Mitch Kiper Stats: Why Ed Dickson = Ben Roethlisberger
Mitch Kiper loves airports. He loves the detailed interconnected logistics of the tightly run operation. He loves the recent innovation of “tag your own bag,” which is both a timesaver and oddly fun to do. Mitch Kiper wonders: once kids no longer remember a time when only airport employees could use those cool sticky tags, will tagging your own bag still be fun? Or is it really not fun, and Mitch Kiper is a strange, strange man? These are questions that can’t be answered by statistics, so they can’t be answered by Mitch Kiper.
Another benefit of airports is that, once done experimenting with “what happens when you suddenly stop walking in a busy hallway?”, Mitch Kiper has a lot of extra free time before boarding, which means more info-tainment for all you Dynosteve desk jockeys.
Today, however, I won’t be previewing a team. I’ll be giving an overview of MitchKiperStats™, so all of you know what I’m referencing throughout this pre-season series. I’ll also share some fun facts about the Dynosteve league as a whole, and try to glean what I can about what the current roster constructions mean for the past and future.
MITCHKIPERSTATS™ -- A New Way to Over-Analyze Fantasy Sports in a way that Might Not Even Make Sense
You’ll notice in the Wallabies preview that I used a few proprietary stats, some easier to interpret than the others. Today, I’m going to break those down with examples, as well as preview some more you might see in the future.
PPW – Points per week. For the sake of the team-by-team previews, I am only using the 2018 projected points provided by CBS. The Weekly Points Per week are taken by dividing their total projected points by 16. If you don’t know why, this article isn’t for you.
%ile -- This is a stat that very much interests me, and hopefully interests you. I’ve calculated the percentile rank of each player against varying categories, in an effort to determine their worth and standing. Over the course of this blog, you will see the following three versions of percentile scores:
%ile vs Rostered Players @ Position –This number gives the percentile rank of an individual player, based on the pool of players in their position that are currently rostered in the Dynosteve league. They are not compared against players in other positions, and not against free agents.
%ile vs All NFL – This is the percentile rank of a player versus All NFL players, regardless of position.
%ile vs Position, All NFL – This is the percentile rank of a player versus All NFL players, restricted only to their position.
Here are some examples of the various %ile stats, in this case for the QB position, based on the CBS projections for the 2018 Season.
A few observations we can see right away from looking at this table, followed by some deeper analysis to see what these stats can possibly teach us:
Aaron Rodgers is the best projected QB, both in Dynosteve Rosters and the entire NFL. He is not the best projected player in the NFL, however (that honor belongs to Todd Gurley).
While Marcus Mariota and Joe Flacco are both top 5% scorers compared to the entire NFL, their value drops rapidly compared to their position, and especially compared to the Dynosteve players in their position. Of the 36 QBs currently on Dynosteve rosters, 18 of them are better than Mariota, and 27 are better than Flacco. But what does this mean for their owners, and how can we translate this info into useful practice?
97% of the QBs in Dynosteve are projected to do better than Mason Rudolph. Amazingly, he’s still projected to put up more points than half of the NFL (That is because half of the NFL is projected to do absolutely nothing). But even as a handcuff from a premier offense, is he worth a spot on a roster?
Now that we’ve taken a look at what these stats mean on the literal sense for each player on the table (Garoppolo aside, because I don’t want to be reminded that Jimmy G’s no longer a Patriot), let’s see what deeper insights we can pull:
He’s friggin great. Until I develop a VoRP-style stat for this league, I can’t tell you what it should take to trade him, but at some point I’ll revisit this.
MARCUS MARIOTA AND JOE FLACCO – WHERE DOES %ile PLACE THEM?
Yes, they’re starters in the NFL. They put up weekly points. At most positions, this qualifies them as good enough to start on a fantasy roster. Some of us are guilty of translating that thinking to the QB position *cough cough Mitch Kiper*. How damaging is it for an owner to settle for simply a decent player at QB, and what point value should a player be putting up to be considered a worthwhile DYNOstarter™?
Remember: there are 12 starters in Dynosteve on any given week. 12 out of 36 = a third. That means, in a perfect world where players perform as expected, you would lose the QB battle every week if you started a QB in the 67th percentile or worse. You would bat .500 in the 83rd percentile. You’d win every week with Aaron Rodgers.
With that in mind, let’s look at where these players stand on their teams. First, the Fenoms, and Joe Flacco.
Joe Flacco is right where he should be—the bench. The Fenoms have Alex Smith, who by our logic should win about half of the QB battles in Dynosteve. Friendzone has an average QB situation, provided Smith stays healthy.
But take a look at the difference between Smith and Dalton. There’s a 5 ppw difference between the two players. You may or may not think of that as a monumentous difference, but at the QB position that accounts for a 55 percentile drop. Five points is the difference between beating half the Starting QBs in Dynosteve, and likely losing every single weekly battle. Mitch Kiper rues the day he thought Andy Dalton had worth. Then again, the Wallabies thought Sammy Watkins would be good. We both failed.
Speaking of times Mitch Kiper misestimated Quarterbacks, how does Marcus Mariota fare on his team?
Not good. Especially now that Famous Jameis will be eating cookies on the sidelines for the first three games, Marcus Mariota is the de facto starter for the Gakusei Kai Nickelsnatchers. There are 18 QBs better than Mariota on Dynosteve rosters, including the bench. The likelihood that Mariota outperforms anyone in the QB slot is minimal. KAI will likely give up points at the QB slot Every. Single. Week.
One other observation is how big a 1.2 ppw difference can make. Look at Jameis Winston to Eli Manning. That 1.2 ppw equals a 20 percentile point drop. If we added 20 percentile points to Winston’s score, he’d firmly be in the category of a Dynosteve starter. Looking purely at ppw, we don’t see much of a difference between KAI’s pisspoor top 3 QBs. Looking at %ile, we see that some are much better than others.
So does this mean Kai should trade to fix this gaping hole? Yes. Because any player under 67th percent isn’t just losing you games, they’re giving up unnecessary points that other positions on the roster will have to make up—which means this negates the added value of owning an elite player such as Julio Jones. Instead of using those extra points to push KAI to victory, KAI will simply be fighting to hold serve.
MASON RUDOLPH – WORTH THE HANDCUFF?
Mason Rudolph is an example of a player whose value we can’t assess from projections or historical performance alone. His value comes from being a handcuff to a starter in a premier offense, in this case the Pittsburgh Steelers. But is he a better choice than a Free Agent, either at QB or another roster spot?
To answer this, we need to compare Rudolph to three separate categories: the starter he’s handcuffing, Top Free Agents at his position, and Top Free Agents at other positions.
Now this is where a bit of opinion comes into it, but who would Mitch Kiper be without his strong, often misguided, arguably schizophrenic opinions?
Mason Rudolph v. Big Ben: Big Ben, as currently projected, is a 72nd percentile QB against the rest of Dynosteve. Meaning, Big Ben would lose most games in the QB category. He’d win some, and there’s always the chance he does better than CBS currently has him slotted (11th). However, handcuffing a player that is expected to lose you most of the battles at QB seems like poor logic, especially when you consider that Rudolph would, at his finest, most likely be a lesser version of Big Ben. Even in a longer-term dynasty sense, if Big Ben can only milk an 11th-best performance out of the Steelers offense, it seems like Rudolph’s roster spot is poorly spent.
But if this is true, would that spot be actually be better served by available free agents?
Mason Rudolph v. Best Available QB: No. Tannehill sucks. We can’t see how he ranks percentile-wise against the Dynosteve players, because he isn’t on those rosters, but we can see that he’s considerably worse than Big Ben, by nearly 10 percentage points against all the QBs in the NFL. I’d rather take the chance of Rudolph killing it with the Steelers than take the known value of Ryan Tannehill.
Mason Rudolph v. Best Available FA, Other Positions: This is where things get interesting. When looking at QB value versus other positions, we can be deceived by the sheer volume of points that even mediocre QBs put up. Percentile, especially versus position, helps cut through that mirage a bit, especially against positions such as Tight End, who put up such a low volume of points that we forget to pay attention to them.
Ed Dickson is a prime example. He is better than 95 percent of all Tight Ends, yet he’s not on a roster. Ben Roethlisberger is better than 93 percent of QBs, and he’s a Dynosteve starter. You may be asking… “What the eff?” (Mitch Kiper doesn’t curse on blogs). Or, you might be saying “Big deal, TEs are less important. He’s not worth it.”
That depends on your point of view. We start 1 QB, and we start 1 TE (potentially more via flex, but that’s unlikely). We can win and lose net points at either of these categories if we play someone significantly weaker than our opponent. These positions are similar. Winning fantasy is only partly about point volume; it’s also about the net points at every position.
Take a look at how Ed Dickson, as well as some other Free Agent TEs, compare to the Dyno TEs currently on rosters.
Ed Dickson would slot in as the 13th overall Tight End. He won’t win you games, but say there’s an injury to, I don’t know, Rob Gronkowski. That could happen right? Dickson would then be the 12th best TE. That’s a starter. And you could argue, basically just as valuable as Ben Roethlisberger. They are both roughly better than 73% of the Dynosteve players in their respective positions. They are both high enough to be started, but not good enough to make a winning difference. And if we subscribe to the idea that Mason Rudolph will get close to, but never actually surpass the value of a future HOF quarterback, who at this moment is just as valuable as Ed Dickson… Mason Rudolph is less valuable than Ed Dickson. Stockholm Syndrome should cut Rudolph for Dickson. (Also, what are you doing, HELL HAMM and BOX?!)
We could then apply this logic to the other top FAs in various positions, but I’m not going to.
There are a bunch of silly stats I’ll be inventing and throwing out over the course of the season to see what sticks, and I’ll keep doing some deep dives like this where I can, provided you guys enjoy them and find them enlightening. Give Mitch Kiper feedback! And someone pick up Ed Dickson! Until next time though, content yourself with…
DYNOSTEVE FUN FACTS—ROSTER CONSTRUCTION!
Most teams carry either 2 or 4 QBs. None have 3. JUNE has 1, and KAI idiotically has 5.
HELL has the most RBs (11), thanks to their most recent draft binge. The Fenoms have the fewest, at 6. Sure hope Kareem Hunt doesn’t go down!
LONG has the most WRs (12). SASWW has the fewest WRs (8). Despite this disparity, LONG has only one WR in the top 40% of rostered WRs (T.Y. Hilton at the 82nd %ile). SASWW has three WRs in the top 20%.
JUNE and ZIMBAB are tied for the least TEs, with 2. ONED has 5 (and only one of them is better than Ed Dickson!)
No one has more defense than KAI, with 4 D/STs on the roster. HELL and WALL seem to think they can only survive with 1. Better hope so, because streaming with only 6 available FA defenses might be rough (of course, roster cuts will alleviate this a bit).
There is one team with more than one kicker. Ironically, it is the team who has begged us to nerf kicker values. I give you: HAMMERFEST.
Who is the worst player currently on a Dynosteve roster? It’s a tie between Jeremy Maclin and Dez Bryant. Both are projected to do nothing. Who’s the worst player actually projected to get points? WR Chad Hansen—unsurprisingly, he’s a Longship Ludder.
