A quick review of the relevant conclusions of the previous article:
The punchline is point #3 above, which depends strongly on point #1. But it's far from clear that point #1 is still true with semi-hookups. To phrase that a little more clearly in terms of an example: if Peyton Manning has a good game, does that mean that Edgerrin James probably had a good game, too? Does Peyton's success open things up for Edgerrin, or does it "steal" some of his production? This is similar to the question posed in this article. And it turns out the answer will be similar -- or rather, the lack of an answer will be similar.
To measure this, I'll use the correlation coefficient. I gave a fairly detailed explanation of the correlation coefficient here, but I'll re-state the main idea in case you've forgotten. The correlation coefficient is a number between -1 and +1. -1 means a perfect negative correlation, +1 means a perfect positive correlation, and 0 means no correlation at all (technically, no linear correlation, but don't worry about that).
Using my usual definition of fantasy points ((RushYD + RecYD)/10 + (all TDs)*6 + (PassYD)/25 - (INT)*3), the correlation coefficient between Manning's fantasy points and James' was +.14. That's a positive correlation, which means that the two had a tendency to move up and down together. But it was a very weak tendency, as evidenced by the fact that +.14 is very close to zero. Let's take a look at some other premier QB/RB combos from 1998 and 1999.
Player1 Player2 Years Games Corr. Coeff ------------------------------------------------------------------- P Manning E James 1999 16 .14 K Warner M Faulk 1999 16 -.34 B Favre D Levens 1999 14 .24 B Johnson S Davis 1999 14 .17 S McNair E George 1999 11 -.16 S Young G Hearst 1998 15 .02 C Chandler J Anderson 1998 14 -.25Interesting. Some pairs exhibited a positive correlation, and some a negative, but all were fairly weak. Note that the strongest correlation was Faulk/Warner, and it was negative. This shows up quite clearly in their week-by-week numbers:
Week Opp Warner Faulk
--------------------------
1 BAL 25 13
3 ATL 36 23
4 CIN 30 4
5 SF 41 4
6 ATL 11 27
7 CLE 26 26
8 TEN 33 24
9 DET 27 9
10 CAR 21 20
11 SF 12 17
12 NO 21 24
13 CAR 26 20
14 NO 23 33
15 NYG 26 17
16 CHI 28 32
17 PHI 12 23
Every time Faulk had a bad game, Warner was huge, and Faulk came up
big in most of Warner's off weeks. Given that Faulk is such a major
part of the Rams' passing game, this is a little surprising.
Now let's look at the correlation over the last five years for some QB/RB duos that have been together for awhile:
Player1 Player2 Years Games Corr. Coeff ------------------------------------------------------------------- T Aikman E Smith 1995-1999 72 -.02 B Favre D Levens 1995-1999 68 .09 J Elway T Davis 1995-1999 57 .13 T Dilfer M Alstott 1995-1999 57 .24 T Dilfer W Dunn 1995-1999 42 .15 S McNair E George 1995-1999 52 -.00 J Blake C Dillon 1995-1999 28 .33It looks as though the overall effect may be a positive correlation, but a small one. Just for comparison's sake, check out the correlations for some QB/WR pairs:
Player1 Player2 Years Games Corr. Coeff ------------------------------------------------------------------- B Favre A Freeman 1995-1999 62 .35 S Young J Rice 1995-1999 43 .37 P Manning M Harrison 1995-1999 28 .54Always positive and much stronger than most of the QB/RB pairs.
What this says is that QB/WR pairs are likely to cause your team to be inconsistent, while QB/RB pairs will not necessarily do the same. Sure, sometimes McNair and Eddie George get shut down on the same week, but sometimes McNair and Stephen Davis get shut down in the same week, too. If the past is any guide, there is no reason to believe that one is more likely than the other.
Thus, there is no reason to suspect that a McNair/George team will be any more or less consistent than a McNair/S Davis team or a Gannon/George team. Draft McNair if you think he's better than Gannon and draft George if you think he's better than Davis. Don't seek the semi-hookup, and don't avoid it.
Let's take a look at some premier RB/WR pairs:
Player1 Player2 Years Games Corr. Coeff ------------------------------------------------------------------- C Martin K Johnson 1998-1999 31 -.01 E Smith M Irvin 1995-1999 61 .01 R Smith C Carter 1995-1999 57 .03 B Sanders H Moore 1995-1999 63 -.15Extremely weak correlations here.
What about WR/WR duos?
Player1 Player2 Years Games Corr. Coeff ------------------------------------------------------------------- C Carter R Moss 1998-1999 30 .07 R Smith E McCaffrey 1995-1999 52 -.06 H Moore J Morton 1995-1999 65 -.12Again very weak correlations -- so weak that they are negligible. Sometimes a big game for Rod Smith has coincided with a big game for McCaffrey, and sometimes it has "stolen" some production from Ed.
Overall conclusions: except for the obvious QB/WR hookup, there seems to be no predictable relationship between the performance of teammates in a given game. Based on this, I would not shy away from something like Enis/Robinson/Engram or Holt/Bruce/Faulk. If those were the top guys on my list at the time I was picking, I wouldn't let the fact that they are teammates bother me at all.
I need to emphasize that this was not an exhaustive study, and its conclusions are therefore limited. It was just a quickie and I chose to look at just a few more-or-less random examples. I did include all the examples I looked at, but it is certainly possible that there is something hiding in the data that further study would reveal. This is not enough to prove conclusively that semi-hookups are irrelevant, but for me it's enough to shift the burden of proof. That is, if you want to convince that semi-hookups matter, you're going to have to show me some hard data that shows a trend my examples missed.