We suck at drafting kickers, but we don’t have to

If I told you kickers might be as valuable as quarterbacks, would you draft them a bit more carefully?

Clay J. Seal
Aug 23, 2017 · 7 min read

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It’s true, you don’t have to be sexy to score points

If you can find fantasy advice for kickers (it’s sparse), they’ll basically tell you not to worry about them until the last round. There’s barely even an attempt at disseminating information—or even any anecdote—it’s just blatant disregard for the position’s value.

Is that fair though? Kickers aren’t automatic, especially after the extra-point was moved back. They’re not created equal, either. The NFL definitely has its kicking stars, and even legends at the position, and those are rightly earned.

So, what are we missing?

As we discussed in both an article and a podcast, Fantasy Outliers’ methodology seeks value, not point-chasing. So although kickers may score less points than other positions (most leagues’ kicker points per game ranged from about 8–11 in 2016), it’s still one more place where you can snag an advantage. Is it sexy? No. But no one said sexiness had anything to do with winning.

Average Weekly Value — Kickers vs. Quarterbacks

This is about what you’d expect. There were four kickers that had a significant positive AWV, which would be half of the league performing above that zero-value line. Just to clarify, the meaning of Matt Bryant having a +2.7 AWV means he scored 2.7 more points per start than the average starting kicker in the league.

Also included is a graph of the AWV of the quarterbacks from last year, just so you can see how kickers relate to a position deemed more valuable in the minds of most fantasy managers. The graphs don’t look so different. And that holds up pretty well across years. The actual points scored is a little different because there’s usually a higher ceiling for quarterbacks, but the charts align pretty well in terms of ratio.

So, great. Kickers have value. Not only within the position, but you can even see that the AWV isn’t so far off of a more-heralded position. The fourth best kicker in Adam Vinatieri was just as valuable as the fourth-best quarterback Andrew Luck.

People kind of suck at drafting kickers

Figure 2. Typical returns for Average Weekly Value for each position in 8-Team Standard Leagues. See the charts yourself here.

If you look at AWV for the first eight picks in an eight-team standard league since 2011, a few things stand out:

  1. Only three of the eight picks have positive AWV.
  2. There’s seriously low variation.

As we mentioned before, from a pure total points perspective, kickers average out a little lower than other positions. They also have similar opportunities for points with one another. With that, we might expect that ROI graph to be pinched toward the zero-line a bit. But these go past reasonable expectations of “pinched a bit,” in my opinion. The AWV for the first three picks is +0.1. The first six picks together sit at -0.1 AWV. And the first eight picked combine for -0.2 AWV. Those are values that are worth about as much as the points on Whose Line Is it Anyway?

But we just saw a chart above that showed there were four kickers with +1.5 AWV or higher in 2016. Why are these averages so low and so close to each other?

It’s because we’re not very good at drafting kickers.

It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy rooted from where this article started. There’s an apathy around kickers that, honestly, even defenses/special teams aren’t subjected to. It’s reflective of how lots of people see kickers in the real game: they’re not real football players; they’re unreasonably expected to be perfect even though no data or rational thought would support that expectation; and since they’re all supposed to be perfect, we miss an opportunity to notice where we’re missing out on achieving value and an advantage over our opponents.

Remember, Average Weekly Value is points won or lost in games started. Another likely reason for these low AWVs from drafted kickers is that kickers are very commonly streamed (swapped in and out off the waiver wire every week). With those players we didn’t invest any time or energy in drafting, people are more likely to pull the trigger if things don’t work out. This is interesting, because lots of times we’re too willing to hold on to and even start running backs and receivers long after they’ve shown us the pick wasn’t what we thought it would be.

Looking at the first eight draft picks from the prism of Total Season Value (Average Weekly Value multiplied by Weeks Started) may also support that we don’t draft kickers well and that we treat them a bit like mercenaries.

Figure 3. Total Season Value (AWV*Weeks Started) for each position in 8-Team Standard Leagues. See the charts yourself here.

The first kicker taken, like other positions, tends to have the highest TSV. This can likely be attributed to the player being pretty good at what he does. As well, since a high draft pick was spent on him, he is retained and started, which will bode well for TSV, even if it doesn’t necessarily translate to AWV. But what’s unique to kickers and defenses/special teams is the immediate dropoff after the first pick. Again, if we treat these picks like they’re worthless, we won’t draft carefully and we won’t be scared to cut them either.

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2017 Kicker value-based projections

Below are our top 15 projected kickers in 2017, in terms of their projected value vs. Tier 1 kickers (compares their Points Per Game projection to the top 10 projected kickers):

Figure 4. Projected Average Weekly Values for the MathBox™’s Top 15 projected Kickers

Not a misprint. Justin Tucker isn’t on there, due primarily to low projected Opportunities Per Game. If you’re curious about how these projections were calculated, click here to read more.

Let’s take this a step further, shall we? Let’s talk about not just value vs. the competition but draft value. Here we looked at Expert Consensus Rankings of the Top 20 Kickers and compared it to MathBox’s™ Top 20 rankings. Anyone on the upper-left-hand side is considered a good draft value by the MathBox™. You’ll see that Jake Elliott isn’t even on here, since he’s the 32nd ranked kicker by ECR. He’s a rookie, so those models aren’t as good as the veteran models (2+ years), but still. In general, you should be shooting for a guy who’s shaded in bright purple and has a big circle (highest projected weekly value), and who’s located close to the dotted line or in the upper-left-hand portion of the graph.

Figure 5. MathBox™ ranks vs. Expert Consensus Rankings for Kickers

You’ve just read about Kickers for five minutes


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Thanks to Chris Seal

Clay J. Seal

Written by

Struggling with forward motion since 1990.

Fantasy Outliers

Where machines and humans team up to win at fantasy sports

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