*AV for every player in the Prospect Bowl games!

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Here is the link to my spreadsheet. I imported it from excel to google spreadsheet, so I hope nothing got messed up. 

Check out Part 2 here for the analysis after the day 2 set of games!

Since my newly created player is participating in the prospect bowl, I wanted to have some fun with it! All the players are at their base 50 TPE so their performance is typically lackluster and filled with mistakes. Despite this, I still wanted to look at the stats and compare all the prospects. I got a lot of inspiration from reading everyone else’s statistical analyses, especially iStegosauruz’s statistical analysis using approximate value from sports reference. Using the methodology outlined in the blog, I calculated the approximate value for all the prospects (offense and defense) besides kickers. For a few of the calculations in the approximate value, I adjusted some of the values and added some parameters that I felt were important that were missing.

The methodology is outlined in the sports reference article, but I will provide a quick summary. On the offensive side, the team offensive points were calculated from the points per drive and the league average points per drive.

Here are the team offensive points for each prospect team:



The Sols, Radioactives, and Kiwis each hold similar offensive firepower, but the seafarers definitely struggled to put up points. On the defensive side of the ball, the team defensive points were calculated similarly but with the points allowed per drive and the league average points allowed per drive.



The higher team defensive points means that defense was more dominant. The Radioactives have the most dominant defense with the other three teams lagging relatively far behind.

From there, the positional team points were determined based on yards gained and multipliers that were determined from looking at historical statistics in the article.

A few factors go into determining the total approximate value for each player. From the data, I calculated the rushing, receiving, passing, and blocking AV for offense and there was just one overall individual AV for defense.

RB/FB Prospects

First, we will look at the RB/FB prospect rankings. For these players, the rushing, receiving, and blocking AV’s were used to get the total AV. For the rushing AV, a slight bonus is given to ball carriers if their yards per attempt is higher than the league average and a penalty if it is lower than the league average. Since all the players had such low TPE, the yards per attempt was quite low and had a lot of variance so I adjusted the penalty to be less harsh.



From a pure rushing standpoint, Goose and Vasiliev are clear frontrunners but with the added receiving element Goose stands out as the best RB prospect. But, overall, looking at the total AV, all the RB’s have been playing at a similar level with the exception of Grenouille.

WR/TE Prospects

WRs were evaluated from just the receiving AV and TEs included the blocking AV. The receiving AV was calculated fairly simply, only accounting for receiving yards, team receiving yards, and the team receiving points.



Each team is represented by their #1 WR in the top 4 with Quick from the Sol’s leading the pack. The Sol’s offense is also aided by an outstanding tight end in Marriott who boasts the best receiving and blocking production for tight ends.

OL Prospects

The OL was tough to evaluate because the AV sports reference used based it off games played, games started, and all pro/pro bowl selections. We don’t have the luxury of using all pro/pro bowl selections and all the OL start and play the same number of games so the OL AV would end up being based off the offensive team points. To try to create some variability and be able to evaluate the OL prospects, the blocking AV was determined using sacks allowed and pancakes.



Chernobyl’s offensive line is anchored by the top two tackles with Jones leading the way by a wide margin. Their hot start can definitely be attributed to their dominant offensive line. Meanwhile, the Seafarers suit up the worst offensive line and it shows in their lackluster offense.

QB Prospects

To wrap up the offensive rankings, the quarterbacks! Since each team had to roster two QBs, they switched out after each game. The top 4 passers got to perform in 2 games and the remaining QBs only got to show their skills in 1 so, they will be evaluated separately.



The Sol’s ReallyInvisible has been impressive in his two games with no interceptions so far while the 3 other starting QBs with 2 games have thrown 2 each and have similar AVs. For the remaining 4 quarterbacks, the Kiwis and Radioactives have the best second string QBs while the backups for the Seafarers and Sol’s have struggled a lot. There is definitely a large gap between the starting 4 QBs and the backups so we’ll see if these numbers even out as more games are played!

Defense

Finally, the defense. This was a bit harder as I made a few adjustments to the AV calculations. First, tackles were made relevant for cornerbacks by just a bit and then TFL and PD were added to the AV calculation. Since cornerbacks and safeties have not racked up that many stats due to their low TPE and inability to consistently get interceptions, each position was evaluated separately. I sorted each player by their individual AV and their individual points. The individual points measure how good of a player they were based on their stats and the individual AV uses the individual points and takes into account the team defensive points.

CB Prospects



For cornerbacks, the rankings for both the individual AV and points are pretty similar but the secondary is the hardest position group to rank with a small sample size. Miller has benefitted from a defensive touchdown which puts him atop by a wide margin. It’ll be interesting to see how the list changes as more games are played.

S Prospects



The safety position suffers the most with the lowest AV out of all the defensive positions. Chernobyl has the two top safeties in this class, but the rest of the pack aren’t too far behind them. Based on the low TPE, I expect the safety position to continue to have the lowest TPE on defense in the rest of the prospect bowl games.

LB Prospects



Next, we move to the linebackers. It is no surprise that Chernobyl has the best LB prospect both in AV and points. The rest of the prospects fall into the same group. The Sol’s duo have the higher AV but the Seafarer’s Watterson and Hall have put up higher individual points so it’s hard to distinguish between the rest of these guys.

DE Prospects



From the DEs Warthol and Project lead the pack in AV and points. The AV and points for the DL is probably the most accurate since they depend mostly on sacks and tackles and these occur more often than interceptions.

DT Prospects



Finally, we finish with Gravity as the best DT. Gravity dominates these rankings most due to his crazy stat line of 3 FF and 2 FR. He probably got some sim luck with that but definitely something to keep an eye on with the next couple of games.

And so that is it for the first set of games of the prospect bowl! I just want to say that these aren’t a clear-cut evaluation to see what players are the best. It is best to look at these position by position and generally, a player with an AV of 12 will perform better than a player with an AV of 7. It will definitely be important to do a deeper dive with the stats as well. For example, if you look at the total AV of TE Marriott (11.75) and compare it to WR The Badger (10.74), Marriott may be the better player overall for your team but from a receiving standpoint, The Badger has put up almost double Marriott’s production.

Also, everyone is just at the base 50 TPE so I’m sure there is a lot of sim luck with some players!