Football Outsiders

I like looking at FootballOutsiders.com for their statistical analysis. I don't think that it translates directly to fantasy football, but it is a nice supplement to your research.

The first set of measurements they have is VOA or Value Over Average. This calculates how successful a given player is over the league average for certain down, distance and field position. Positive numbers are better than average, negative numbers are worse.

There are great fantasy players with average or worse VOA numbers, I think because the real life defenses they are facing make an effort to focus on stopping them. Therefore I don't recommend solely using this number to make your judgements on player value. However, I think that this is a good tie breaker if you have trouble picking between two players.

The second set of measurements you may find useful is PAR or Points Above Replacement. This is an idea taken from rotisserie baseball. A replacement level player is picked, and the actual player is measured against this ficticious player's statistics. This increases the value of good players that are keyed on by opposing defenses. Again, you may use these numbers to help you sort out the value of fantasy players.

I think that these measures may be best used to look for hidden gems, or players who succeed given limited opportunities. Therefore you can pick these players as backups for your fantasy team, or try to project who will breakout given more opportunity.