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So I woke up this morning thinking to myself ‘man, mixing red bull, vodka and a box of Franzia was a bad idea.  And why am I covered in dijon mustard with socks on my hands?’  Ok, that was my first thought.  My second thought was ‘let’s get statistical with our Razzball readers and pun about a mathematical term while we’re at it’.  Quarterbacks have been a huge topic leading into the season, especially when it comes to draft strategy.  Many places are actually saying 2011 changed the way we draft in that it should become more common to take a QB early than to aim for a running back.  With that in the back of my mind, I thought it would be good to take a look at the deviation we experienced statistically between 2010 fantasy points and 2011 fantasy points with regards to the quarterback position.  Realize we don’t care about the names on the list, what we care about is the deviation between what being the number one quarterback for fantasy in 2010 was versus being number one in 2011, then the number 2, so on and so forth.  With that, let’s take a look at the results of my mad little statistical experiment.  Note I am using yahoo for my statistical analysis because our Razzball Commenter Leagues – which is still a thing if you want to start a league or sign up for one for some Razzball goodies – are utilizing them.  Oh and apologies if you’re trying to look at the chart below on a phone.  You’re gonna wanna wait till you get home to look at this:

So there is a lot to be culled from this list.  If we only look at total percentage increase, we are justified in thinking we had a major breakthrough in quarterback stats from 2010 to 2011 as the top 20 provided nearly a 7% increase in production between those two seasons.  However, I don’t know about you but I’m seeing some crazy stats from the top 5 versus the rest of the top 20.  As a whole the top 5 in 2011 outproduced their top 5 counterparts from 2010 by a whopping 26.34% margin.  That, my friends, is borderline earth shattering.  But what about the rest of the top twenty?!?  Don’t worry, person I made up to prove my point, we’re getting there.  The remainder of the 2011 top twenty were outplayed by their 2010 counterparts by a small percent at -1.93%.  So what does all this mean, you ask?  Does it mean you really need to have a top 5 quarterback in 2012 to be successful?  In my opinion it would have to be no.  Go look at the players in the top 5 from each year.  Of them, only two are repeat successes: Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady.  That lack of consistency in being able to nail down who is going to succeed from one year to the next actually should increase the mindset that aiming for a bargain quarterback is much better than targeting a ‘top tier’ one.  Producing this list also helped me reaffirm my 2012 fantasy football rankings when it came to quarterbacks.  While we can’t find the mean of a quarterback’s ability from two seasons alone, we can find that there’s enough deviation from season to season to not overspend on a position that produces so much fantasy talent.