Almost four years ago, I wrote a very quick article about week 17. In it, I concluded that, contrary to my expectations, there was not too much difference between the fantasy point averages of top 10 players between week 16 and week 17. Yes, sometimes players rest in week 17. But they also rest in week 16 sometimes too.

That study was a very quick one, and four week 17s have passed since it was written, so I figured it was time for an update.

But it's not just the extra data that makes an update necessary. The last time I studied this issue, the NFL had six divisions and six wildcard teams. Now it has eight (smaller) divisions and only four wildcard teams each year. This might affect week 17 for a couple of reasons (I owe this insight, by the way, to a commenter on my blog named JKL):

• The more teams there are in a division, the more teams are likely to still be in contention for the division title in the last week of the season. If you don't believe this, consider the extreme cases. If you had a two-team division, you would almost never see it come down to week 17. If you had a 16-team division, it would very frequently come down to the last week. Thus, it seems believable that a 5- or 6-team division would still be in play in the season's final week more often than a 4-team division would.

• With three wildcard teams in each conference, one wildcard team hosted a playoff game each year. With the current two-wildcard setup, wildcard teams have no chance of hosting a playoff game.

I'm not claiming to have established this as indisputable fact, but it seems likely, based on the points above, that the NFL's current structure would lend itself to an increased number of meaningless week 17 contests compared to the old system. Fewer divisions will be in dispute, and fewer wildcard teams will have incentive to win in order to secure home field advantage. Finally, it just feels like we've had some pretty lame week 17s in the last few seasons, doesn't it? Vague mental impressions can be deceiving --- which is why we're about to check the hard data --- but week 17 has been about as exciting as preseason week 2 for the last couple of years.

Let's check the numbers. For each season since 1996, I found the top 10 quarterbacks and top 20 running backs in terms of fantasy points per game among players who played in week 15. I chose these players in an attempt to identify the fantasy-relevant players going into week 16. The reason for the week 15 requirement was to attempt to include only players who were healthy at the time. I left out wide receivers and tight ends because it's sometimes difficult to determine from the stat line if they played a full game.

Next, I checked how many of these players rested in week 16 and in week 17 each year. Often players don't sit a game completely out but only play a series or two which, from a fantasy owner's perspective, is just as bad. So I defined a player to have rested if he attempted 12 or fewer passes and carried the ball 6 or fewer times. Why those numbers?

Here is the summary:

1996--2001

Pos       rested wk16     rested wk17
--------------------------------------
qb             4              10
rb            12              22

2002--2005

Pos       rested wk16     rested wk17
--------------------------------------
qb             3              10
rb            11              17

Lots to talk about here:

• The column headings are a bit misleading. They say, "rested," but that really means only that the player attempted 12 or fewer passes and rushed the ball six or fewer times. Some of the players may have been injured in week 16 or 17. Some may have played the whole game but just had an uneventful day for some other reason. Without ten years worth of injury reports, it is hard to know which of these players were truly resting and which didn't play for some other reason.

• The usual caveats about arbitrarily selected cutoff points apply. I used 12 pass attempts and 6 rushing attempts. Had I used 10 and 5, or 15 and 10, the results might have looked a little different.

• Contrary to the previous article, there is evidence here that players rested in week 17 more than week 16 even pre-2002. Let this be a reminder to take me seriously when I say things like I said in the old article: "take this for what it is: a quick and imperfect study." Sometimes when you look at things in a different way, or when you look more closely at them, they look different.

• In spite of the theory outlined at the top of the article, there does not seem to be any evidence that things have changed since 2002.

Conclusions

There is no right or wrong way to run a league. Head-to-head, total points, keeper, redraft, serpentine, auction, decimal scoring, TD-only, point per reception, start two QBs, whatever. If it's what the members of your league want, then it's how your league should be. It would be inappropriate for me to tell you that you should or should not have a week 17 Super Bowl because of this article.

This article simply contains information. Use it, if you wish, to help your league better understand the pros and cons of a particular schedule.