2010 Projections Review – WR: Where we went wrong
After taking last week off of evaluating our 2010 fantasy football projections, I return to check out the wide receiver position.
I'm proud to announce KFFL.com did well at the FSWA event in Las Vegas this week, coming away with two writer awards, a fourth-place finish for accuracy in baseball projections and a sixth-place result in football forecasting. We were strongest at quarterback and tight end, which generally hasn't been the case for us. Unfortunately, we regressed in running backs and wideouts. Assuming we have a season in 2011 to project for, finding balance is paramount.
Wide receivers
*All players were projected prior to the start of the 2010 NFL season, so the numbers do not include in-season moves made through free agency.
A few players I believe everyone was way off on:
- Brandon Lloyd, Denver Broncos
- Randy Moss, New England Patriots/Minnesota Vikings/Tennessee Titans
- Steve Johnson, Buffalo Bills
- Dwayne Bowe, Kansas City Chiefs
Where we went awry:
- Steve Smith, Carolina Panthers: We didn't expect the Panthers' quarterback situation to be as much of a bane as it ended up being. Smith, as usual, missed a few games, but that went into his original projection.
- Julian Edelman, New England Patriots: We can live with this one since Wes Welker (knee) wasn't a sure thing and Deion Branch wasn't in the picture at the time of this projection.
- Mike Wallace, Pittsburgh Steelers: Ultimately, we simply didn't believe in Wallace enough. Hines Ward hasn't drawn double-teams in some time, and there was no telling how Ben Roethlisberger would perform following a four-week layoff. Wallace's yards-per-reception average is what really threw a wrench into our projected numbers, and since he is a deep threat, scoring 10 touchdowns didn't seem realistic to us. He has our attention now!
- Brandon Marshall, Miami Dolphins: Had he played all 16 games, Marshall would have come pretty close to our projected figures. He struggled to find the end zone as the entire offense floundered and didn't display chemistry with quarterback Chad Henne.
- Mario Manningham, New York Giants: It's effectively impossible to forecast injury with any regularity, outside of a few players, and we didn't expect the Giants to lose Steve E. Smith (knee) for much of the year. Hakeem Nicks also sat out (three games), which added to Manningham's unforeseen workload.
- Hakeem Nicks, New York Giants: Our projected points weren't all that far off, but Nicks played in only 13 games. We were not even close with his receptions, and he was scoring at an insane rate. Much like with Wallace, we weren't believers in Nicks breaking out in 2010.
Should have bought into the hype
Others of note:
- Greg Jennings, Green Bay Packers: The end zone was his second home in 2010, and we didn't see that coming.
- Greg Camarillo, Minnesota Vikings: He has sure hands and should have fit into Minnesota's offense with relative ease, but the Vikes chose not to play Camarillo very much.
- Miles Austin, Dallas Cowboys: Chalk this up to Jon Kitna starting most of the year.
- Jeremy Maclin, Philadelphia Eagles: We stand by our projections of him, because Michael Vick wasn't in the equation at the time.
- Larry Fitzgerald, Arizona Cardinals: It was hard to envision the Cardinals' passing game being as bad as it proved to be, but we were close on his reception and yardage. Fitz didn't come close to our projected touchdown total.
- Devin Aromashodu, Chicago Bears: We were high on Johnny Knox instead of DA. We didn't see how Aromashodu fit into Mike Martz's offense, and it turns out we were right. Unfortunately, he was way worse than we could have known.
Some of our troubles at the position were due to injuries, but we also made our fair share of blunders in evaluating players. You can be sure more film study and number crunching, among other methods, will be employed for 2011. As I spend more time investigating specific reasons that we were off, I'll come to you with some lessons learned.
