Even the most novice fantasy owners know who the elite players at every position are. Why? Because anyone can usually look at the fantasy-point total from the previous season and figure it out. After all, big year-end totals don’t just come from a series of small numbers…right?

Fantasy football is a game about numbers at its very core, but it is so much more than that. Championships are not necessarily won because a certain player has bigger numbers at the end of the year than everyone else. Instead, fantasy titles are more often won by those owners who get good-to-great performances consistently. Just as importantly, how often is an owner’s core players outperforming their peers at their position? Last but not least, when are those players delivering their biggest performances?

There is nothing wrong with reviewing last year’s final numbers and making some determinations for the upcoming season based on that. It is just an incomplete means to an end and one that can get monotonous if the numbers don’t provide some kind of perspective. As we all know, not all fantasy-point totals are created equal: few players have or ever will go on the four-game run Le’Veon Bell enjoyed from Weeks 11-15 last season. Odell Beckham Jr. did more in 12 games as a rookie than most receivers will ever do in a year. But were either of them the most consistently dominant player in fantasy football?

To answer that question, I have chosen to utilize a system that places a value on a player’s rank – relative to his position he plays – from that given week. Although I will provide some observations below, the goal is to let the numbers – or the rankings, as it were – do the talking. Much like Red Zone Report, my hope is that as the years pass, we will begin to see some trends emerge and draw some solid conclusions based on that.

For those readers that remember last season’s Consistency Rankings Analysis, I have eliminated the player’s scoring average and value – the standard deviation concept I use for my Big Boards. (Sorry folks, there is only so much information that can fit on a page.) I have replaced them with the following designations that serve as the basis for my scoring system:

- For quarterbacks and tight ends: “top 1” indicates that a player was the top scorer of the week at his position and “elite” refers to when a player finishes among the top five players of his position. “Clear starter” (CS) is someone who is ranked inside the top 12 (a QB1/TE1 in other words), while any mention of “backup range” refers to when a player lands outside the top 24 (a QB3/TE3 in other words).

- For running backs and receivers: “top 1” indicates that a player was the top scorer of the week at his position and “elite” refers to when a player finishes among the top 10 players of his position. “Clear starter” is someone who is ranked inside the top 24 (a RB2/WR2 in other words), while “backup range” refers to when a player lands outside the top 36 (a RB4/WR4 in other words).

Below are the other column headers:
OR – Overall rank
PR – Position rank (based on total number of fantasy points at the end of last season)
SRS – "Simple Ratings System" (explained above); essentially a consistency score that assigns varying point values based on weekly rank and position.

Notes: Any weekly rank that appears in a red box was a negative point total for that week. All rankings/concepts based on a 12-team league PPR league where rushing and receiving touchdowns are worth six points, passing scores are worth four points and owners must start one QB, two RBs, two WRs and one TE. Players had to participate in at least eight games to qualify.

• The top-scoring running backs will almost always top this list for a number of reasons, but primarily because they face the least amount of resistance as it relates to competition relative to their position and the fact that most fantasy leagues require two starters at the position. With committee backfields now the norm in the NFL, the 5-10 backs (give or take) that end up getting featured each year are going to put their 18-22 touches per week up against the 24th-best back, who may see 10-12 on average. The 24th-best receiver each week (and each year) is usually either a top receiver for a more run-heavy team or a 1B option for a pass-heavy team. The WR24 could easily see the same 8-10 targets in any given week as the WR1 does.
  
  As great as Murray’s season and fourth-place SRS finish were, he was never able to earn the top spot in any given week, which was about the only obstacle keeping him from overtaking Lynch and giving Bell and Forte a run for their money atop the SRS leaderboard. Antonio Brown (ninth) found himself in a similar position, netting four top-three finishes (three seconds and one third). Had Brown managed to turn one of those top scoring efforts into a “top 1” performance, he would have edged Gronkowski for the No. 5 overall spot on this list. Regardless, it says a lot about any receiver to perform as a top-12 wideout 66.7 percent of the time and as a top-24 wideout in 86.7 percent of his games given the level of competition he has at his position.
  
  
• As I was placing the “PR” next to each player, I noticed something that made me do a double take; Cooks was ranked 116th in total fantasy points last season. However, the main reason I decided to mention him and his place in the standings is because he was the WR50, which means 43.1 percent of the top 116 overall scorers in fantasy last year were wide receivers! Taking it one step further, the player directly above him on that same list was Steven Jackson, who finished as the RB25. While Cooks was a valued fantasy property in PPR leagues prior to his season-ending thumb injury, Jackson was a weak start for at least half of the season. In other words, even if we assume that backs such as Bradshaw (RB21), Sproles (RB22), Gore (RB23) and Ivory (RB24) were every-week starters in 12-team leagues – which they were not for various reasons – there were roughly twice as many starting-caliber receivers on a weekly basis as running backs!
  
  It is cliché nowadays to say the NFL is a passing league. After all, 56.6 percent of all offensive plays last year were passes (obviously that does not include calls that began as pass plays and turned into a quarterback scramble, a lateral, etc.). Still, the observations in the previous paragraph are substantial insomuch that for a true 2:1 difference in starting-caliber players at one position, one would be inclined to believe that the league-wide pass-run ratio would be something closer to 66-34 or 67-33. Certainly, a receiver’s one point per catch is going to help him make up ground on running backs over the course of the season and pass plays do generate significantly more yards on a regular basis, but I’m not sure I was prepared to see there were THAT many more quality options at receiver than running back.
  
  
• C.J. Anderson’s SRS score (29) would have been on par with Lacy were it not for the “backup range” points he accumulated in six games while waiting his turn in Weeks 1-8. This system rewards consistency as much as weekly excellence, so the fact that a player like Anderson can finish at No. 33 while only playing about half a season speaks to how incredibly dominant he was and the relative lack of high-quality fantasy options at his position.
  
  
• It’s not as if I needed to remind you, but Beckham’s 13th place finish in SRS despite missing a quarter of the fantasy season is nothing short of incredible. One more “top 1” or two more “elite” weeks would have catapulted him into the same range as Luck and Foster, who incidentally was the only player that missed multiple games and still outperformed the rookie.
  
  
• Two results that really surprised me were at No. 53 (Hopkins) and No. 54 (Miller). Hopkins was a top-12 receiver only three times last season and posted as many WR3 games as he did “backup range” games (four). Admittedly, we can chalk some of that up to the fact that Andre Johnson owned a 26-12 edge in red-zone targets in 2014, but it may be something future owners want to consider if they are eyeing Hopkins as a potential low-end WR1/high-end WR2 this season. Most of Miller’s 14 SRS score was built on the strength of his 11 “clear starter” finishes, which means he was a rock-solid RB2 last year, but would have been stretched to be a fantasy team’s RB1. Can he ascend into RB1 territory in 2015 with added competition (Jay Ajayi) and upgraded talent at tight end and receiver?
  
  
• One of the categories I like to track when putting together this piece is the average ranking of each player for the first half (Weeks 1-8) and second half (Weeks 9-16) of the fantasy season. Nine players (Gronk, Lacy, Bell, Anderson, Brees, Rodgers, Newton, Ryan and Beckham) finished with average weekly rankings below 10 in the second half, and all nine enjoyed a better score in the second half than they did the first. In 2013, only six players posted sub-10 average rankings in the second half of the season, three of which ended up being a drop-off from their first-half performance. Let’s file that information away as notable, but far too small of a sample size to draw any real conclusions from at the moment.
  
  
• Regardless of whether you were on the right or wrong side of Roethlisberger’s six-touchdown double-feature in Weeks 8-9, it is noteworthy that nearly half of his 40 SRS score came from those two games. If we merely make those weeks “elite” instead of “Top 1”, he falls from No.22 on this list to somewhere in between Ryan at No. 27 and Eli Manning at No. 34. The biggest shocker, perhaps of all 200 players, was Newton’s 21st place finish. I owned Cam in my most important league last year; suffice it to say that I did not feel like I received seven “clear starter” performances from him nor do I recall getting a combined five “Top 1” or “elite” efforts out of him either. Conversely, I enjoyed the relative consistency that Romo provided me in another league and would argue that owning him in the aforementioned league probably would have netted me 1-2 more wins and a few less lineup headaches over the course of the season. The biggest difference between Romo and the other two quarterbacks I just mentioned? You guessed it – two “top 1” finishes apiece for Big Ben and Newton.

• Matt Forte

That’s it. That’s the list. It bears mentioning there were only 13 total instances of a player posting eight or more elite weekly performances in a season over the last two years and that Peyton Manning fell one such effort shy of joining Forte in the exclusive club. While it is not a revelation that Forte was such a dominant fantasy force in former HC Marc Trestman’s offense over the last two years and admittance to this “club” is very difficult, it was a bit of a surprise that at least one of the following players – namely Charles, Graham, Lynch, Antonio Brown, Bryant, Demaryius Thomas and maybe even Lacy – didn’t find his way onto the guest list as well.

Shifting our focus to the “clear starter” range, only 20 players registered at least 10 such performances (keep in mind that is top 12 for quarterbacks and tight ends, top 24 for running backs and receivers) and 34 players had nine. There are 192 players/defenses taken in a typical 16-round, 12-team draft. Subtracting 12 kickers and 12 defenses to make the percentages more realistic for the sake of this article, we are left with 168 players. Dividing 20 into 168 tells us that only 11.9 percent of all position players (drafted or undrafted) were clear starters in at least two-thirds of their games. Lowering the threshold to nine “clear starter” games gave owners a 20.2 percent (essentially one-in-five) chance to find a player who delivered a starting-worthy performance at least 60 percent of the time in 2014. Last summer’s Consistency Rankings Analysis yielded similar results, as 23 players registered 10 or more “clear starter” efforts and 33 finished with nine.

Let’s take a closer look at the positional breakdown of the two “classes” over the first two years of this study:

Charles, McCoy, Forte, Graham, Murray, Lacy, Peyton Manning, Brees, Antonio Brown, Lynch, Jeffery, Fred Jackson, Olsen and Demaryius Thomas.

Now we’re talking. Gronkowski probably deserves to join the 14 players above, but we can’t just ignore his seven-game, injury-riddled 2013 campaign or change the rules for one player. But if we add him to the list, we have 15 players that have earned the “reliable” tag over the last two years. However, before we stack our 2015 draft board with those players at the top, let’s take a closer look at them and their current situation:

Three players (McCoy, Graham and Murray) have changed teams. Four others (Forte, Manning, Brees and Jackson) figure to be featured much less prominently this year than in the previous two. A strong argument could be made that Jeffery (more defensive attention with Marshall gone) and Thomas (less volume as a result of a more balanced offense) could be included in that bunch. That leaves us with six players (Charles, Lacy, Brown, Lynch, Olsen and Gronkowski) as players that owners can feel ultra-confident in heading into 2015. Of those six, Charles will be 29 by the end of the season and Lynch is already there. Lacy and Gronkowski each stayed healthy last season, but both players’ physical style of play makes them risky bets to put together a string of multiple healthy seasons. Brown will likely see his numbers drop to 2013 levels (110 catches, 1,499 yards and eight touchdowns; admittedly still very good) thanks to the likely continued emergence of Martavis Bryant and Olsen could see his production slip a bit with big-bodied rookie WR Devin Funchess in the mix this year.

Final thoughts

Although the numbers looked slightly depressed for receiver enthusiasts on the top-10 chart above, I believe the absence of a huge gap between No. 1 and No. 10 at the position is actually positive news for those owners who like to load up at the position in the draft after the top backs are gone. (Look at the gap that exists between Nos. 1-10 at every other position and that includes two years of data!) For example, there was a significant falloff from Foster’s 67 SRS and Forsett’s 42 (19th) in 2014; only 15 backs after Forsett scored in double figures on the SRS scale (which is a very low threshold). Even more telling, most of those backs were likely undrafted (such as Forsett and Anderson) or mid-to-late round selections (Ingram, Hill, Bradshaw, Lamar Miller, etc.). As most owners likely remember and the big SRS chart above shows, Hill and Anderson weren’t even all the useful on a regular basis until midseason, Sproles was a risky start after September, Asiata was completely hit-and-miss (mostly miss) once the Vikings committed more to McKinnon and Bradshaw did not play after Week 11. While the distribution among running backs was much more compact in 2013, the number of players to post at least 10 on the SRS scale was similar among backs in 2013 (19) and 2014 (21).

In years past, I have been reluctant to pass on what I consider to be effective depth (i.e. potential RB3/4s) at the running back position in the fourth to seventh-round area, sometimes doing so at the expense of taking a hit at my final starting receiver spot. It is a choice I have made over the years in part because I believe in my ability to find a useful asset on the waiver wire at receiver. The back-heavy draft approach also insulates my team at a spot that takes more punishment than any other fantasy position and keeps a potential starter away from my competition. I believe that strategy is one of several that has helped me win a pretty decent sum of prize money over the years and will probably remain a solid fantasy football strategy for the foreseeable future. But as is the case with just about everything else in fantasy, it has its limitations (much like another strategy we will discuss in a bit).

In leagues that require only two starters at receiver and utilize a flex – like most of the money leagues I play in – it makes a lot of sense to horde running backs, especially if you are able to land a top-10 wideout with a first- or second-round pick. A three-receiver format makes the approach a bit dicier because it puts the owner at risk of possibly creating two weaknesses at a position the format is placing a higher priority on than any other, based on the number of slots that must be filled at that position. A Jordy Nelson-Allen Robinson-Pierre Garcon trio may end up filling the WR1, WR2 and WR3 slots on your team with great success, but what happens if Nelson misses multiple weeks? Owners should always strive to have options that can potentially step into the slot above them (WR2 becomes a passable WR1, WR3 becomes a passable WR2 and so on), something that becomes pretty difficult when they focus more on building running back depth than anything else. Virtually every team is going to come out of the draft with at least one weakness, but it is essential that an owner does not create additional ones simply by using early-to-mid round picks on players that won’t start more than a handful of games for your fantasy squad if the team stays relatively healthy.

Using my SRS charts over the last two seasons and a score of 40 as a baseline, I can make the case there are going to be about seven backs – as was the case in each of the last two years – worthy of being considered a fantasy RB1 at the end of the 2015 season. (There will obviously always be others on the brink and two quality RB2s can sometimes be as good – if not better – than one great RB1 and a revolving door at the RB2 slot.) However, this SRS analysis calls into question whether owners should spend more than one early-round pick (preferably their first pick) on a running back and subscribe to a one-back theory (as opposed to the zero-RB strategy that has become popular in recent years).

The premise of zero-RB strategy is solid– build a rock-solid supporting cast at the other three important fantasy positions and spend all your late-round/free-agent/trade resources on the most turbulent and volatile position in fantasy football – but I recall very few teams in all of the years I’ve played in high-stakes leagues that: 1) have won without at least one elite running back (no matter what the rest of the supporting cast looks like) and 2) doesn’t have to surrender at least two premium players in order to secure such a back. In my experience, many of the teams that go receiver-heavy in the draft start out fast but fade around November when NFL teams becoming slightly more committed to running the ball. Those observations are the main reasons why I’ll probably never attempt a zero-RB strategy; it is extremely difficult to win in highly competitive leagues with a team that begins the season with two known weaknesses at the most important position and probably even more difficult to talk a rival owner into dealing one of the top 3-5 fantasy backs in those leagues.

I’m pretty certain Ameer Abdullah will emerge as a decent RB2 option in PPR leagues by the end of the season, but I’m not willing to start him as a RB1 or RB2 for the 6-8 weeks I think it is going to take him for him to get to that point and hope it happens faster. What if Joique Bell stays healthy or Theo Riddick plays a larger-than-expected role in the passing game? If either one of those scenarios plays out, Abdullah’s owners spent the first 1-2 months of the season hoping for something that didn’t happen and are stuck with a back in a three-headed committee as a reward for their patience. In most of the leagues I play in, roughly 70 backs and 75 receivers are rostered in any given week and the trade deadline is over after about Week 8, making injuries about the only avenue in which an owner can pluck the next gem off the waiver wire after that point. My title teams have almost always been buoyed by my ability to find a second-half stud at running back and/or receiver, but it has been fairly uncommon when I have done both or find two studs at the same position in the final weeks.

I have long been a believer that while some draft “strategies” work better than others, none are all-encompassing and should be utilized in every situation, so don’t misunderstand what I have said in the last few paragraphs. For example, I cannot defend using a top-three pick on a receiver when the incredibly-talented, high-volume running backs are available. However, I’m not sure I could pass up pairing Bryant or Julio Jones with Demaryius Thomas or Beckham if presented the opportunity near the turn (and my projected RB1s were gone). Pair them up with a Vincent Jackson-, Allen Robinson- or Jarvis Landry-type in the sixth or seventh round, grab Kelce or Olsen in the fourth, target Bell and Abdullah as a package deal in the fifth- and sixth-round range and trade away one of the two elite receivers for a RB1 somewhere along the line if you don’t want to wait and take your chances of finding a potential RB1 on the waiver wire a few weeks into the season. I’m not saying it would be my preferred way of handling business, but I’m willing to bet such a team would challenge for a title.