Pardon The Pause: Not Time To Panic On Plax

I just saw a statistics parallel on a certain sports channel showing Plaxico Burress' production from last year to this year.

The profile highlighted Plax's targets, (8.8 in 2007 to 8.3 in 2008), the completion percentage of balls thrown to him (I don't remember the numbers, but it improved from last year to this year), and his number of touchdown receptions. The point was that there should be concern from his dip in production from eight scores last year through Week 8 vs. three this year through Week 8.

I disagree.

Plaxico had three scores in Week 1 at the Cowboys. That was a shootout, and the Giants were down for much of the game and eventually lost it. Which means the Giants were throwing for much of the game.

That game was what statisticians call "an outlier".

An outlier is a number in a set of data that is significantly different from the rest of the set. Last year, Burress had his eight touchdowns by Week 8 last year, in Week 6. After scoring thrice in Week 1, he consistently had one, and only one touchdown every week from Week 2 through Week 6. In Weeks 7 and 8, however, he had a combined 57 yards and no touchdowns.

While eliminating the high outlier leaves him with still five touchdowns, let's move to this year.

Burress has only three touchdowns thus far going into Week 9, but the glaring differences between this year and last were that he did not play in two weeks up to this point. The Giants were on a bye in Week 4 (their bye was Week 9 last year), and he was suspended in Week 5. Furthermore, he was benched against the Steelers for the duration of the first quarter, so we're essentially comparing the production of seven games (5 touchdowns, eliminating the outlier at Dallas a season and a half ago now) to 5 and three quarters (three touchdowns).

The proportion of games played to touchdowns (discounting the outlier) last year, when applied to this year's game action, suggests that Burress should have but four touchdowns. Four touchdowns, ironically, is exactly the amount of number of scores he had after the Giants' Week 9 bye last year, in their seven games.

He's one off that mark.

As a fantasy player, you should know that this is consistency with Burress so far. He scored nine in his last fifteen games last season. And as a side note, two of those nine came in Week 17 against the Patriots, after most fantasy playoffs were over.

The bottom line is, don't worry about Plaxico's endzone visits this year. He'll score on Sunday against the Cowboys.

Probably twice.