The Dynasty Value Impact of Suspension: A Josh Gordon Story

Eric Burtzlaff Posted On January 28, 2017

As the dynasty trade ambassador on twitter, I am witness to ‘dynasty value freak out’. If a player has a monster game, twitter will begin to be flooded by trade value questions for the player. This year’s examples include Jay Ajayi, Stefon Diggs, Tyreek Hill and Derek Carr. There is no arguing the fact that the dynasty market moves every time a player has a huge game or throws up a goose egg.

This well-known phenomenon of recency bias brings me to a quest to begin understanding the dynasty market from a more empirical standpoint. There’s really not that many tools to help. There’s my twitter account (@dynastytrades), but that’s fleeting for a long-term understanding of trends in the market. The other tool out there is the monthly dynasty average draft position (ADP) prepared by our own Ryan McDowell (@ryanmc23), and that’s the tool I’m going to be using through this series. I obtained all the average draft position data from January 2013 through today for this series. It is worth pointing out that ADP and trade value are not the same thing, however I will assume they are very correlated.

This is a complicated topic with many outliers and many trends that could be purely coincidence. I’m not writing this article to say I have that figured out, but I am writing this article to start looking in the dynasty trade market window.

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Let’s get to our first test subject, Josh Gordon. Calling Gordon’s career “troubled” is a massive understatement. If you have played dynasty for several years, you likely have felt the burn firsthand of his many suspensions. I don’t want to argue the validity of Gordon as a talent, screw-up, or troubled human who clearly needs some help. I do want to take a detailed look at his dynasty values as he rides his career roller coaster as it gives us understanding of trends in the greater dynasty trade market.

I have charted Gordon’s ADP over time from January 2013 through January 2017 below:

Screen Shot 2017 01 28 at 20.16.06

This data quantifies the dips and rises in Gordon’s value through the years. Let’s go through the graph with a bit more detail.

After his first suspension, Gordon’s value remained largely un-impacted and climbed to number three overall in startups in the early off-season before the 2014 season. There was no pattern, and dynasty owners weren’t scared of losing two games from their young stud.

His value took an impact after his DUI in July of 2014 falling as far as 67 overall in August of 2014. However, once the season progressed his value rose to as high as 13 overall in December 2014.

Then in January, news broke that Gordon would be suspended the 2015 season for failing yet another drug test. His value tanked again. This time worse than any time before. He fell to as low as 176 overall in August 2015. Once again, his value started climb as the season went on. His value peaked once more at 23 overall in February of 2016.

Once again, news breaks: Gordon will not be reinstated by the NFL in March 2016. His value slowly falls to 121 overall over the course of the next four months. The NFL announces that Gordon will be reinstated in July 2016 but only after serving a four game suspension.

Gordon’s value climbs once more. He climbs to 45 overall by September 2016 until Gordon announces that he will be entering rehab instead of playing game five of the season. He announces he will step away from football indefinitely.

What can we as Dynasty Owners take away from this data?

This data is fascinating. It shows that dynasty owners have a very short memory. Every time the hype train started for his re-instatement, the value climbs. Immediately after he is suspended, his value craters within three-four months. I’d like to highlight the things I think are important from the data above:

Gordon’s value never immediately craters. It always takes about three-four months before owners accept his new status in the ADP.
Every time Gordon’s value rebounds it next exceeds the highest point prior to his suspension. For example, he goes from three to 13 to 23 at his peaks. His value is diminishing.
Gordon’s value is always highest in the off-season with all the twitter hype.
As the regular season goes on, Gordon’s value climbs regardless of his suspended status.

I’m going to assume most suspended player’s ADP data are like Gordon’s data. Do I think this assumption is perfect? No. Do I think its correct to correlate dynasty owner’s emotion to suspended players regardless of talent level? Yes. I’ll caution the reader that you will need to correlate values to their ADP prior to suspension. If a player was 40th overall prior to suspension, I’d estimate you can expect that player to be roughly 50th overall upon returning to the league. I’ll coin a term. I’ll call it the ‘yo-yo theory’. The yo-yo of dynasty value comes back but never quite as high as originally.

I’m going to make some assertions for buying/selling suspended players. The best time to buy any suspended player is three-four months after his suspension. The value is the lowest at that time. I assume that’s because the owner of the asset as finally accepted the value given by the community to their asset. On that same note, the worst time to buy a suspended player is in the off-season while the hype train is building. It seems when dynasty owners are bored, they are cranking the value of Gordon or likely any suspended player forgotten about during the season. They are easy targets for hot take articles.

Buying a suspended player early in the fantasy season when everyone thinks they are competing is another great time. If you are rebuilding, you should be targeting those players in August-September. There will likely be a time in the future where you can flip the players for more than you paid (likely in February). As the fantasy season progresses and more owners get eliminated from the playoffs, the value of suspended assets climbs. It’s worth mentioning that buying suspended assets can result in the floor falling out, but as I’ve outlined with Gordon, that takes many more screw-ups than you’d assume.

The best part about the ‘buy and flip’ strategy with a suspended player is we don’t care if they ever actually play again. I’m very adverse to owning suspended players, but they have quite predictable ADP charts. We aren’t betting on the suspended player, we are betting on the short-term memory of the dynasty community. That aspect of the game is insanely exploitable. I’d even bet that Gordon’s value climbs to the fourth-fifth round of start-ups if he’s ever reinstated.

Finally, I personally am risk averse for drug offenders in the NFL. I don’t know many drug users in my personal life that just give it up one day and never go back. I assume that’s true in the NFL. That doesn’t mean that you can’t profit from suspended players, and as I’ve outlined here, I think there’s a clear formula for turning a 130 ADP into a sure-fire profit if you time your moves correctly.

If you’d like to see this analysis done on another player, please leave a comment with your dream analysis.

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