Pro Football Prospectus: Statistics, Analysis, and Insight for the Information Age

Wow. So much information. It is very in depth and was much more information than I thought could ever be out there. Used it for drafting and was able to pick a few gems that no one else in our league new about.

Pro Football Prospectus 2006 is as good if not better than Pro Football Prospectus 2005. The information and statistics are first rate and their articles and analysis are excellent. At our Fantasy Draft I got several odd looks for my picks but I got the last laugh as Schatz and company's predictions began to come true. I used to get 3-5 magazines per seaons, now I just get Pro Football Prospectus.

These guys know football. There is no stone unturned here. I'm counting on no less than first place in all 6 of my fantasy leagues with this as my manual. A breakdown of every player and his value and stats with predictions on breakouts and busts. Every team is is also described with all strengths and flaws exposed.

Like its sister publication `Baseball Prospectus', this book is stuffed with information. `Standard football statistics are heavily context dependent - the down, distance, the location on the field, the time remaining - all of these elements influence both the goal of the play and its outcome.' The Football Prospectus team strives to improve conventional football statistics by `filtering out context-dependent effects' with mathematical formulas to best anticipate the results of the coming season. The authors claim to have predicted more playoff teams over the last two seasons than any other major football medium. `Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average' (DVOA) is the primary criterion - this compares specific plays, players and teams to the league average. Top players have DVOAs near 30% - Peyton Manning had a 41.7% DVOA in 2005 while Brett Favre's was 1.8%. DVOA skews negative for better defenses, so top defenses like the 2005 Bears approach a -30% DVOA. The authors also use 'Defensive-Adjusted Points Above Replacement' (DPAR) to measure a player's impact for an entire season. For example, if a player dominates in his first few games but then suffers a season ending injury, he is of little overall value to his team that season. Accordingly, he will have a high DVOA but a low DPAR. The introduction offers simple explanations of the complex statistical analysis, but the book can also be enjoyed without studying the authors' methodology. The first half of the book contains an informative and entertaining write-up for each NFL franchise. These capsules are often supplemented with short essays like `Do NFL Teams Get Jet Lag' for the Oakland Raiders and `How Impressive are Adam Vinateri's Clutch Field Goals' for the New England Patriots. Each team's entry further lists statistics and analysis of the 2005 schedule, five-year trends, strategic tendencies, and rankings at all positions. The book's second half includes expanded capsules for all individual quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, tight ends and kickers. Each capsule lists both statistics for the past three years and a projection for 2006. The last few pages show top 200 player rankings for Fantasy Football, my only resource for my low-intensity preparation for FF 2006. While the few grammatical and spelling errors are unfortunate, consideration must be given to the timeliness of the information and accompanying rush to printing. This book is an outstanding preseason resource and I plan to reference it often during the coming season. Very highly recommended for any NFL fan looking for more than the standard cliches from the major media outlets.

I've been a reader of [...] for about two years. After reading numerous articles, I still can't figure these guys out. They can be downright hilarious at times, get all serious and scientific later, and yet on every single article you'll find something, big or small, that slowly changes the way you look at games, and at the sport as a whole. Many people regard them as "stats geeks" and complaint that you need a math degree to understand their articles; however, that's not true. If you don't have any mathematical background, you can simply skip the tables, graphs and numbers, and go straight to the commentary, in plain english. However, taking the time to learn where they're coming from (which they also explain, on the site and in the book) makes the experience all the richer, leaving you with that "wow... that's good" feeling. This book (and last years' edition) lets you have some very interesting new analysis at the tip of your hands. While it might sometimes seem harsh (particularly if you're a homer, for any team) it's the most accurate I've read about my team or any other. I really can't overstate just how groundbreaking the numbers are - pointing out things that you just know about your team, that no one else even notices, while backing it up with solid mathematical bases. For three years now, they've been predicting stuff no one else could, and the principles of it all are really very simple. As for the book itself, the fact that they have a chapter for every team gives it the feel of a preview magazine, even though the content is far (trust me - FAR) superior than that of any magazine in the market. It has commentary on every single skill player in the league, and it will most definitely help you if you're into fantasy football. All in all, this is one of about 10 books I would definitely recommend to anyone that follows football. And rest assured, these aren't guys that got into this for the money, or are just doing their job and "mailing it in" - these are guys that truly love the game, and that, on top of everything else, gives this book a feel that you won't find anywhere else.