Last Spring I wrote my first article for DLF and simultaneously embarked on a personal crusade to convince the fantasy world to rid itself of something that seems to be equally enduring and worthless, the kicker. Change is difficult and by nature we tend to resist it. For that reason, it was no surprise that my first article stirred up some strong feelings and lots of debate.
Now that it has been several months and the idea has sunk in a bit, it’s time to revisit it. If you’re already on board with the idea, I hope that this article combined with the original and the one still to come will help you convince your leagues. If this is the first you’ve heard of the idea or you’re against it, all that I ask is that you take a breath and read this with an open mind. Change isn’t for everyone, and maybe you love your current system, but give me a chance to convince you to Kick the Kicker!
If you haven’t read the original article, go back and take a look at it, especially at the four reasons that people want to keep kickers. If you or someone in your league wants to keep kickers, it is probably for one of those reasons. Ask yourself, “Is it really a good reason?”
This two part series will look at the primary characteristics that we, as dynasty owners, hold in the highest regard: predictability of production and consistency of production. We want a player who will produce at a high level each and every year as well as from one week to the next instead of a one hit wonder. We also want to be able to predict when a player is going to see a sudden uptick in production, when it will continue at the same level, and when that production is going to drop off a cliff. It is only when we have consistent production that we can accurately predict that we can get real value out of a dynasty asset, so let’s see what happens when we apply those ideas to kickers.
Just to be clear, here were the ground rules that were used to evaluate the scoring of the kickers:
- In order to keep the scoring basic, all field goals were 3 points and extra points were 1. I did look at distance scoring briefly, but the vast majority of kickers were within 1 place regardless of the scoring method and the top 12 was still the same top 12 in 2012. Lawrence Tynes, Shayne Graham and David Akers were the only kickers to fall more than one place in the rankings when distance scoring was used. Blair Walsh and Connor Barth were the only ones to gain more than one place in the rankings.
- Individual players were used as opposed to team kickers. Team kickers seem to be in the minority.
- All averages were calculated over a 16 game season. If a kicker missed a game due to injury or if their team was shut out, that was included.
- I will be focusing on the top 12 kickers since 12 team leagues are the happy medium and the vast majority of teams only carry one kicker on their roster at a time.
In fantasy football, we spend an awful lot of time and effort trying to forecast and predict what will happen in the coming year. In dynasty football, this is amplified as we try to predict out multiple years and try to scoop up talent before that breakout happens. The better our ability to predict, the more championships we tend to win. Sure, sometimes we will guess wrong or might get lucky when we didn’t expect it, but in general, if you put in the time you can not only increase your ability to predict success and failure, but also make sure that you are right more than you are wrong. If kickers are truly a valid dynasty asset and not a product of blind luck, you should be able to predict which kickers will have big years and which ones won’t.
In order to put this predictability to the test, I took down the rankings from three big national organizations: ESPN, CBS sports, and Yahoo. These were their composite rankings that were published during the last week of the 2012 preseason. If we have any hope of predicting kickers in a dynasty sense, these guys need to be able to accurately predict kickers for just one year. I’m not saying that these guys are better than anyone else, just that for one reason or another they are fortunate enough to make a living off of fantasy sports. That means they can devote more time to fantasy that most of us have the luxury of doing.
Let’s start with ESPN and see how their composite rankings panned out. The number in the parenthesis is the actually ranking of the kicker. Any player finishing outside of the top 20 is missing a number.
1) Stephen Gostkowski (1)
2) Mason Crosby (18)
3) David Akers (9)
4) Sebastian Janikowski (12)
5) Garrett Hartley (19)
6) Dan Bailey (10)
7) Alex Henery (17)
8) Matt Prater (7)
9) Rob Bironas (20)
10) Robbie Gould (-)
11) Matt Bryant (3)
12) Mike Nugent (-)
As you can see, ESPN only managed to only get a third of the top 3 picked correctly in the top 3. In fact, they only had one of the top 7 picked correctly in the top 7 group. Overall, their top 12 only had 2 of the top 5 kickers and 5 of the top 10. When you add in the fact that they had half of their predicted top 12 kickers finish in the bottom half of the league (#17 or lower), you can see they didn’t have a whole lot of success.
Yahoo didn’t fare much better:
1) Mason Crosby (18)
2) Sebastian Janikowski (12)
3) David Akers (9)
4) Stephen Gostkowski (1)
5) Dan Bailey (10)
6) Jason Hanson (6)
7) Nate Kaeding (-)
8) Matt Prater (7)
9) Robbie Gould (-)
10) Alex Henery (17)
11) Rob Bironas (20)
12) Matt Bryant (3)
Yahoo struck out when it comes to the top three since they didn’t hit on any of them. They did get two of the top 7 picked correctly though, which is one better than ESPN. On the flip side, they had two kickers at 7 and 9 that didn’t even place in the top 20. While their misses were ranked much higher, they did have one fewer of them than ESPN. They were still far from accurate though with only 2 of the top 5, which they ranked at #4 and #12.
Let’s give it one more chance by looking at CBS sports:
1) David Akers (9)
2) Sebastian Janikowski (12)
3) Stephen Gostkowski (1)
4) Mason Crosby (18)
5) Garrett Hartley (19)
6) Alex Henery (17)
7) Dan Bailey (10)
8) Jason Hanson (6)
9) Matt Bryant (3)
10) Matt Prater (7)
11) Nate Kaeding (-)
12) Shayne Graham (5)
Like ESPN, CBS managed to get one of the top three in that group correctly, but also just one of the top 7 named. They did manage to place eight of the top twelve kickers in their top 12 predictions though, which means they had the best success rate by naming two thirds of the group, though the other third were in the bottom half of the league. Not only that, but their order was extremely off with half of their top six finishing in the bottom half of the league.
In all cases, you would have had a higher chance of success randomly choosing a kicker from the top 12 rankings than you would have had picking one of the top three kickers that were ranked. That doesn’t say much at all for being able to predict which kickers will have a quality season even if you wait until the week before the season starts. If these paid “experts” can’t do better than this for a single year, how are we supposed to be able to do it not just for one year but forecast for several years to come?
The bottom line is that predicting the success of a kicker is an extremely difficult proposition. Not only is it difficult, but the payoff for doing so correctly is almost non-existent. Remember from the original article that having the top ranked kicker only gets you roughly one more point a week over the average kicker. You might as well just draw a name from a hat and save yourself a lot of wasted time.
Kickers just aren’t predictable, which means it all comes down to luck. If you’re on DLF reading this article, then luck isn’t exactly what you are all about. You are spending your free time to gain insight and an edge. In other words, you are making sure that you eliminate the luck so you can make quality choices. Why would you want to keep an element of the game that you (or anyone else for that matter) can’t accurately predict? Not only are kickers nearly impossible to forecast, but they just aren’t consistent at all, year-to-year or week-to-week – that is the focus of part two, so stay tuned for tomorrow’s article.
Join the movement – convince your league to Kick the Kicker!
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I agree with you wholeheartedly, and I would love to get rid of kickers in all my redraft leagues. However, my IDP dynasty leagues has a twist that affects kicker value, the Rookie Flex position. The rookie flex can be any position: IDP, QB, K, etc. An interesting (if unintended) consequence is that the rookie kickers get drafted as high as the late 2nd round because they can outproduce other rookies as you wait for your IDPs and WRs to develop.
Total scoring for rookies in this league for 2013:
1) DMartin 308
2) RG3 306
3) Luck 279
4) RWilson 274
5) Alfred 257
6) TRich 234
7) Tannehill 180
8) TYHilton 179
9) BWalsh 168
10) Weeden 166
11) Blackmon 162
12) Kuechly 159
13) JTucker 151
14) JGordon 147
15) BWagner 143
So although it sounds great to turn your team into a 2QB team (for one year) by drafting Brandon Weeden, or draft the top rookie LB, you got the same basic scoring by having Blair Walsh. Crazy gimmick, or interesting strategic incorporation of the kicker position?
Never heard of anything like that before. I’m not sure if I like it or hate it, but it would make for some interesting strategy. I would probably draft rookie kickers pretty early in that situation just because you know they will get playing time while rookie WRs might be buried on the depth chart for a year or two. It is really s short sighted strategy though, because you’re making a pick for just one year of production, since you can’t use them in their second year.
You could always just remove the kicker requirement for a starting position. If someone wants to use one as a flex, they can, but no one has to use a kicker.
Thanks for reading!
Exactly, it’s a one-year advantage of having a starting rookie that each owner has to balance. I got burned by drafting Randy Bullock in the 3rd round, and then he went on IR before the season started. In hindsight, I could’ve had Russell Wilson instead. Ouch.
I haven’t had kickers in my league in about 5 years or so, and we’ve never missed them.
I’m jealous! It has been an ongoing quest for me over the last few years. I’ve only been partially successful!
Well done. I hate the kicker as well. But every league I’m in has them. I usually draft one with an early bye, then cut him on his bye and ignore it the rest of the year. It’s really silly. And worse yet is when some team wins a match-up thanks to a K scoring like 18 points. And it happens.
Hopefully you’ll be able to use this article, the original one from last Spring, and the one that comes out tomorrow to help convince your leagues to remove kickers. They really have no part in a serious fantasy league in my opinion. Good luck!
It’s the same thing has any other position player having their best day of the season or having a career day against you or for you.
It’s just part of fantasy football. Get one of the good one’s or suffer.
Who exactly would be “one of the good ones”? If you think you know, you should re-read the article again. Not only that, but kickers tend to have 4 week spans like 6 points, 3 points, 5 points, 18 points. They average 8 points, but the week by week consistency is terrible (this is the focus of tomorrow’s article). There isn’t any rhyme nor reason to the highs or lows. It is just random. If you want random, draw names for draft picks and flip coins for lineup choices. Lots of random there.
I think one of the reasons I disagree is because I’ve never been in a league where all FG are only 3. Making them 4 for 40 yards and 5 for 50+ is a huge difference in picking your kicker as there are many kickers who may have opportunities at those distances but only a few that can actually hit them with some consistency.
I don’t buy the example of an average of 8 points either. Two examples
Calvin Johnson – 1st 8 games of the year, 11, 9,23,5,13,2,5,13. Average of 11 with 3-4 dud weeks.
Roddy White – last 6 games of the year, 6,2,17,2,27,4. Average of 10 with 4 of the 6 considered awful.
It’s all the same, fantasy is fantasy.
It’s just like any other position, you need to stay on top of who’s available and what is going on with their teams productivity. Making good trades and managing your team.
Good Article, I just don’t agree with banning the kicker.
Going to distance scoring changed the scores but not the rankings other than a few select cases. Though the top 12 were actually the exact same kickers either way, as stated in the article. The average would be a little bit higher as well. Anyway, consistency is covered in part 2. Make sure you check it out.
I am in the midst of creating a league now and eliminating the kicker was atop my agenda. We are replacing it with another flex.
Very glad to hear it! I hope that it continues to be a trend among competative fantasy leagues.
A couple of suggestions:
1. Don’t ignore injuries. To me, your analysis is less credible because you dock the projectors for Kaeding, Gould, and Nugent – all of whom were injured. (Unless you’re saying that we can predict injuries for other positions with accuracy and we can’t at kicker). If anything, injuries at kicker are less likely to happen because of its non-contact nature. I recommend revising to use points per game for a more fair analysis. I think you’ll still get the outcome you wanted.
2. I recommend using the FantasyPros pre-season composite ranking. Because it combines more “experts”, I think it’s a better source to compare against. Again, I bet you’ll get similar results.
If you’re going to campaign against kickers, than I think you have to campaign against team defenses. In fact, I think defenses are even less predictable than kickers. They are more random from year-to-year and week-to-week. Either start with defenses or change your argument to getting rid of both kickers and defenses to be consistent. Personally, if could only get rid of one, I’d get rid of defenses first.
On a pure ideological level, I agree with getting rid of defenses and kickers. But on a selfish level, I’d keep them both. That’s because I think I can gain a meaningful marginal advantage by streaming kickers and defenses. For example, if you played the team defense that was up against the Chiefs all season, you would have had the equivalent of the 3rd best defense in the league (in most scoring systems). And Scott Pianowski of Yahoo! has laid out some good principles for streaming kickers (check out his weekly accuracy on FantasyPros). If I can harness these tools to my advantage, I’ll use them to win. It may be that I’ll lose a game or two to a kicker or defense outburst, but I think I’ll profit in the long term. With other owners gaining the advantage of so much free and quality information about the other positions, why not keep what I can use to my advantage?
I didn’t ignore injuries, I included them. Meaning if a guy gets hurt, it is the same as getting a zero. A few years ago, if you drafted Brady early and then watched him get his knee taken out, it isn’t like you could say to your league “Hey, he got hurt. I want Payton Manning instead.” You need to deal with that. If you drafted Kaeding as your kicker, you had to figure out something to do when he was hurt. Either way, you’re correct that if you go by points per game or total points, the results are very much the same.
As for the kickers vs defenses argument, I can only do one campaign at a time! Plus, the movement for IDPs over team defenses is already pretty substantial. Not only that, but just because you would rather get rid of team defenses doesn’t mean that you can’t also get rid of kickers. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Your final point of streaming kickers and defenses has one major flaw. You’re assuming that all defenses and kickers are available to you. I doubt that you could go to your wavier wire and pick up Denver, Steelers, Ravens, etc. They are probably on someone’s roster. With that said, I’m a firm believer in doing that with team defenses in a lot of cases. Doing that with kickers is a lot more difficult because you can’t predict kickers as easily in addition to the fact that several of them are going to be on rosters.
Thanks for the read and the comments.
1. Injuries: How an individual FF owner handles a player injury is different than how you handle an injury for purposes of evaluating predictability or the accuracy of a forecast. You shouldn’t penalize a site’s preseason kicker rankings because of a player injury unless player injuries are otherwise predictable. I think we can safely assume that player injuries are close to equally impossible to project across all positions, so you should not use injuries to argue that kicker are inherently less predictable.
2. Streaming: I am not assuming that all kickers and defenses are available. In standard leagues, usually 1 K or D per team is rostered, maybe 1-3 more. That leaves 17-20 Ks or Ds available in a 12 team league. If you are in leagues where teams are rostering 2 or more Ks or Ds, then your argument makes more sense. Otherwise, streaming works well specifically because Ks and Ds are so volatile – it’s likely that you can find, out of 17-20 Ks or Ds on the wire, a starting quality K or D (one that will finish in the top 12 that week) on the waiver wire. And I think you can do it with some accuracy. Take a look at the final 2012 Accuracy Rankings at FantasyPros. The best K expert (Pianowski) had a 61.9% rating for Ks. In contrast, the best WR expert had a 61.6% rating. So predicting kickers CAN be as “easy” as predicting WRs. However, not many know how to do that. Just looking at the rest of the accuracy rankings, you’ll see that most experts are much better at projecting WRs than Ks. But Pianowski and others are coming up with better systems and if you follow them (or just follow his public rankings), I think you can stream Ks and take advantage of the disparity in knowledge.
Keep up the good work.
Defenses I’ll buy. Kickers I just don’t see how you can accurately know while kicker is going to have a better game. You pick the guy against the bad defense, and you might get 5 extra points. Pick the one against the good defense and you might get shut out. I haven’t looked at anyone trying to predict the top 10 kickers on a weekly basis to know if it can be done, especially if you take out 10 of the best that are rostered by other teams. I just know you can’t predict at the start of the year and that they aren’t consistent from week to week.
Thanks for reading!
OK — so first and foremost i’m 100% with you on eliminating Kickers– I’m planning a new dynasty league and excluding Kickers AND defense actually. Anyway I have had this debate for years with a fellow player who doesn’t really frequent this website at all. I sent him the article last year and sent him this update THIS YEAR- to which I got the following response. I was wondering how you would address his gripes?
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Sigh. We will never agree on this and this article misses so many points to me they are difficult to number. I’ll try to be quick;
1- The idea that you only need to measure the top twelve is ridiculous. SO MANY owners ignore kickers that they never make any add/drops at the position, whoever they draft is their guy all year. In the XGL, only 5 of the top twelve kickers are on rosters. Same number in the CDL. RMGL is a little better, there are 9. In my four Gold/Platinum leagues there were 3, 5, 3 and 3 kickers out of the top twelve that were on rosters. Take a look at your leagues, I’m sure the numbers are similar.
2- “Predictability” is inconsistent at every position except for a few QB’s. We should definitely eliminate defenses and tight ends if that is part of the criteria. For this argument to carry any weight he would need to do the same exercise with all of the positions and demonstrate that ONLY the kicker position is random. That would be a failed effort, guaranteed.
3- I believe kickers make fantasy football more interesting. It makes field position more important when watching a game where you or your opponent have a kicker involved. Being in or out of field goal range suddenly matters. Lining up for a long kick, a play that has an extremely important role in the actual game of football, has dramatic value in fantasy. It’s more fun, to me, to include kickers.
4- Kickers score such a HUGE percentage of points in NFL games that it just seems wrong to eliminate them from fantasy. Football scoring is dominated by kickers historically and currently. Eliminating kickers in fantasy football would be like eliminating free throws in fantasy basketball, it’s too important a part of the game to cut loose.
5- The authors list of reasons that people claim to want to keep kickers and why they are bad reasons in the original article completely misses the point. No reasonable person would argue the first three and he completely fails to address the fourth by only involving the top twelve kickers. Not remotely compelling.
I remain light years from convinced on this issue. Have a lovely Tuesday.
I agree with 1 and 2. 3 and 4 are emotional/personal preference (do you like the DH or not?). Nothing you can do about that except hope you have a majority of your league to make the change.
Unfortunately, some people won’t ever let their mind be changed or listen to an argument that goes against what they know. They are often the same people that keep going to the same 3 restaurants and ordering the exact same meal because “it is good”. This might be the case with your friend. They just don’t like change and they rationalize it with fringe arguments so that they can keep everything just the way it used to be. If you’re trying to convince him to get a rule change, it might be best to focus on the rest of the league.
Anyway, let me give it a shot!
1) I don’t quite get the point here. It sounds to me like he’s saying that in his leagues people don’t have top kickers because they pick them and forget. Wouldn’t that support my argument about unpredictability? If the teams only have 5 of the top 12 kickers on their rosters because they drafted them and never looked back, doesn’t that mean they drafted poorly? In otherwords, they couldn’t figure out who the best ones were?
2) All positions have some randomness, but not like kickers. Just a little snap shot. Looking at ESPN’s start of the year rankings, they nailed 8 of 12 QBs (3 of the actual top 12 were rookies) but were 3 for 3 on top 3 and 4 of 5 on the top 5. At RB they had 7 of 12, but the 5 that missed were all injuries and they missed on all the rookies again. WR they were 8 of 12 with 3 of the 4 they missed on were injured. Kickers were by far their worst position. Especially when you consider that the overwhelming majority that they missed on were due to injuries and would have been top 12 in points per game. Not the case for kickers. While some did get hurt, most of them played every game and just didn’t produce.
3) It would also be interesting to draft by drawing names from a hat or deciding lineups by flipping a coin. That doesn’t mean that we should do it just because it is interesting. But if he has fun with kickers, that’s his choice. That isn’t any more valid of an argument than if I just said I don’t like kickers, get rid of them.
4) Fantasy football doesn’t follow the NFL nearly as closely as he seems to think. The Vikings don’t get a point every time Harvin catches a pass or Jared Allen gets a sack. The Broncos don’t get a point when Manning throws a 25 yard pass. If he’s going to argue that because kickers score points in the NFL they need to score fantasy points, then the converse should be true and he should only play in TD only leagues. That way when the NFL team gets points, his fantasy team gets points. Kickers are a very important part of the NFL game (so are tackles, guards, centers, punters, long snappers, etc), but I don’t think they belong in fantasy football anymore than some of the things we do in fantasy belong in the NFL. It isn’t an exact parallel between fantasy and real.
5) Funny that he thinks no one would ever argue 1, 2, and 3 when that is exactly what he did! His number 4 is basically the same as number 1 in the article. Number 2 in the article fits with his general tone, and number 3 in the article is basically his number 3. As for number 4, if someone is rostering the 32nd best kicker when the 4th best is out on the wavier wire, that is their own stupidity. Though tomorrow’s article does use the entire league to talk about consistency.
I hope some of that helps.
If we are talking unpredictable shouldn’t we include Larry Fitzgerald? How about all of the Arizona offense? What about CJ Spiller. Everyone knew he was a stud except Chad Gailey so it mitigated his worth. And that Dwayne Bowe was as unpredictable as heck considering Matt Cassel and Brady Quinn are horrible. And Vernon Davis. 4 TD’s in 1st 3 games and then 1 for the rest of the season. Why isn’t he in the unpredictable debate? And Eli, oh Eli, the killer of a lot of fantasy seasons.
No, unless you are automatic starts like Brady, Brees, Peyton and ARod, AP, Foster, Lynch Mob, AJ Green, Megatron, Graham, Gronk and any other top 5 player from each position then aren’t you just as unpredictable as a kicker?
*Chan
Things always happen. The point is that kickers are on the extreme of the unpredictability spectrum. In the vast majority of other positions, guys under perform due to injury (which happens across the board). No other position has the number of “top” guys that don’t perform just because they didn’t. Sure, Fitzgerald and Vernon Davis bombed this year and were healthy, but they are the exception not the rule for non-kickers.
Kickers suck. I use a new one every week based on matchup, unless I lucked in to Blair Walsh during the season.
I see these people rostering 2 or 3 kickers and it makes me want to pull my hair our. Why?!
I like it when they do that. It means there are 2-3 more prospects for me to roster!
Though I have to admit, in leagues where the wavier wire locks before playoffs, I feel like I need to carry 2 kickers just in case one gets hurt. Few things annoy me more!
Personally, I enjoy kickers. Don’t care how unpredictable they are or any of that. Just another element that helps me enjoy watching the games on Sunday. I love it when my kicker and my opponents QB or RB are on the same team and they stall in the redzone. No TDs for them, 3 points for me. I don’t care about predictability. If I did, I wouldn’t be doing dynasty in the first place (really, whats more unpredictable than a rookie draft pick???).
If you want to keep them because you enjoy them, that’s completely fine. I’ve heard of all kinds of things in leagues because those leagues enjoy them. Fantasy is all about fun. You need to do what you enjoy. That’s why some people do TD only, others do PPR, some do IDP, etc. As long as you realize they are unpredictable and inconsistent (tomorrow’s article), I’m happy. Thanks for reading!
Well done once again Jacob. Ever since we discussed this a few years back, you had me sold. The numbers don’t lie. Kickers do not need to be in fantasy football as their unpredictability and unreliability, even if you do stream them, and are informed, tend to be inconsistant. Most that argue for them are those that enjoy the unpredictability and likely are looking past the facts. That is their free choice I guess. All in all this topic should be considered in all competitive leagues and I hope that the two we are in together vote to pass this change. I look forward to tomorrows article and am glad DLF chose to put this on the free side. The more that read this and think it through the better our pastime becomes.
I’m glad that you liked it! Tomorrow is all about the consistency, or rather lack there of, for kickers. Both from year to year, but mostly week to week. It should help out anyone that is trying to argue to remove the kickers from their league.
Short and sweet, disagree. In most leagues this year, I made a bet that the Atlanta offense would give plenty of opportunities to Matt Bryant. It paid off. Most years I hold a statistical advantage over my league mates in K and DST. Why not give the informed the advantage they’ve worked for?
So- get rid of kickers. Ok, DST, too. Heck, there’s only a few good TE’s, so just throw them in the REC position. Hey, let’s just pick team QB, team REC, team RUSH.
Oops, I said short and sweet. Lets leave it alone! Kickers are people, too. And they have a lot to do with NFL outcomes.
I covered a lot of your points in responses to others. Thanks for reading!
In our 16 team dynasty, we do special teams units. I had the Denver special teams. It consist of total FG yardage made-1point for every 15yds. It also consist of 1point for every punt downed inside the 20. And 1point for every 2 fair catches your punter has. Also kickoff and punt return yardage is added together -1 point for 25yds, but the catch is it goes against the team your spt is playing. If Denver had 100yards of return (4pts) but Cleveland had 71yds, (2pts) then I just scored 2pts in yardage points- but after punts and fieldgoals added to it, I usually averaged about 10-15pts a game with Denver. Colquitt is one of the better punters for placing punts inside the 20! Anyway, this is better to us than just kickers !
Very interesting system. I haven’t looked at details, but I think I like the idea better than just plain kickers. I would question if it is consistent and predictable though. If it is, I’m all for it!
I think the point can be made both for, and against kickers. However, I think the predictability test fails with one major flaw.
If someone believes that the ability (or, more appropriately, the lack thereof) to predict kickers values makes them worthless, then can you make an argument that the inverse must also be true?
Follow me, if you will (or can). If you can easily predict the outcome of a given player (or position), doesn’t it render the game meaningless? If I sat down and was easily able to predict the top 5 QB, RB, WR and TE, wouldn’t it then make the game less of a challenge, and, by default, less fun?
For those of us that have done dynasty league ball for 10 years or more, the challenge is not in knowing that Arod, Brees, and Brady will be the top 3 QB’s. Its in trying to predict who the NEXT Arod, Brees, and Brady will be, isn’t it? Any newbie can joing a redraft league and tell you that those 3 will be highly sought after at the QB position. They can also tell you that AD, Foster, Martin, and Morris will be highly sought. Question is…could they have predicted Morris and Martin BEFORE this season?
One part of the big reason I personally enjoy dynasty league football is in making roster moves that effect my team in future years. For example, I won my league championship 2 years ago, mainly on the back of Vick, Gates and Hillis. I then proceeded to trade Gates and Hillis at our next rookie/FA draft (and packaged Vick this year). Why? In part, because I wanted the challenge of predicting the next stud at those positions, and because I felt they either had an anomaly season (Hillis), or were ending their useful life on my roster (Gates). Did I get lucky that their respective production dropped after I moved them? In part, yes. I’d also like to think that I did so with some research, knowledge, and experience.
Therefore, if the top kickers are available, and no one picks them up, your league mates are not only doing a disservice to their team, but are giving my team an advantage.
In our league, we cut down to a roster of 12 players, then draft 8 rookies/FA players. Most teams cut their kickers and def, then redraft replacements (or the same at each position). I kept my kicker from last season (Hanson) because I thought he would have value…he finished 6th in our league. Same for my defense (Baltimore, 11th). That meant that by taking the risk that they would have solid years, it would give me the ability to throw more darts at the rookie/FA dartboard. I ended up cutting Baltimore, and picking up Chicago’s defense, who’s owner had cut them for bye week coverage.
In the end, its part of the game, part of the challenge. If you want to drop the position(s), that’s fine. However, for me personally, part of the reason I play this is not just to win championships, its to test my mettle as a pseudo-GM/coach. Adding/dropping players on and off my roster is part of my credo in this game (I made almost 40 transactions this year), and kickers and defenses are part of that experience.
Long winded, I’m sure. However, the predictability test fails in my eyes. If for not other reason than this. If you follow football, not just fantasty football, you make YOUR OWN predictions about players and their abilities. Do you take into account ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, etc? Sure you do. However, sometimes, you have to do your own research, and make your own calls, win or lose.
Well, if you would like to predict the top 12 kickers now, we can use your rankings in next year’s article! No one took me up on the challenge last year, even though several claimed to be able to predict kickers. That forced me to use ESPN, Yahoo, and CBS.
As to your debate about finding the next big stars, that is definitely the most fun. However, Rodgers, Brees, Brady, etc have all been consistent producers. You aren’t trying to predict the next one year wonder. Kickers aren’t consistent from year to year or even week to week, which is addressed in part 2. That means that being able to predict who will or won’t be successful has very limited value.
Thanks for reading!
I just don’t see the point in excluding a position that can give you points between 0-15 on a weekly basis.
You could add a position called “sum of two dice” and have everyone roll two dice every week. That would give you between 2 and 12 points a week and be equally random, unpredictable, and inconsistent as kickers!
…. LOL. Now that is funny. We should do that Jacob…. wait.. we are, we still have kickers. I can’t believe some of these rebuttals.
Point is very simple. But… people fear change.
I don’t fear change at all, but again we are excluding a position that produces points. In my league all EP are 1, FG are 3 but over 50 they are 5 and a miss is -1.
Having a kicker who bombs from 50 is coveted, they are being sought after and are hard to obtain.
If you have a crappy one then maybe you should have used a pick a round earlier to solidify the position. I don’t agree with drafting a kicker extremely high and I ususally don’t until Rd 9 in my dynasty draft (11 player keeper) and I am always willing to carry 2 (Good thing, I had Bailey and Medlock in 1 league) and we have auction WW rules.
Getting rid of your kicker… get rid of your flex too then because RBBC RB’s who are technically the CoP and WR3′s are just as unpredictable.
Again, you are looking to exclude guys who score points on a regular basis. 10-12 kickers annually are more valuable than Steven Jackson.
I commented above but again here…I think many of us agree with your arguments, and yet we don’t want to get rid of any position that gives any slight advantage to those of us who do more research, analysis, and are most active on the waiver wire. I’ve won the regular season title in my local redraft league 2 of the last 3 years by streaming DST & K, so it’s been working for me. I disagree somewhat with the lack of predictability. A kicker for a high-scoring offense playing in a dome should get at least 3 XPs, whereas the Chiefs kicker playing in the wind and snow may get zero. Agree that it’s difficult or impossible to predict field goal attempts (the ceiling), but it is possible to predict XPs (the floor).
Just went back and looked at my results for this season. My K vs. their K heads-up, me streaming vs. their draft-and-hold, I was 9-6-2. I’ll take that.
Saints were a high scoring dome team (2nd most TDs in the league). Hartley was 18th because they scored a lot of TDs and not many field goals. He is the perfect counterpoint to just picking a kicker on a high scoring offense.
On the flip side, the Vikings were a middle of the road offensive dome team. Walsh was a pretty good kicker because of high field goal numbers.
There just isn’t a strong correlation between team success and great kickers. There is some, but not a strong one.
I would also argue that the advantage for that work is pretty limited.
Thanks again for reading and commenting.
Agree that it’s difficult or impossible to predict field goal attempts (the ceiling), but it is possible to predict XPs (the floor).
NO it isn’t. By saying this you are saying you could tell me what the score would be. And… an xp is one point. What kind of floor are we talking. Say the score is 28-17 in your game. You had the kicker of the team that scored 28… Wow… your highly touted kicker on a good offence just got you a whopping 4 points while some joe schmo on a crappy offense (that stalled at the 30 all frickin game) hit 5 feild goals….
Stupid argument. Fear of change. Simple as that. Quite frustrating to read to be honest.
JBlake… if you think you will be able to get “lucky” with your kicker so be it. You should maybe buy a lottery ticket or take a trip to Vegas.
I think you are missing the point by a long shot. Streaming or not. Kickers are straight up unpredictable. Don’t care if you have Seabass, Prater, or whomever… No way to predict their success due to too many variables that are completely out of their (the kickers) control.
I hate to argue about this, because as I said, I’m actually in favor of eliminating kickers. But don’t try to convince me that kicker scoring is absolutely unpredictable. Are you telling me that if the Patriots played the Chiefs every week, you would be okay taking the Ryan Succop side against my Gostkowski every week? I’ll take that bet. And I never said anything about luck; I would not put the effort into picking a kicker each week if I thought it was all about luck.
Jacob said above that there is no strong correlation between team success and kicker success. I guess that depends on your definition of strong correlation: Looking at the top 6 seeds in the playoffs, those kickers are 2/3/5/9/10/17 in my league scoring. Bottom six teams (by 2013 draft order) kickers are 4/12/13/21/25. So if you picked a random kicker from a Top 6 team, you would have an 83% chance of having a Top 10 kicker. If you picked a random kicker from the 6 worst teams, you would have a 17% chance of having a Top 10 kicker.
Problem is – the pats don’t play the chiefs every week that takes your point and flushes it. What you are not seeing is that if 12 or so kickers are rostered in your league – you will simply not be able (each week) to do what you think you are saying you do.
Do you understand?
But every week there are lopsided matchups just like that where there is a significant different in waiver wire K option #1 vs Ryan Succop (poor Ryan Succop being dragged through the mud). Forgive my extreme and flushable example, but I was merely countering your statement that kicker production is completely unpredictable. If you want to take a bet next year, using Vegas spreads and over/unders each week to match kicker of highest expected scoring team vs kicker of lowest expected scoring team, just let me know.
No, I don’t expect to be able to predict with 100% accuracy every week, but as I said, my record last year of streaming kickers versus my opponents’ kicker was 9-6-2. Six times I was wrong, sometimes horribly wrong. But nine times it worked.
I would be curious to hear the total point differential between your kicker and your opponent’s kicker. Or else the total number of points your kicker scored using the system of 3 for a FG, 1 for a XP. Then we could compare exactly what you gained for the effort. My guess is that youe point differential on the season is somewhere around 15 points or right about 1 point a week. At that point, you need to decide if it is worth it.
Just because there are a few lopsided games per week doesn’t mean that the kicker will be available for you to grab…. And… lopsided games are far from a garantee anyway. Why is this difficult? 9-6-2 isn’t something to get that excited about. Likely wasn’t worth your effort like Jacob said.
Yes, my average point differential was around +1. I’ll concede that, in your opinion, it’s not worth my time to gain that advantage. Thank you for telling me what my time is worth to you.
I didn’t say it wasn’t worth your time. I asked if you felt it was worth your time. If you do, then by all means, go for it! Though I would guess that is about the biggest gain that you can get by doing that. I think any kind of gain that is more than that would be extremely rare, and there would even be some years that you end up behind just by bad luck.
No hard feelings, Jacob. My comment was directed more at Jon, who started this rebuttal thread by calling me and/or my discussion points stupid.
I can’t get my Commish in that redraft league to even consider PPR or updating the scoring system, so I don’t see us eliminating the kicker. In my dynasty league, I probably will propose to get rid of the kicker position but keep rookie kickers available for the rookie flex position as you suggested above.
I appreciate your article, and the follow-up point/counterpoint discussion. What I don’t appreciate it being called stupid and fearful of change by a random forum troll who doesn’t know me.
Go and re-read JBlake. “Stupid argument” was the wording. I see people on this site make mistakes like that all the time. It seems people read something and see what they want to see or only see part of a post and stop paying attention to the rest. Attention to detail… You made points that simply didn’t make sense. Several times – Hence – Stupid Argument. I’ll stand by that. It is and was true. But.. that is my opinion and really… who cares?
Please read a bit closer before getting all worked up and taking things overly personal. Just becasue an individual takes a stand and tries to make a point and it isn’t logical / it doesn’t mean that that individual isn’t logical…. it means that their opinion on the matter isn’t…
Make sense now?
Oh… and name calling…
“Random forum troll”. Are you serious? Wow. Talk about reducing yourself. NOt sure the name calling was called for.
Impressive – speaks volumes toward my point.