Never, Ever, say Kicker not important

[SFGeek 0]

Changed out Kaeding Sunday morning due to bad weather in Cincy and replaced him with Josh Brown kicking in dome.

 

Kaeding - 8 points

Brown - 12 points

 

I WON MY CHAMPIONSHIP BY 3 POINTS BABY!!!!!!

[Gladiators 1,904]

Changed out Kaeding Sunday morning due to bad weather in Cincy and replaced him with Josh Brown kicking in dome.

 

Kaeding - 8 points

Brown - 12 points

 

I WON MY CHAMPIONSHIP BY 3 POINTS BABY!!!!!!

 

Don't think many, if any, would argue that they're not important...But drafting them early isn't important.

 

Congrats on the win.

[schmitty34 2]

Don't think many, if any, would argue that they're not important...But drafting them early isn't important.

 

Exactly. Drafting them early not only is not important, but it's flat out stupid. But finding the right kicker once the season starts and playing matchups/situations when it counts is important.

 

DST is similar, but there are a few that are worth drafting a little earlier...but otherwise, matchups and situations eventually become more important.

[SFGeek 0]

You guys are correct.

I was just stating that the conditions and match ups are huge. So many people when I asked what they thought of my swapping kickers on game day said, "what are you worried about? They're just kickers."

 

There you have it.

[Cara 0]

I agree. I play matchups with my kickers and do the same with my defenses. It is always funny watching the first owner to take a defense 4 rounds before anyone else. The number of Owners taking Kaeding 3 rounds early was comical, but the number of Owners taking the Jets Defense in round 8/9 was almost unbelievable. As the Season approached, the Jets defense seemed to slowly creep up the boards. The 8th round was the earliest I saw them go, but I remember a post on here where someone else saw them go in the 7th a couple times. Crazy.

[heavy-set 39]

kicker not important

[southcarolina 166]

I agree. I play matchups with my kickers and do the same with my defenses. It is always funny watching the first owner to take a defense 4 rounds before anyone else. The number of Owners taking Kaeding 3 rounds early was comical, but the number of Owners taking the Jets Defense in round 8/9 was almost unbelievable. As the Season approached, the Jets defense seemed to slowly creep up the boards. The 8th round was the earliest I saw them go, but I remember a post on here where someone else saw them go in the 7th a couple times. Crazy.

 

Jets D got taken in the 4th round of my draft. Same guy took the 49ers D in the 7th. I mocked him mercilessly for weeks between the draft and the season. Then he won his first 9 matchups on his way to a 12-2 season.

 

I beat him in the semifinals though

[Puddleglum 0]

kicker not important

[IMMensaMind 459]

In my league, kicker is (insanely) important: 50+yard field goals are worth 10 points (40+ = 6 pts; 39- = 3 pts). I took out Kaeding, and put in Beuhler (18 points in my league).

 

Won by 7.

[Jaxie 0]

I lost my semi-final game by 3 and my kicker missed 4 field goals that week. I would have destroyed the other team if I'd been in the championship, but instead I destroyed the other team to win 3rd place. Difference of $300.

[murf74 461]

I started Joe Webb as my kicker

[southcarolina 166]

I started Joe Webb as my kicker

 

 

Thats cheating and totally a weak move.

 

 

 

/outraged

//OUTRAGED!!!!

[msudavedawg 5]

HAVING a kicker - important. DRAFTING a kicker before your final pick - not so much.

[p00h 85]

this is a really stupid thread, supported by 1 move made 1 week. Let me give you the opposite. Bryant, top 3 kicker all year, playing in a dome, got me 2 points championship week in 2 leagues. What does your theory have to say about that??? Falcons at home, where they never lose, very solid offense all year, kicker averaging close to 10 pts/game, got me 2...

 

 

Kicker is the most random piece of the FF puzzle. Under the most optimal conditions, they can give you 2 points, and in a blizzard, they can rack up 15. Their production has very little to do with themselves, which is why its so random. They're at the mercy of the offense getting them into position to put up points. And even then, does the offense just go run up TDs, or do they line up for 4-5 FGs a game.

 

 

Just cuz you plugged in a kicker that happened to have a great week, doesn't mean there is some sort of logic behind it. Kaeding didn't not produce because of the weather, he didn't produce because his team played like sh!t...

[sirwinzalot 1]

I just won my league championship, I didn't draft a kicker on draft day. Kickers suck period. They can determine the outcome of a close game, but you could insert any kicker into your lineup and not feel any better or any worse about your team.

[chroniciguana 13]

Kickers cause you to act crazy while watching a game. Who else in the room, for instance, is rooting for a drive to bog down with a fourth and five on the 25? Or gets ticked when their kicker's team opts to go for it or brings on the punter? Or can instantly compute the length of a potential FG from any spot on the field?

 

Yeah, kickers suck. But I'll take the points. And the strange looks from everyone else at the bar.

[mambokings 0]

this is a really stupid thread, supported by 1 move made 1 week. Let me give you the opposite. Bryant, top 3 kicker all year, playing in a dome, got me 2 points championship week in 2 leagues. What does your theory have to say about that???

 

It says the same about any player in fantasy football, that nothing is ever guaranteed, but you yourself point out that you had a "Top 3" kicker...and I'm sure you kept him for a reason. As you said in the rest of your post, he averaged 10 points per game - did all other kickers? No. As you said, you wound up in the championship round...bet your kicker at 10 points a week had something to do with that. So he had a bad week when you needed it the least...welcome to fantasy football. It could, and does, happen to any position.

[Big Zeke 0]

Janikowski was pretty damn important to my winning my league - 19 points in week 16 championship! My highest scoring position that week, even more than Vick who was 2nd with 17.75 pts.

[Matt Mueller 146]

Changed out Kaeding Sunday morning due to bad weather in Cincy and replaced him with Josh Brown kicking in dome.

 

Kaeding - 8 points

Brown - 12 points

 

I WON MY CHAMPIONSHIP BY 3 POINTS BABY!!!!!!

 

I changed out Akers for Buehler. Didn't like the weather in Philly(was thinking the game was monday) and Buehler had been hot.

 

I won by .16 points.

[TimHauck 1,805]

this is a really stupid thread, supported by 1 move made 1 week. Let me give you the opposite. Bryant, top 3 kicker all year, playing in a dome, got me 2 points championship week in 2 leagues. What does your theory have to say about that??? Falcons at home, where they never lose, very solid offense all year, kicker averaging close to 10 pts/game, got me 2...

 

 

Kicker is the most random piece of the FF puzzle. Under the most optimal conditions, they can give you 2 points, and in a blizzard, they can rack up 15. Their production has very little to do with themselves, which is why its so random. They're at the mercy of the offense getting them into position to put up points. And even then, does the offense just go run up TDs, or do they line up for 4-5 FGs a game.

 

 

Just cuz you plugged in a kicker that happened to have a great week, doesn't mean there is some sort of logic behind it. Kaeding didn't not produce because of the weather, he didn't produce because his team played like sh!t...

 

Agree with this 100%. Yes, nothing is guaranteed at any position of FF, but kicker is the biggest crapshoot. As you said, Bryant was a top 3 kicker, playing at home in a dome against a decent but not great defense, all signs pointed to him having a good week, and he gets 2 points in the championship game.

[p00h 85]

It says the same about any player in fantasy football, that nothing is ever guaranteed, but you yourself point out that you had a "Top 3" kicker...and I'm sure you kept him for a reason. As you said in the rest of your post, he averaged 10 points per game - did all other kickers? No. As you said, you wound up in the championship round...bet your kicker at 10 points a week had something to do with that. So he had a bad week when you needed it the least...welcome to fantasy football. It could, and does, happen to any position.

 

 

no it doesn't. When you know a rb is going to get 20 touches a game, that rb is a better plan than one that gets 12 touches. When you know a WR is being targetted 9 times a game, that tells you he's a better play than a WR that is getting 3 targets. Qb that throws 35 times a game blahblahblah. You get the point. What is the guage for a kicker. At best its the offense he plays on, but even then its a complete crapshoot week to week. Sure over the duration of a season the kickers on high octane offenses will be better than those on crap offenses, but on any given week, its a total crap shoot. Even with bad weather conditions, it doesn't tell you anything. In terrible weather a solid offensive team might be able to move the ball enough to kick 5 short FGs, and in sunny southern california the chargers might be held to 14 points, giving you 2 pts. Total crap shoot, very unlike any other position, though the non elite TEs are very close as far as being total crapshoots...

[southcarolina 166]

What is the guage for a kicker.

 

 

For me it was "Play the kicker who was kicking against Arizona this week, if at all possible"

 

The Cards are giving up almost three and a half field goal attempts per game, on top of 2.6 XP attempts per game. They have not once given up less than 7 points to an opposing kicker this season. In my league (5 pts for FGs 50 yds+, 4 pts for FGs between 40-50 yds) the Cards gave up 171 pts to kickers, over 11 per game. 171 pts had it been scored by one kicker would have by far ranked as the top scoring kicker in my league (Janikowski - 151 pts). They never once gave up less than 7 to an opposing kicker. I rotated kickers for most of the last 2/3 of the season. My kickers scored 138 pts for me, which would have ranked as the third best kicker in my league behind Janokowski and Carpenter. Was i right every week? Not hardly. I started Billy Cundiff one week when he scored 2 or 3 pts. I started Mason Crosby one week when he scored 4. Dan Carpenter got me 2 pts one week. But honestly all of these games were when the guy kicking vs Arizona was already taken, or hurt (Crosby was a Sunday morning fill in for Matt Prater who was supposed to kick vs Arizona that day, and i was scared to start his replacement).

 

Im not really disagreeing with you that the kicker position is more volatile week to week, but to call it a crapshoot to me implies you could just throw a dart at a board and you wouldnt be any better or worse. I think that there is enough information out there to at least make a good educated guess at which kickers will have good days. I mean hell i did it, and im brand new at FF. So either i am incredibly lucky, or else there is some method to my madness.

[TimHauck 1,805]

Im not really disagreeing with you that the kicker position is more volatile week to week, but to call it a crapshoot to me implies you could just throw a dart at a board and you wouldnt be any better or worse. I think that there is enough information out there to at least make a good educated guess at which kickers will have good days.

 

Especially with drafting, you probably could do just as well with throwing darts. Taking into account matchups, weather, etc., you can probably do a little better with your week-to-week pickups, but not by much.

 

Yes, there is a lot of turnover in top RB's especially, and defenses are often a crapshoot as well, but kickers are by far the worst. Here is FFToday's preseason top 5 kickers with the ranking they finished in my league in parentheses:

1. Stephen Gostkowski (34 - IR)

2. Garrett Hartley (21)

3. Ryan Longwell (28)

4. Nate Kaeding (18)

5. Mason Crosby (12)

 

And here are the top 5 kickers in my league and their preseason rankings on FFtoday:

1. Sebastian Janikowski (24)

2. David Akers (6)

3. Matt Bryant (20)

4. Josh Brown (30!)

5. Neil Rackers (7)

 

So, not a single of their preseason top 5 kickers even cracked the top 10, and they only had 2 of the top 5 kickers in their own top 10, with 3 of the top 3 finishing kickers ranked 20th or lower. Not trying to say FFToday's rankings are bad, but why should a position where probably 90% of teams end the season with a different guy than they started with be so important? I'm almost leaning towards the idea brought up earlier of getting rid of kickers in my league. Or at least do something like penalize more than we already do for missed kicks. Otherwise it really is just a lot of luck.

[southcarolina 166]

Especially with drafting, you probably could do just as well with throwing darts. Taking into account matchups, weather, etc., you can probably do a little better with your week-to-week pickups, but not by much.

 

Yes, there is a lot of turnover in top RB's especially, and defenses are often a crapshoot as well, but kickers are by far the worst. Here is FFToday's preseason top 5 kickers with the ranking they finished in my league in parentheses:

1. Stephen Gostkowski (34 - IR)

2. Garrett Hartley (21)

3. Ryan Longwell (28)

4. Nate Kaeding (18)

5. Mason Crosby (12)

 

And here are the top 5 kickers in my league and their preseason rankings on FFtoday:

1. Sebastian Janikowski (24)

2. David Akers (6)

3. Matt Bryant (20)

4. Josh Brown (30!)

5. Neil Rackers (7)

 

So, not a single of their preseason top 5 kickers even cracked the top 10, and they only had 2 of the top 5 kickers in their own top 10, with 3 of the top 3 finishing kickers ranked 20th or lower. Not trying to say FFToday's rankings are bad, but why should a position where probably 90% of teams end the season with a different guy than they started with be so important? I'm almost leaning towards the idea brought up earlier of getting rid of kickers in my league. Or at least do something like penalize more than we already do for missed kicks. Otherwise it really is just a lot of luck.

 

Three of FFT's preseason top 5 kickers suffered injuries and missed multiple games, and no one i read predicted the cliff the Minnesota Offense was going to fall off of. Part of the reason for the volatility of the actual rankings vs the preseason rankings IMO is that kickers scoring less points in general than other positions causes their stats to be all clumped together. What im trying (poorly) to say is that the difference between the best kicker in pts per game (#1 Akers 9.1 ppg) and the worst kicker who actually scored (#40 Longwell 4.9 ppg) was only about 5 pts per game. A five point per game drop off from the best RB only drops you to #5. A 5 PPG drop off at QB only drops you somewhere betweeen the #2 and #3 QB. So when you say a kicker who started as a top 5 preseason kicker, and he slides all the way to #20 in reality, the actual drop off would only be slightly more than 1 point per game.

 

 

Im certainly not advocating drafting a kicker with anything but your last pick. But there is unpredictability in every position. No one saw Mike Vick becoming what he did. FFT's preseason top 5 WRs were Andre Johnson, Randy Moss, Miles Austin, Reggie Wayne and Roddy White. Only one of those guys finished in my leagues top 5 (White). Dwayne Bowe, my leagues #1 WR was ranked 20th preseason. Brandon Lloyd, my leagues #2 WR was ranked #102 preseason. FFT's top 5 preseason RBs were Peterson, Johnson, MJD, Rayrice, and Gore. Only one of those guys (Peterson) ended the season in the top 5 in my league. My leagues #1 RB (Foster) was ranked #30 preseason. My leagues #3 RB (Hillis) was ranked #52. My league's #4 RB (Charles) was ranked #13 preseason. My leagues #5 RB (McFadden) was ranked #37.

 

Again i am not advocating drafting a kicker earlier than the last round, if at all. I think we are basically agreeing with each other. But i think just throwing up your arms and saying "Any kicker will do" on a week to week basis is just being short sighted. There is information out there, and if you are diligent enough to find it, you can make a decent guess who to play.

[TimHauck 1,805]

Three of FFT's preseason top 5 kickers suffered injuries and missed multiple games, and no one i read predicted the cliff the Minnesota Offense was going to fall off of. Part of the reason for the volatility of the actual rankings vs the preseason rankings IMO is that kickers scoring less points in general than other positions causes their stats to be all clumped together. What im trying (poorly) to say is that the difference between the best kicker in pts per game (#1 Akers 9.1 ppg) and the worst kicker who actually scored (#40 Longwell 4.9 ppg) was only about 5 pts per game. A five point per game drop off from the best RB only drops you to #5. A 5 PPG drop off at QB only drops you somewhere betweeen the #2 and #3 QB. So when you say a kicker who started as a top 5 preseason kicker, and he slides all the way to #20 in reality, the actual drop off would only be slightly more than 1 point per game.

 

 

Im certainly not advocating drafting a kicker with anything but your last pick. But there is unpredictability in every position. No one saw Mike Vick becoming what he did. FFT's preseason top 5 WRs were Andre Johnson, Randy Moss, Miles Austin, Reggie Wayne and Roddy White. Only one of those guys finished in my leagues top 5 (White). Dwayne Bowe, my leagues #1 WR was ranked 20th preseason. Brandon Lloyd, my leagues #2 WR was ranked #102 preseason. FFT's top 5 preseason RBs were Peterson, Johnson, MJD, Rayrice, and Gore. Only one of those guys (Peterson) ended the season in the top 5 in my league. My leagues #1 RB (Foster) was ranked #30 preseason. My leagues #3 RB (Hillis) was ranked #52. My league's #4 RB (Charles) was ranked #13 preseason. My leagues #5 RB (McFadden) was ranked #37.

 

Again i am not advocating drafting a kicker earlier than the last round, if at all. I think we are basically agreeing with each other. But i think just throwing up your arms and saying "Any kicker will do" on a week to week basis is just being short sighted. There is information out there, and if you are diligent enough to find it, you can make a decent guess who to play.

 

I dunno, 5 points per game is a pretty big dropoff IMO.

 

And I did say that all positions are unpredictable, but kicker is by far the worst. And that's not even taking into account that it's rare for so many of them to get injured. As p00h stated, kickers are much more dependent on the team around them than any other position. It's not quite that "any kicker will do," but it almost is. Kindof as sirwinzalot stated, how many times have you seen a "rate my team thread" where someone responded by saying, "I think you need to upgrade at kicker"? Probably never.

 

But I think the point that no smart FF'er would draft a kicker before the last round if at all is also a reason that some may use for wishing to get rid of kicker altogether. Why should a position you may not even draft, or most likely have a different one at the end of the season than when you started play such an important role? No, the top kickers don't score as much as the top RB's or WR's. But they can score more than some mid-tier RB's and WR's. Just looking at WR's, Janikowski scored as many points as Marques Colston. Both Janikowski and Akers scored more points than guys like Santana Moss, Larry Fitzgerald, Percy Harvin, Wes Welker, and Anquan Boldin. A lot of these guys were drafted in the third-fifth rounds, yet a freaking kicker had more points than them.

[IGotWorms 3,321]

Kickers are important, but it is mostly luck as far as picking the right one. So I'm not exactly sure what your point is.

[southcarolina 166]

So I'm not exactly sure what your point is.

 

 

FF season is over, we need something to argue about, and someone already has dibs on Joe Webb.