2009 NFL Fantasy QB Rankings For FREE!

If you liked last year's post concerning the accuracy of fantasy football prognosticators, you'll like this one. Remember in that post, we empirically showed that taking the previous year's performance as the projection for the upcoming year wasn't significantly more inaccurate than the projections the "experts" (which many of you pay $$ for) provide. We'll take the hypothesis that saying that QB performance for this year won't be significantly different from what happened last year and apply that to this year's QB projections.

But it's a new year and what the heck do I know, right? Go ahead and pay out that money to buy magazines and subscribe to sites that provide "projections based on research," "most up-to-date rankings," blah blah blah. I took a couple of magazines and flipped through the pages. The first magazine had a page that introduced the magazines' staff. They had pictures, some generic personal information and some very high level fantasy predictions. OK...I'm not sure how really important that is to a fantasy player. Does anyone during a draft pore over a magazine's publishing staff page?

It gets better. I pick up another magazine, supposedly from another dot com fantasy company. They also have a staff page with the same kind of information. I looked at the pictures...they're the SAME PEOPLE! Yes, of the twelve people on the staff of the first magazine, eleven are on the staff of the second magazine, supposedly from another dot com fantasy company. What's up with that? Both magazines cost $7.99. If you think that picking up a couple of magazines, from different dot com fantasy companies will give you a more balanced and robust perspective? Not necessarily true.

I will give you some FREE fantasy predictions! You will, at least, get your money's worth... :-)

I will take last year's QB rankings and use the premise that the rankings from last year will be the same as this year. There will be a couple of adjustments. If for example, a QB moves from one team to the other and will be the starter, I'll keep that QB at the same ranking, even though they changed teams. QBs coming back from injury will be replaced with the highest rank position from the best of their replacements (i.e. Brady for Cassel). They will be projected at the ranking level that their substitute had last year. Finally, I put in Mark Sanchez in the slot held by Gus Frerotte (#29). Frerotte is not in the league at this point and Favre is now in Minnesota.

Could that cause some inaccuracy? Yes, but to keep the level of my "expert analysis" to a minimum, I'll keep the adjustments paltry and simplistic. You will also see by doing this just the few instances where you can intuitively (i.e. for free) make your own adjustment and not pay $7.99 to read something you basically already know. I made one adjustment to be fair to the magazines, dealing with Brett Favre. They didn't have him in their top rankings so I assumed that they would place Favre in the position of the top rated Minnesota QB (#27).

Shown below is my FREE 2009 NFL QB fantasy "Top 30" quarterback ranking! To show you the comparison with the two "different" magazines, I will also place the ranking the "experts" project for that player (with the Favre adjusment explained above). I don't promise accuracy. I don't promise that you'll be a "fantasy god" or that you will "dominate your league." However, I also don't charge you $7.99 and provide you my picture either!

#	Quarterback	Magazine A	Magazine B
1	Drew Brees	1	1
2	Aaron Rodgers	3	3
3	Jay Cutler	13	12
4	Philip Rivers	5	7
5	Kurt Warner	6	6
6	Peyton Manning	2	2
7	Tom Brady	4	4
8	Donovan McNabb	8	8
9	Matt Cassel	18	16
10	David Garrard	14	15
11	Chad Pennington	25	26
12	Tony Romo	7	5
13	Eli Manning	16	14
14	Brett Favre	27	27
15	Matt Ryan	9	9
16	Jason Campbell	17	19
17	Kyle Orton	19	18
18	Joe Flacco	20	21
19	Ben Roethlisberger	10	10
20	Jake Delhomme	24	24
21	Matt Schaub	12	13
22	Byron Leftwich	31	30
23	Trent Edwards	23	22
24	Kerry Collins	26	28
25	Shaun Hill	28	20
26	JaMarcus Russell	21	23
27	Marc Bulger	29	29
28	Ryan Fitzpatrick	41	41
29	Mark Sanchez	30	34
30	Matt Hasselbeck	15	17

Early 2010 Super Bowl Odds Posted

For those of you looking for pre-season guesses as to who will win Super Bowl XLIV in January 2010, SBR Global Sportsbook has posted early odds. They are:

Arizona 30/1
Atlanta 23/1
Baltimore 23/1
Buffalo 50/1
Carolina 23/1
Chicago 18/1
Cincinnati 63/1
Cleveland 75/1
Dallas 18/1
Denver 63/1
Detroit 150/1
Green Bay 30/1
Houston 40/1
Indianapolis 12/1
Jacksonville 40/1
Kansas City 63/1
Miami 50/1
Minnesota 14/1 (before Brett Favre's addition)
New England 4.5/1
New Orleans 18/1
New York (N) 11/1
New York (A) 40/1
Oakland 80/1
Philadelphia 10/1 (before Michael Vick's addition)
Pittsburgh 8.5/1
San Diego 8.5/1
San Francisco 63/1
Seattle 50/1
St. Louis 100/1
Tampa Bay 41/1
Tennessee 18/1
Washington 40/1

New England, Pittsburgh and San Diego are the early favorites, which make sense since Tom Brady is back for New England, Pittsburgh is the defending champion and LT and Shawne Merriman are back for San Diego. To me, Green Bay at 30/1 and Arizona at 30/1 seem like good bangs for the buck, but the oddsmakers aren't dumb.

The odds on both Minnesota and Philadelphia are likely to drop with the adds of Brett Favre and Michael Vick (aka Ron Mexico), respectively. Given that Detroit didn't win a game last year, I'm not so sure that 150/1 odds are high enough...perhaps 1000/1?

Las Vegas Gaming Revenue Hasn't Hit Bottom

The struggling economy continues to pound Las Vegas as well as Nevada overall. Las Vegas isn't the only gambling center suffering - Atlantic City and Macau are also suffering revenue declines. The advantages of those other venues is their close proximity to very large populations. Nevada is still a draw, but not a quick commute from Southern California as Atlantic City is from New York. The Bloomberg article has the full details.

With jobless claims still rising, the economy has not bottomed. The temporary slight drop in the unemployment rate is just that, temporary. Do not be surprised if unemployment doesn't break the 10% level or higher before the economy turns.

Perhaps the folks in Las Vegas should read an earlier post concerning what Nevada can do to exploit a latent sustainable competitive advantage. What Vegas can't do is think they can just ride out this storm. There are secular trends that are impacting Nevada that can't be ignored. If they just keep offering what they offer, or cut prices, that will easily be matched by competing venues and the final result will be worse than the situation before the price cutting.

However, if you would like to visit Las Vegas, you are likely not going to get any better deals than now.