Peyton Manning vs Priest Holmes

Yesterday we noted that Peyton Manning, the NFL regular season and Pro Bowl MVP was not always the top player in Fantasy Football. Perhaps the most surprising was his finish behind Dante Hall in the ESPN Yardage league.

Well tonight we are going to look at another angle. Among the values we calculate at StatLeader is the average fantasy points a player scores counting only the games they have played in. Not a difficult task if you know both the total number of fantasy points scored based on the specific league scoring system and the number of games in which the player actually played.

This number is especially interesting when projecting what might have been. Let's take, for example, Priest Holmes. Holmes was injured in Week 9 and missed the rest of the season. While he was not among the top point earners for the year, how did he rank during the part of the season in which he did play?

Looking at his points through we 9 we find the following:

• Holmes finished 3rd behind Manning and Culpepper but ahead of McNabb in 8 of the 12 leagues we tracked (ESPN LM Standard, ESPN LM Traditional, ESPN Traditional, Yahoo, CBS, NFL.com, Sporting News/Fox, and AOL).
• He finished in a 2nd place tie with Culpepper in the ESPN Performance League.
• Finished 4th behind McNabb in the ESPN Yardage league
  
• However, Holmes was #1 in the remaining two leagues (Best Buy and Ninety Five Five) including a wide margin victory under the Best Buy scoring system. (Holmes 31.5, Manning 28.1, Culpepper 27.2, and Shaun Alexander 23.3).

One more interest twist. Holmes left the Week 9 game early getting only about 2/3 of his normal participation. This significantly reduced his average point production. If you go back to the week 8 stats and reevaluate, things shift around quite a bit. Based on the Holmes' Week 8 Average Fantasy PPG:

• Holmes is now the top fantasy point producer in 6 of the 12 leagues (ESPN LM Standard, ESPN LM Traditional, ESPN Traditional, Best Buy and Ninety Five Five)
  
• Moves from 4th to 2nd in the ESPN Yardage league.
  
• He remains 3rd behind Manning and Culpepper in the remaining 5 leagues (Yahoo, CBS, NFL.com, Sporting News/Fox, and AOL)

The most surprising number is the margin that exists under the Best Buy scoring system. Through week 8 his Average fantasy PPG was an incredible 33.9 (again the next three were Manning 28.1, Culpepper 27.2, and Shaun Alexander 23.3).

Once again, further proof of the StatLeader KYSS principle (Know Your Scoring System).