Quarterback Review: And the Winner Is...

I chose poorly.

When I last left you, we came up with four sets of quarterback rankings, focusing on predicting the top-ten QB from Week 8 excluding the Thursday and early Sunday game. The first set was a direct result of an empirical system derived last week. The second was strictly a ranking of how many points each signal caller's team was expected to score based on Vegas odds. The third was a consensus of a bunch of industry writers while the last was my personal ranking.

Here are the results of a correlation study, comparing where each system projected versus where they ended up. The actual number of points was not included in the correlation, just the ranking.

After the first week of the experiment, the consensus industry rankings soundly trounced the objective analysis as well as my own. Looks like I have some work to do.

Let's take a look at some of the specifics, in an effort to figure out where I can improve - without making any knee-jerk changes based on one set of data.

The primary reason the writers finished on top was nailing seven of the top-ten (the rest all had five) along with fading Tony Romo a bit. The writers were the only set with Jay Cutler the writers and myself had Joe Flacco while the objective systems did not. I faded Nick Foles who was included on the other three lists.

Thinking about Romo, the writers likely dropped him down assuming DeMarco Murray would run for a touchdown or two not to mention continue to roll up yards. The systems loved him since the Dallas-Washington game was projected for the highest points total, the Cowboys were favored and at home. Aside from the injury, Romo was exposed by the blitz which effectively made all four rankings wrong, the writers were just a little less wrong. For what it's worth, I included prime time games in my original study and found no impact. However, the result of Monday Night's contest begs the question whether scoring is different in divisional games so this is on the Toddy-do list.

Looking at Jay Cutler, the objective rankings did not like the fact the Bears were away and the underdog. My guess is the writers assumed the Bears would have to throw to keep up with the Patriots so at worse he'd get garbage time points. While that may be the case, I'd prefer to use the winning QB is a match-up of that nature, in this case Tom Brady, For what it's worth, Tom Terrific was indeed part of the Draft Kings Millionaire Maker winning line-up.

My personal gaffe was Ryan Tannehill. I had a ton of exposure to the Miami general in tourneys and two-QB sites. Let's just say this was my first weekend in a while that I risked more than I won. Don't worry, my bankroll is rather modest so I'll still be able to eat this week. The real question being was my rationale for choosing Tannehill flawed or was it just one of those games? The Dolphins were expected to score just over 24 points which is liked by the objective systems. They were favorites though they were playing on the road. The opponent was Jacksonville so I anticipated that Tannehill keep his streak of strong games alive. With the reminder that I don't want to overreact to one poor judgment call, I am not afraid to admit I had too many shares of a guy that was borderline in a lot of the objective factors. I think he was a viable contrarian play; I just should have diversified more.

There's a whole lot of us wishing we used Ben Roethlisberger this week and asking what we missed? The answer is nothing. If someone says they liked Big-Ben as a contrarian tourney play, I would not call them on it. I did in fact think about using him on a two-QB site but ultimately passed. Just one of those weeks.

I'll post the Week 9 rankings generated by the above systems on Friday. Ultimately my goal is to be better than the objective analysis and the writers though my experience has taught me no matter how good you think you are, over the long haul group-think will win out over individual. But, since it's my lunch money that's being risked, and I'm am obstinate SOB, I'll rely on my own rankings more often than not.

I'll just have to choose wisely.