Denard in Fantasy Football
They laughed when I drafted Denard in the last round of our 14-team league. They made fun of me when injuries and byes pressed him into a starting spot at RB. And then:
October 19th, 2014 at 11:17 PM ^
October 19th, 2014 at 11:17 PM ^
Love denard but your team must suck.
October 19th, 2014 at 11:30 PM ^
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October 20th, 2014 at 1:09 PM ^
In PPR leagues, guys like Giovanni Bernard have a lot of value. A pass catching lead back is very valuable. In a 14 team league, DRob isn't a bad choice at all as your last pick. Truth is that Gus Bradley should have turned to him sooner.
October 20th, 2014 at 11:40 AM ^
get VERY thin in a 14 team league. There are probably several iffy players on everyone's rosters in his league.
October 19th, 2014 at 11:17 PM ^
my number one waiver claim priority but some dude drafted him and still has him on his bench because he abandoned his team. Frustrating.
October 20th, 2014 at 8:58 AM ^
this guy should be held accountable to participating. Request that the comish contact this team to trade away or start trying.
Go Blue! Beat state!
October 19th, 2014 at 11:20 PM ^
October 19th, 2014 at 11:21 PM ^
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October 20th, 2014 at 9:02 AM ^
I had DR earlier in the FFl season and had to drop him for other more pertinent waiver wire acquisitions. Now it will be a bidding war for his services for this weeks waiver wire.
Go Blue! Beat state!
October 19th, 2014 at 11:39 PM ^
October 20th, 2014 at 12:02 AM ^
October 20th, 2014 at 12:40 AM ^
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October 20th, 2014 at 12:52 AM ^
My two rules of fantasy:
- If you draft a kicker before the last round you don't know what you're doing
- If you have a backup kicker, you don't know what you're doing
October 20th, 2014 at 7:01 AM ^
October 20th, 2014 at 7:40 AM ^
People who don't understand the value of a top kicker in FF don't understand FF. If you're in a really competitive league, then chances are 3-5 points a game will make a huge difference.
October 20th, 2014 at 9:16 AM ^
Last year Gostowski had the 3rd best fantasy year for all kickers since 1960. He was the #1 kicker in fantasy. He was worth 1.85 points/game more than the #10 kicker for the year. But hey, 1.85 points is still points, right? Well, only if you can actually accurately predict which kickers are going to be better than others, which is a nearly impossible task.
It's a little different in an auction draft, where depending on who you're targeting you may not end up spending your whole budget anyway, so dropping a couple extra bucks on a kicker may not be a terrible idea if you've got extra cash near the end. But in a regular draft league you're pretty much always better off taking an extra lottery ticket at RB or WR than taking your kicker even one round early.
October 20th, 2014 at 12:26 PM ^
Agreed. I didn't get the chance to do a full study on the persistance of kicker outperformance. I drafted Gostkowski based on last year and consensus projections this year. It's worked out so far but I'm not going to say it's automatically already a slam dunk.
October 20th, 2014 at 4:32 PM ^
Your logic only holds true if:
- one kicker is predictably better than another over the course of the season (which seems unlikely)
- the difference between Kicker A and Kicker B is greater than the difference between FLEX A and FLEX B (where FLEX A is the player you could have selected while selecting Kicker A, and FLEX B is who you got instead). The missing point here is opportunity cost. If you had spent that extra $2 on a RB/WR/QB/etc, it might give you a greater point advantage than spending it on a kicker.
On another note, I don't know what kind of leagues you guys play in, but I find that there are very few games in mine that are within even 10-15 points, let alone 3-5.
October 20th, 2014 at 4:33 PM ^
For example, in one of my leagues, you could have selected Cutler, Rivers, Ingram, and Reed all after Gostkowski went. And those are some great players to get in the 13th round.
October 20th, 2014 at 5:55 PM ^
Exactly. So I calculated the marginal value of a dollar based on points above the replacement level player at each position and used that to value kickers relative to other positions. My work told me that spending a little more money on Gostkowski was worth it.
Like I said, I didn't get to do a full study on the persistance of kicker outperformance, but all the "gurus" (CBS, ESPN, Yahoo, etc.) agreed that Gostkowski was the best kicker so I used that as a working assumption. Early returns are promising, but I'm not going to call it a success yet.
I took Gostkowski in a snake draft as well and the next 5 picks were Tavon Austin, Marqise Lee, Carson Palmer, Brian Hartline, and Terrance West. So I'm pretty ok with Gostkowski over any of those.
October 20th, 2014 at 6:11 PM ^
I guarantee if you pick up a different kicker every week based off the match-ups (if you evaluate them intelligently or use a website that does), you will end up in the upper echelon in your league in terms of kicker points. Even if you knew what the kicker rankings would look like at the end of the year before you draft-which you don't-streaming would still be the preferred option. It's not about a top kicker compared to other kickers. It's about a top kicker compared to a sound week by week strategy plus being able to draft a player at a position with more performance variation who could win you your league.
October 20th, 2014 at 7:39 AM ^
I, too, drafted Denard out of respect with my final round pick. Then promptly dropped him to pick up Tre Mason (it's a pretty deep keeper league, and playing him yesterday was a really good call).
October 20th, 2014 at 8:16 AM ^
i am picking him up right now! he is now the starter! go blue
October 20th, 2014 at 9:03 AM ^
Yeah I think I had him on my bench. Oh well. Go Denard
October 20th, 2014 at 10:07 AM ^
October 20th, 2014 at 11:48 AM ^
I am only in two leagues this year, and neither of them are going well so I picked him up and started him in both of my leagues (mostly as a joke because I don't really care at this point). My backup option got 5 points in both leagues. Denard got me 13 extra points by getting 18. I won one matchup by 11 points. And in my other league I was 1-5 on the season in 9th place going up against the guy in 1st place and won by 5 points. Needless to say, I had a couple pissed off friends yesterday. ALL HAIL LORD ROBINSON!
October 20th, 2014 at 12:27 PM ^
I'm in a league where FA's get bid on every week (teams get a fixed budget for the year). It's more fair and more fun than the open or list systems. Now, every single person is an M alum, so the bids for shoelace will be super, super high. We'll see who goes the craziest...
October 20th, 2014 at 1:17 PM ^
made me think about his past value as a QB to UM. To show why we have missed a healthy Denard so much in the past 2-3 years, I calculated a corrected* win pct for UM, for the games in which he was the main UM QB.* For 2012, I made a correction in the win pct to account for his lack of full health due to the ulnar nerve injury that severely affected his throwing. There was a correlation of .97 between UM's win % and his playing status/experience from year to year (and a correlation of about .9 without a health correction for his games as the QB in 2012).**
|
Year |
HlthyW% |
|
NoDnrdQB |
0.444444 |
|
2010 |
0.583333 |
|
2011 |
0.846154 |
|
2012begin |
0.892857 |
*The games with no denard as QB (defined according to whether he played QB in >50% of the game) include all in 2009 and the last 6 games of 2012. For the first 7 games of 2012, I have made a correction for the win pct (labelled HlthyW%) by dividing the actual win pct by .8 (under the assumption that he was at 80% of full health).
**The correlation was essentially the same using a more realistic log odds model (rather than linear model of the win pct itself).
October 20th, 2014 at 2:03 PM ^
#FTW #SHOUTOUTJAGS
October 20th, 2014 at 7:45 PM ^