and vice versa.
I collected the gamelogs of 10 receivers last year who each played 16 games. I matched all their games against the pass defense of the opposing team last year.
EG: Julio Jones in his first game last season played against Philly, who allowed 4308 yards all season (#30 out of 32) and scored 169 yards; the next game he played against Carolina who allowed 3847 yards and he scored only 64 yards. That looks exactly like what you expect; if you play a team with a worse defense, you expect to score more, and against a good defense you expect fewer yards.
Except that's not what you see if you look at multiple players, or only in a very minor way:
What I did was:
- of course it's hard to compare a 1600 yard season to a 900 yard season, so I converted all game yards to a percentage by dividing by the average of that player
- maybe some of these WRs had a very tough schedule, so I converted the defense allowed yards to a percentage in a similar way
So now you see tough defenses on the left, and easy defenses on the right; you see top individual performances at the top (Shepard week 7 against Atlanta), and bad at the bottom (Evans week 9 against Carolina). There is some correlation, but this is not something I can sit my studs on or play a lesser player because "he will feast" against a lesser defense. It just doesn't matter enough.
I did a similar exercise with yards/catch to see if that mattered, and if anything it made the correlation less. And remember that this is after the season, when at least we have some data on the defense. To predict this before a season makes it even harder and less useful.
TL/DR; schedule doesn't matter for sit/start, and even less for drafting. The old mantra holds: play your studs.
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