I'm starting to think that these Experts base their analysis mainly on statistics only and ignore other outside factors, like a players health status, or a team missing key players.
I feel that these Experts base their rankings on the premise that 'if all things are equal' then this is what we expect to happen. But there are other factors that influence a players performance on field. A lot of these factors can be the players health, a Team's strategy on the day, etc.
I know it is hard for the Experts to know a lot of the 'other factors', because the NFL Teams don't let the public know exactly what is going on in the Club (and rightly so), but some information are released by the Clubs, that I don't think the Experts are taking that into consideration when they suggest rankings.
I do respect the Experts rankings, but I will take other factors more into consideration in the future.
Yeah, I agree that they tend to base rankings on statistics. It's not that they ignore outside factors - they don't, well, not all. But I do think that they tend to under-value the recent other factors.
Most appear to use DVOA which is an attempt to place a statistical value on those factors - Defense adjusted Value Over Average.
In sum:
"DVOA breaks down the entire season play-by-play, comparing success on each play to the league average based on a number of variables including down, distance, location on field, current score gap, quarter, and opponent quality. While it can be used as a measure of total team performance ..... it can [also] be broken down to analyze team effectiveness in any number of ways: down, quarter, rushing vs. receiving, location on field, passes to backs vs. passes to receivers, and so on."
Admittedly DVOA doesn't/can't account for illness/injury but it does try to account for which players are in/out of offense and defense.
e.g. how the does Steelers defense perform when T J Watt, their best linebacker, isn't playing - how many sacks do they get, how many passes does the opposing QB complete, do opponents pass more because they know Watt is missing etc etc
But relying on DVOA is relying on a long-term past performance. In general you'd think they'd be right, e.g. just as tossing a coin will invariably end up 50/50 heads/tails over time. But in 10 tossses, 20 tosses? So DVOA can lead, as I have said, to the under-valuing of more relevant current factors, e.g Hill still gets ranked a top WR even when he patently is not, he just isn't getting the targets.
I think it's also the nature of the game itself that's a problem.
When a team falls behind early a RB who isn't targeted a lot has little chance of scoring well because his team will throw the ball rather than run it, e.g. Cook last week against the Packers had 8 carries until the Vikings were down 20-0, afterwards he had 1 carry.
Conversely, when a team gets an early lead they tend to run the ball more so the RB gets a lot more carries.
DVOA does attempt to factor this into the stat.s, e.g. does a team start well or poorly, at home or away, against what type of defense. See from above: "current score gap, quarter, and opponent quality"
But it's still long-term trends that the statistics represent.
I probably have more faith in the experts than you do Bermi even while i think they can be blinkered at times.