Who will fall out of the Top 20 in '09?

As promised, I've got more analysis on the average rankings position spreadsheet front for you all. So I started thinking about the aggregate Top 100 rankings that I've pulled together over the past few years and wondered (as I always seem to do...) how accurate and successful those rankings were. I'll be saving the big "ranking of the rankings" analysis on specific expert sites for the end of the 2009 season of course but I was curious about what happens to that overall average from all the sites I looked at...for example, how many of those players in the top 20 end up performing well enough that season to nab a spot in the following year's top 20 ranking?

I went back through the FFLibrarian archives and found the average rankings for 2007, 2008, and of course 2009. From 2007 rankings there are 9 of the top 20 players that made a repeat performance in the 2008 top 20 rankings. And from the 2008 rankings, 11 of the top 20 are in this year's top 20 rankings. So I'll go ahead and say that from this small sample size, roughly half of the players from the aggregate top 20 overall rankings will fall out of top 20 relevance the following year (and it's fairly equally distributed throughout the top 20, so it's not a case of the top 10 players all sticking around).

From the 2007 rankings, those who showed up in the 2008 top 20 included LaDainian Tomlinson, Brian Westbrook, Steven Jackson, Joseph Addai, Clinton Portis, Larry Johnson, Frank Gore, Peyton Manning, and Willis McGahee.

Those who were in both the 2008 and 2009 rankings include Adrian Peterson, Maurice Jones-Drew, Steven Jackson, Larry Fitzgerald, LaDainian Tomlinson, Frank Gore, Randy Moss, Clinton Portis, Brian Westbrook, Tom Brady, and Reggie Wayne (side note: LT, Westbrook, SJax, Portis, and Gore are the only three to be on top 2o lists all three years).

So which players from this year's top 20 average will remain top 20 quality next year??

Here's a recap on the top 20:

Adrian Peterson Michael Turner Maurice Jones-Drew Matt Forte Steven Jackson DeAngelo Williams LaDainian Tomlinson Chris Johnson Larry Fitzgerald Frank Gore Steve Slaton Drew Brees Andre Johnson Brandon Jacobs Brian Westbrook Clinton Portis Randy Moss Calvin Johnson Tom Brady Marion Barber

I'll be honest, it's hard to imagine many of these guys falling from top 20 status but here are my thoughts...

Most likely to fall out of top 20: Brian Westbrook, Steven Jackson, Clinton Portis, Randy Moss, Brandon Jacobs, Frank Gore, and Marion Barber. Most of these guys have potential injury issues.

Could fall out of the top 20 but I'd be surprised: Andre Johnson, LaDainian Tomlinson, Michael Turner, MJD, DeAngelo Williams, Steve Slaton, and Drew Brees.

Physically possible that these guys could fall out but I'd be stunned: Adrian Peterson, Matt Forte, Tom Brady (not so much because I'm convinced of his top 20 overallness, but the guy didn't even play last year and the experts still have him in the top 20; he'd have to have a leg amputation to fall out of favor with the pros for 2010), Chris Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald, and Calvin Johnson.

So what do you guys think??