Running the Spectrum

Eric Hardter Posted On April 12, 2016

Very few things in dynasty football are black and white. Hell, often times you can’t even necessarily break it down into shades of gray. In many instances we’re moving through all 300+ nanometers of the visible range (sorry, sometimes I have to remind myself I’m not a scientist anymore).

Be it startup and rookie draft picks, trades, or blowing the entirety of your free agent auction budget, there’s a certain level of nuance that should be expected. It’s never as simple as Player X versus Player Y, who’s ADP is higher, or whatever some trade calculator spits out as an end result of relative equality. It’s team need, and perhaps more importantly, owner disposition and risk aversion that can often carry the day.

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It’s that latter portion I want to address, particularly as it relates to the specific risk of a player’s character concerns. Simply put, there is no objectively quantifiable way to account for the valuation (or devaluation) of a player’s off-field drama, and sometimes we might never even see it coming (a la Ray Rice). However, at the very minimum we have a recent batch of empirical data to help us comprehend the ebbs and flows of a troubled player’s value over time, and depending on the (expected) outcome.

As such, I’d like to present Exhibits A, B and C, as shown below:

The Case Studies

Exhibit A – The Redemption Story (Josh Gordon, WR CLE)

Yes, now another potential failed drug test threatens to torpedo his once-promising NFL future, but just a few short weeks, or even days ago, his value was climbing ever closer to it’s previous peak. The rationale behind it was simple – he’d seemingly kept his nose clean during his 2015 break from the gridiron, and now stood poised to return to his previously elite on-field ways. Still only 25 (on April 13^th) years old, formerly soured owners again began to adopt a long-term view of the guy. It was a true rags to riches (to rags to riches….to rags and then to riches again) story, ultimately leaving Gordon back amongst the ranks of the early third round of startup drafts.

Exhibit B – The Downward Spiral (Justin Blackmon, FA WR)

Standing in the opposite corner was Blackmon, a player who hasn’t seen the inner portion of the white lines (no pun intended) since 2013. Taken as a real-life top-five pick, and ascending as high the third round in dynasty startups, Blackmon’s stock bottomed out after a continued series of transgressions has likely left him out of the league for good. Apart from one true believer who took him in the 16^th round in the April Mocks, you won’t currently find him residing anywhere in your typical 20-round draft.

Exhibit C – The Enigma (Martavis Bryant, WR PITT)

Arguably the rule-breakingest of the three, Bryant is dynasty fantasy football’s newest lightning rod. After his sixth failed test in under two years, the 2014 rookie laid waste to the NFL’s revamped drug policy, and is now set to miss the entirety of the 2016 season. His proponents believe that, under no uncertain circumstance, he will be back in 2017, while detractors posit that there’s a loooong time between now and then for Bryant to fall back into bad habits. His current ADP reflects that reticence, as he has fallen a whopping 76 spots between April and March, from the second round all the way down to the back of the eighth.

The Fork in the Road

This, of course, begs the obvious question – is Bryant more Gordon or more Blackmon? Again, knowing what we know now about how Gordon’s off-season has actually transpired, these might be one in the same. But for the sake of the argument, let’s still treat them as diametrically opposing outcomes.

If Bryant can traverse the next 17 months without incident, it’s reasonable to assert he’ll see a value spike similar to Gordon’s, based on where he was rated before news of his suspension broke. On the other side of the coin, one more failed test could and should immediately shift him to a Blackmon-esque status, finding him out of our lineups and perhaps out of the league altogether. It’s with that in mind that I set forward the following thought experiment demonstrated below.

The Risk Assessment – Part One

In the first series of three Twitter polls, I asked a relatively simple question – when compared to Calvin Johnson, how did the masses view the dynasty values of the trio above?

To answer the obvious question, yes, I’m quite aware Megatron retired weeks ago, filing his papers and making it pretty gosh darn official. With that said, he still has the ability to do something neither Bryant nor Blackmon could claim – score fantasy points in 2016 (and judging by his April ADP in the 16^th round, there is a non-negligible portion of owners who see this upside as at least approaching tangibility). Gordon, at least at the time, appeared to be a bit more in the clear.

Presented without further comment, here were the results of these polls:

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The Risk Assessment – Part Two

From here I wanted to tweak the situation just a little bit, and compare each case study to a literal and metaphorical “oldie but goodie” – Jets receiver Brandon Marshall. The logic behind this reasoning was an attempt to drive down a similar road, just at a different speed. For all intents and purposes, Marshall reflects the Schrödinger’s Cat scenario Johnson could have (could still?) had – an uber-elite, aging veteran still getting the job done into his 30s. Of course, as an active member of an NFL roster, Marshall has something Mega doesn’t – a much more straightforward path towards immediate and (relative) long-term fantasy stardom. Nevertheless, Marshall currently stands as Gordon to Johnson’s Bryant.

Presented without immediate commentary, here are the results:

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Interpreting the Results

The outcomes on either end of the spectrum were fairly straightforward, if not entirely predictable. As the once and future stud lying in wait, Gordon mercilessly dominated the aging and retired Johnson in the polls. His numbers again trumped Marshall, but not in the “Put him in a body bag, Johnny!” manner that could have been expected. With essentially a 2:1 margin of victory, there clearly remained a seed of doubt amongst voters that maybe, just maybe, the dicey youngster’s future could still be eclipsed by the steady veteran’s.

With Blackmon, it was essentially the mirror image. Marshall figuratively smacked him down with the Hammer of Thor, with an 11.5:1 ratio voting in his favor. Johnson was only slightly less decisive, as his current status of “retired by choice” trounced Blackmon’s “(likely) retired by the NFL’s choice” with a 5.7:1 ratio.

Where we really saw true divergence was with Bryant. Roughly one in five voters still favored Johnson, just on the mere hopes he doesn’t go full Barry Sanders and decides he wants back in. To me, this is no blip on the radar – a definitively quantifiable and not insignificant portion of the voters prefer the Hail Mary chance that Megatron laces ‘em back up, thereby very effectively highlighting the weariness that exists with Bryant’s pattern of misbehaving.

When pitted against Marshall, the results bore even more weight. Though this was easily the closest matchup of the six, the veteran triumphed with a 1.3:1 ratio of voters deciding in his favor. Even despite his, ahem, “advanced age” permeating the subconscious of many at this particularly wacky time of the year (despite finishing as the overall PPR WR3 in 2015, Marshall is only a late fourth round pick in mock startups according to the April ADP), those who partook in this poll still felt the upside resided with the aging Jet.

What Does It All Mean?

I think what we’re essentially seeing is many dynasty folk no longer remain agnostic to a player’s character concerns. And truth be told, at least to this writer, it makes a heck of a lot of sense. We’re often quick to devalue players due to injury concerns, despite the fact that a torn ACL or broken leg remains fluky in nature. To me, weighting the likelihood that a player who has messed up repeatedly in the past will mess up again is not only tangential to that line of reasoning, but perhaps even likelier to predict. To that point, in what I can only describe as one of the smartest pieces I’ve read all offseason, Charles Kleinheskel over at RotoViz detailed precisely why this most recent failed test is likely the beginning of the end for Bryant. Finkel is probably Einhorn here, and Bryant’s value appears to have shifted a lot closer to that of Blackmon than that of Gordon.

The Monkey in the Wrench

Of course, as we all know by now, Gordon has reportedly failed yet another drug test. He could, and should (I’m not going to wax poetic about the societal correctness surrounding the NFL’s pot policy – rules are rules, and the vast majority of the league follows them) be suspended again, again solidifying the distrust we probably should have had at a rate akin to quick-dry cement. These players are certainly not the only three existing examples (previous redemption stories include, amongst others, Hall of Famer Brett Favre), but it’s fair to wonder if the spectrum of reclamation has narrowed even further.

In Conclusion

I’m not going to tell you what to believe. I’m a staunch dynasty conservative and I wouldn’t touch Bryant with a ten-foot pole well before this latest suspension. I own Gordon in one league where I got him with a third-round rookie pick following his admission into the Supplemental Draft, rode him to a championship and have essentially viewed anything I got from him since as a nice bonus. In another league I cashed out prior to 2014 for Michael Crabtree and a second round rookie pick. I’ve never owned Blackmon. It’s just my personal philosophy.

But many are risk takers, and it has undoubtedly panned out for them at one point or another. To that I say to each his own – there are a myriad of dynasty worldviews to adopt, and one isn’t any better than the other. But as the results above show, it appears there is a definable shift towards accounting for character concerns when it comes to valuating dynasty assets – running towards the upper end of the risk spectrum could mean running away from future dynasty value down the line.

Follow me on Twitter @EDH_27

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Eric Hardter

Contributor at Dynasty League Football

Eric is a Boston College chemistry grad school survivor with a minor in dynasty football. He prefers to utilize both statistics and sarcasm whenever possible, believes in process over results and thinks "Hot Takes" are the scourge of the fantasy landscape.