Introduction to these player comments
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Glossary of terms
Kurt Warner career statistics
I play in two leagues each year. One is a keep-7 league in which I do not own Warner. Further, I know I don't want to pay whatever it would take to pry him away from his current owner. The other league is a redraft with rules that I believe de-emphasize QBs relative to RBs and WRs. Nonetheless, that league contains some QB-lovers, so I know Warner (and the other top shelf QBs) will be long gone before the slots where I'd consider them good value.
As a result, I don't spend any time thinking about Warner. It would be only a mild exaggeration to say that he's not even on my draft board. So I won't be astonishing you with my insights into what Warner is likely to do this year.
What I'll do instead is examine some data on the more general question of how top QBs hold their value compared to the top guys at other positions. Take a look at this chart. Explanation follows:
Median finish
Group next year
-------------------------------
qb 1 - qb 5 8
qb 6 - qb10 16
qb11 - qb15 15
qb16 - qb20 23
qb21 - qb25 28
qb26 - qb30 33
This includes all players from 1970-2000. For the first line, I looked at all QBs who ranked first through fifth. So we have five guys each year, times 31 years. That's 155 player seasons being considered in that first group. I then tracked those 155 players the next year. Their median finish was #8, which means that half of them finished #8 or better and half finished #8 or worse. Likewise, if you look at QBs who finished 6-10 in a given year, their median finish the next year was #16. And so on.
This doesn't mean much unless we compare it to the RB, WR, and TE data, so here goes:
Median finish
Group next year
-------------------------------
qb 1 - qb 5 8
rb 1 - rb 5 8
wr 1 - wr 5 10
te 1 - te 5 6
So top 5 RBs tend to hold their value about as well as top 5 QBs do. WRs are a little worse, and TEs are a little better.
Median finish
Group next year
-------------------------------
qb 6 - qb10 16
rb 6 - rb10 18
wr 6 - wr10 21
te 6 - te10 14
Much the same picture here. QBs and RBs about the same (QBs a little better), WRs a little worse, and TEs a little better. Let's finish out the top 20s:
Median finish
Group next year
-------------------------------
qb11 - qb15 15
rb11 - rb15 26
wr11 - wr15 21
te11 - te15 18
Median finish
Group next year
-------------------------------
qb16 - qb20 23
rb16 - rb20 29
wr16 - wr20 29
te16 - te20 29
Frankly, I'm a little surprised by how well the QBs come out looking here. I would have guessed that RBs would be more reliable year-to-year than QBs, but these data don't support that notion.
Let's check out a more modern (though necessarily smaller) data set. This time, I'll run the same numbers, but only include the years 1995-2000.
Median finish
Group next year
-------------------------------
qb 1 - qb 5 11
qb 6 - qb10 19
qb11 - qb15 15
qb16 - qb20 21
qb21 - qb25 26
qb26 - qb30 35
rb 1 - rb 5 11
rb 6 - rb10 14
rb11 - rb15 23
rb16 - rb20 20
rb21 - rb25 38
rb26 - rb30 46
wr 1 - wr 5 10
wr 6 - wr10 21
wr11 - wr15 20
wr16 - wr20 38
wr21 - wr25 23
wr26 - wr30 44
te 1 - te 5 5
te 6 - te10 15
te11 - te15 21
te16 - te20 33
te21 - te25 29
te26 - te30 30
There's a lot to absorb here, so I'll just let you poke around at the data and draw your own conclusions if you're interested.