(Disclaimer: All references to fantasy points are using my leagues scoring system)
Its draft day for your office pool. You and 7 other panicky office mates are trying to cram your entire live draft into a single lunch hour. Picking is fast and furious and you are trying to fill out your bench wide receivers. You see that Hines Ward is left, and your Yahoo Top 100 list is telling you that hes the 59th best pick overall plus youve got that steel vendor in Pittsburgh who sends your department chocolate for Christmas. Its a slam dunk, youre going to take Ward
Wait a minute Champ, slow down.
Is that really what you want?
Now would be a good time to talk about Standard Deviation. Technically speaking standard deviation is: the square root of the average squared deviation from the mean. In layman terms it tells us how off a players average you can expect him to be from week to week.
The question you want to ask yourself is this, all things being equal between two players would you rather have a player that scores 10 points every week, or a player that scores 0 points one week and 20 points the next?
Probably you would want Mr. Consistent.
So, do you want Hines Ward, or not? Well, if you have brought a cheat sheet to your draft that includes a players standard deviation from the 2007 season youll notice that Derrick Mason is still available, and youll notice three things immediately:
1. Derrick Mason scored 131 fantasy points last year to Wards 116.
2. Derrick Masons standard deviation is a 4 compared to Wards 7. (Lower standard deviation is good.)
3. Ward is ranked 59th on Yahoos top 100, but Mason is ranked 97.
All things being equal you should take Derrick Mason because he will be more consistent. Of course all things arent equal, and Derrick Mason plays for the Ravens who have an uncertain QB situation, while Ward plays for the Steelers and has Ben Roethlisberger at QB.
But the point remains that a players consistency is absolutely something you have to take into account on draft day, and the best easiest way to do that is by having standard deviation as one of your metrics.

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