9 yard versus 0 yard analysis

One of my primary frustrations with Fantasy Football is what I like to call The 9 Yard Phenomenon.  I'm sure this has been discussed ad nauseum by people that get paid to write about Fantasy Football, but....hold on.  You mean that people get paid to write about Fantasy Football?  There is a sector of the market that revolves around people writing about a fake sport?  I want in on this action!!!!

So what is the 9 Yard Phenomenon, you ask?  It involves two things- statistics and irrational frustration, and the interplay between the two.

In Fantasy Football, players accumulate points based on their statistical performance.  For example, every ten yards that a player totes the football he scores 1 Fantasy point.  Quarterbacks get 1 point for every 25 yards of passing.  Players can earn additional points if they achieve certain milestones- 100 yards rushing/receiving, 300+ yards passing, etc.  I realize that some leagues might score differently, but I don't play in those leagues.  So they don't count. Heck, they don't even exist.  You can probably see where this is headed.

If you have ever played Fantasy Football, you have surely had a player end up with (blank)ty-nine yards, thus costing you a point.  I'm also assuming at that point you subject themselves to a degree of self-loathing and frustration due to being thisclose to having scored that point.  There is an exponential increase in self-loathing frustration the closer the score of your current weeks' game is.

Early this season, back when I was thinking a little more rationally than I am now (I mean, come on- does anybody else really worry about Dallas Clark somehow scoring 50+ points in a game for the comeback win?  He'd have to have like 300 yards receiving and 4 TDs- with Curtis Painter as his quarterback...) I wondered about the prevalence of the 9-yard phenomenon (...Hey Lord, it's me again...).  That is, are (blank)ty-nine yard games anymore common than games where the player lands square on the multiple of ten?  Or does it just seem like they do because of the way our brains are wired?

I hypothesize that they occur at roughly the same frequency- it's just that once a player has crossed the threshold then we don't worry about it anymore.  He has the point in the bag, so now we just hope he doesn't lose yardage or worse: fumble (-2 points).

So here's what I'm going to do.  I'm going to go through the game summaries of the last two seasons worth of regular season games, analyzing the performance of each offensive player (I don't want to figure out defense- that's just too hard.  Defense might win championships, but it also puts me to sleep).  I will figure out per week the number of players who had yardage that ended with a 9 (or for quarterbacks, 99/24/49/74), as well as players who landed spot on the 0 (25/50/75 for QBs).  I was thinking of doing 8 and 1, but I decided against it.  After all, I'm doing this for posterity.  If ESPN wants to pony up the dough, then I'll consider it.

I'll figure out how many players had stats each week at each way to pick up yardage (Pass/Rush/Receiving).  Then I'll list how many of those had a '9' and how many had a '0' (with relevant markers for QBs).  I'll even break it down home and away.  How's that for service- and I'm not even getting paid! 

In addition to the total frequency of occurrence for 9 versus 0, I'll be keeping an eye out for the relationship of home/away prevalence and how the progression of the season affects yardage.  Do stats men give home players those few extra inches?  Do referees get lazier with their ball spotting as the season goes on?

I can't say, friends.  But the numbers can.

Is this a colossal waste of time?  Yes.  Will anyone who plays Fantasy Football read it, process it, and internally recite it when the nagging frustration starts to kick in?  Probably not.  But like the dude and the starfish and the death, I'm just hoping that my labor of love will somehow, someway make a difference in one persons life- especially if that person is me.

I'll be posting my findings next weekish.  It would be sooner, but I have lots of other things to do.  After all, I'm not getting paid for this.