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Kipreview: Week Five

Hi all. As Mitch Kiper navigates this first year in the Dynosteve media circles, he is slowly but surely finding his way. Part of that internal discovery involves meditating to the mantra, “Bless Em.” It also involves the self-realization that writing a data-driven article prior to Thursday Night Football is an unsustainable weekly effort. So, welcome to the new air date for the Kipreview. New time slot, same questionable analysis you love.

This week, before I get started, I want to make a special shout out to four players. In the fantasy world, these players are largely useless. But because I have to input stats from literally every player in the CBS database, running “Text to Columns” to separate first and last, there are some players who cause trouble with longer names than the average, so each week I’m stuck manually editing their names. These players have become special to me. While they may not play meaningful downs in the NFL, they certainly are the buttfumbles of Mitch Kiper’s heart. So this week, Mitch Kiper is handing his annual “Your Surnames Suck” awards to: Equanimeous St. Brown, James Vander Laan, DeAngelo Henderson Sr., and Robert Griffin III. Congratulations. My excel spreadsheet hates you.

These awards are not the only a la carte special Mitch Kiper will be serving this week. At the request of statistic-guru peer Ben Buccigross, we will be looking at the Bergen Boxtables QB situation, and trying to assess once and for all who should claim the Blue Throne of Bergen.

NOTABLE TRANSACTION:

Honorable mention goes to… Greater Zimbabwe Victoria Falls – Packers D/ST

This was the only move in the league that had any impact this week. Prior to week 4, the Falls picked up the Packers and dropped Jordan Matthews. The Packers immediately became the Falls D/ST #1, boosting their C-FPG by 2, and giving them a top 10% defense. Goose’s previous D/ST #1, the Panthers, are barely better than half the currently rostered Defenses.

Also, it’s worth noting that the Packers put up 28 points, pushing the Falls over the edge of a very high scoring battle with the Yeshivas. That pickup made the difference. And meanwhile, the Jaguars languish in the 81st percentile of rostered D/STs, putting up an average of 9 ppg. Mitch Kiper still has hope, but right now he is willing to admit he may have made a mistake.

Speaking of Mistakes…

And since this league is apparently about being petty (looking at you, Scenario Dilloatmeal), a very special almost Dishonorable Mention… That Damn Michael Thomas trade.

Thatcher Hammerfest mentioned this past week that Adam Thielen fared just as well as dearly departed WR Michael Thomas. This logic is irrelevant. The Hammerfest would not have come even close to losing to the Longships had Thomas and Thielen been on the roster. Last week, even though Thomas scored basically even with Rob Gronkowski, the prize the Hammerfest supposedly pillaged from the Syndrome, the Hammerfest would have had a clearer win had they not made the trade. Replace Gronk with Burton, and Sanders with Thomas, and the Hammerfest not only win that matchup more convincingly, they also win one and possibly two more matchups in prior weeks.

Mitch Kiper has a grading system that he usually keeps to himself to grade players. It’s based on a formula similar to how he calculates the overall league rankings, giving different positions variable weightings based on the percentage of total points the position contributes to a weekly score, as well as the scarcity of quality players at that position. Here is how Michael Thomas and Rob Gronkowski compare, along with some other players for reference:

While Rob Gronkowski scores more than Kenyan Drake, he is nowhere near as valuable, considering his composite output is basically that of a mid-to-low tier receiver. Note how the Hammerfest traded away a player who, by this system, is worth twice as much as Rob Gronkowski. If you argue the system, that’s cool too—it’s vague and arbitrary from your point of view. What you can’t argue is the ridiculous disparity in weekly FPG, and the fact that Rob Gronkowski is only better than 85% of the rostered TEs in the league, and Michael Thomas is better than every single WR in all of Dynosteve. Less than two percent of the NFL ranks higher than him.

Also, don’t look now, but…

Now it stands to reason that Gronk will do better now that the offense is opening up thanks to new addition Josh Gordon and new-old addition Julian Edelman. That said, from Mitch Kiper’s perspective, argue it however you want, this is still a bad trade. Hammerfest could have kept Michael Thomas and basically had the same production at TE. Adam Thielen to Michael Thomas is not the comparison you need to make. It’s Michael Thomas taking up one spot v. Gronk + Sanders taking up two, and the opportunity cost lost by making this trade.

SPECIAL FEATURE: BEN’S QBs

Last week, Bergen Ben Buccigross, sometimes referred to as the Better Benjamin Bureau or Best Bud Ben, came to Mitch Kiper with a request. Could he please analyze his QB situation and help him improve his decision making process? Being the helpful pal that he is, Mitch Kiper said yes, especially since he made scurrilous claims about the Boxtables QB situation in weeks prior.

Ideally, Mitch Kiper wanted to take the weekly C-PPG of each player and calculate a moving average, trying to track the trendlines of the two players Composite PPG over time. Unfortunately, Mitch Kiper has only been tracking his proprietary data for four weeks of this season. That would not be enough.

So, he took the pure FPPG data from both Brees and Watson, threw them onto a chart, and calculated a 4-game moving average to look at the trends of each player, and try to predict where their scores should range. Obviously, Watson’s 2017 injury puts a bit of a question mark on the process, but Mitch Kiper thinks this is one of the more reliable ways to use such a limited data set in such limited time (Mitch Kiper doesn’t like to spend more than an hour per week on these articles).

While Mitch Kiper would have loved to claim that Brees was the obvious choice here, the data seems to indicate that the picture isn’t so clear. Bergen’s weekly flummoxing is understandable. Both QBs have been trading weekly high scores. Right now, Brees is averaging higher than Watson. Yet based on historical data, we can probably expect a regression towards the 15-20 fppg range, which is where he sat all of last season. If we were to eliminate the gaping hole in Watson’s games, and measure them back to back (which Mitch Kiper could do, but once again, lazy), his moving average would be above that of Brees. Even now, Watson’s trendline looks primed to cross over Drew Bree’s trendline.

So who does Mitch Kiper recommend? Deshaun Watson. There are of course mitigating factors: Brees has a killer offense, arguably better than that of 2017. Watson’s WRs tend to get injured, and it’s possible that he could regress as defenses get more tape on him. But for now, Watson looks to be on the uptrend back to 2017 levels, while history says that Brees will likely calm down. Hope this helps, Mr. Buccigross. You sure are a Better Benjamin.

TOP FREE AGENTS:

Because I’ve done some longer features this week, I’m skipping free agency. You can see them on the fantasy website. There’s not much I can offer here that you can’t get yourself.

TAXI WATCH:

Here is the taxi squad as it currently stands, followed by relevant updates and changes:

- Nyheim Hines is still a stud. He’s better than over 75% of running backs currently on Dynosteve Rosters. Considering 75%+ is usually good enough to put you on a starting roster, the fact that he’s still on a Taxi squad is absurd. The fact that Goose can afford to keep him there is depressing.

- Most of the other taxi players have come back down to earth. Mark Andrews and Antonio Callaway might become intriguing once injuries and byes start to screw a couple teams, but otherwise these players are right where they should be.

LEAGUE OVERVIEW:

Finally, the league overview. Here’s how it looked before Tuesday’s waivers, and then after waivers. Both of these reflect the Week 4 stats.

- The swap at #1 and #2 comes from the Falls signing the Packers prior to the Week 04 games. Because it was a late-in-the-week move, it hadn’t factored in yet. This is another reason I’m moving to Saturdays. Also, props to Goose for making a small move with a seemingly decent impact.  

- Gakusei Kai suffers a massive drop due to the loss of FitzMagic.

- The Fenoms are surprisingly high up there. We’ll see if the Cheefs can continue their run, or if cold weather will slow them down.

- Now that we’re starting to hit multiple bye weeks, watch out for the barebones benches of Gakuesei Kai and Stockholm Syndrome. Their inept depth will heavily contribute towards their likely path to the toilet this year.

[mitchkiper-blog]

KIPREVIEW: Week 04

THE KIPREVIEW: WEEK FOUR

 Greetings gents. Mitch Kiper here, with another visual delight for your nerd eyeballs to scan. This week won’t carry the controversy of Week Three, but the Kipe won’t let that stop him from providing fun and questionably valuable metrics as we head in to the fourth week of fantasy. It’s hard to believe we’re almost a quarter of the way through the season. Not only that, we’re officially entering bye weeks! Ç'est Magnifique! That’s right—Mitch Kiper speaks French.

NOTABLE TRANSACTION:

Gakusei Kai Nickelsnatchers – Trade SASWW for Buck Allen: Was it a great long term dynasty trade? Probably not. However, that trade saved the Nickelsnatchers week 3, and probably benefitted the league as a whole. Buck Allen was the key contributor to the Nickelsnatcher upset of the Brooklyn Yeshivas. Without him, KAI would have played Marcus Murphy (if you’re asking “who?!”, you’re right) and lost by just a few points.

According to KiperMetrics, Allen also adds to the overall strength of the Nickelsnatchers team. Adding Allen shifted the Nickelsnatchers from 11th to 10th overall, and more importantly closer in score to the middle tier than the bottom (see league overview for this). Here is what the Nickelsnatchers team looks like right now.

Honorable mentions go to…

Gakusei Kai Nickelsnatchers – Week 03 Tyler Eifert trade: For the simple fact that the moment they traded him away, he posted up a double digit scoring game. Eifert needs one more for the Nickelsnatchers to level up and earn at least one of the Boxtable’s 2nd round picks.

Dishonorable mention goes to…

Bergen Boxtables – Starting Deshaun Watson AGAIN: While not a transaction, per se, this needs to be noted. Bergen has a good team. Mitch Kiper stands by this statement, as well as his pre-season rankings. Alas, a good team means nothing if you’re starting the absolute wrong player. Watch Deshaun Watson for five minutes and you see a quarterback going through a sophomore slump. Teams have scouting on him now, and know how to make him struggle with his progressions. Here is a comparison between the Boxtables’ two best QBs:

Ben has started Watson for three straight weeks. For three straight weeks, Drew Brees—a perennially good fantasy QB, as proven by the fact that he is #1 all time among all NFL players in composite rating—has outperformed Watson. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

And for once, a neutral mention goes to…

Brooklyn Yeshivas & Bergen Boxtables – Ito Smith to BOX, John Brown to YESH: There’s no arguing that this trade is mutually beneficial. The Yeshivas get a young promising WR to replace a lagging Brandon Marshall as their WR3, and Ben Buccigross gets a promising young Falcon RB who is primed to possibly take a bigger role next year once Tevin Coleman is gone. Yet as far as the KiperRatings go, this move does not make much of a dent in their overall roster composition.

The Yeshivas gain slightly by adding Brown, at least according to C-PPG, which is a more long term measure. John Brown carries a 10.62 c-ppg, while Brandon Marshall is at 9.86. For how far ahead of the pack the Yeshivas are, this does not make enough of a dent to be considered anything more than a minor move. Perhaps it will pay off come playoff time, but for now it makes next to no difference in his overall ranking. Here’s how the Yeshivas looked before and after this trade:

TOP FREE AGENTS:

It’s a sad, lonely world in free agency. But if you want to brave it, here are the top free agents according to cppg, and the rostered players closest to them in the ranks:

Notable tidbits:

- People are hanging on to kickers that are well below the leaders in the league. In particular, Jason Myers should be signed by someone, as he’s currently in the top 10% of all kickers currently in the NFL according to C-PPG. If you look at the current K rankings by FPG, the top 5 are taken and then there’s a wide gap before we hit other owned players. Sure, the difference is miniscule, but every point counts.

- According to C-PPG, Deshaun Watson is not far off from Joe Flacco and Andrew Luck. This should be a signal to the owners who insist on playing these QBs in lieu of alternatives (or, owners who insist on holding even worse QBs—cough cough Dak Prescott—in lieu of Flacco).

- D/ST pickings are not bad. As this article was written, HAMM dropped the Jets for the Dolphins. That means there is one D/ST available that is still better than 80% of the D/STs currently on Dynosteve rosters. For those who have been paying attention the last few weeks, 75th percentile seems to be the mark you want to stay above to win points in positional battles.

- RB free agents are virtually non-existent. Alfred Blue is the best option available, and he puts up fewer points than fellow FA WR Terrelle Pryor. Terrelle Pryor.

- Same goes for TEs. But hey, if anyone wants someone who puts up points, Garrett Celek is there.

- There are certain players that, according to C-PPG, are due for a regression: Dolphins WRs Jakeem GGrant and Albert Wilson are the main suspects. To a lesser extent, Chris Godwin and Keelan Cole are outperforming their history. On the flip side, Mitch Kiper expects to see slightly more from Duke Johnson and Tavon Austin.

TAXI WATCH:

Here is the taxi squad as it currently stands, followed by relevant updates and changes:

- Dante Pettis: With Garoppolo out for the season, Pettis has seemingly gotten comfy in his taxi seat. He is currently in the lower half of Dyno WRs as far as points scored goes. There’s no reason to bring him up.  Antonio Callaway is ranked similar to Pettis, and for now is in the same boat.

- Nyheim Hines: Hines remains our best taxi player, and yet due to the strength of the Falls, his promotion seems far off. He’s performing better than 60% of the Dynosteve RBs. This would qualify him as a worthwhile sub on most squads. The fact that the Falls can afford to keep Hines off the active roster is a slap in the face to us all.  

- Mark Andrews: A newbie to the taxi watch, Mark Andrews is currently performing better than 60+% of the TEs on Dynosteve rosters. Considering how many teams have been scrounging for TE talent, Andrews is a valuable stash, and possible trade bait.

- Ito Smith: The trade of Ito Smith is, I believe, our first ever taxi-squad only trade. Because the Boxtables had to drop Dalton Schultz to make room for Ito, the total taxi pool has dropped by one player this week.

LEAGUE OVERVIEW:

Finally, the league overview.

- ZIMBAB and YESH remain in a league of their own, while the Fenoms amazingly lead the pack for the last two spots in the championship tier.

- Without Lev Bell to buoy them, the Juneboshers have fallen to merely above average. They’re in the thick of things, barely separated in score from WALL and BOX.

- Mitch Kiper still predicts that BOX will rise and ONED will fall in the standings by season end, mainly due to bench strength and lack thereof, respectively. He believes that the coming bye weeks, not to mention injuries, will more directly hurt the Syndrome, while the Boxtables have enough bench strength to weather the storm. This is also why he predicts KAI to suck eventually. There’s very little depth in the Gakusei Kai household.

And that’s it! Tune in next week—maybe I’ll find more controversy to dig up. We can only hope!

[mitchkiper-blog]

The Friendzone Fenoms: And How Mitch Kiper Learned to Admit a Mistake

The following article was written weeks ago, in a semi-delirious state. Mitch Kiper has since recovered, and after a long journey of self-reflection, decided to edit this to the best of his ability and publish “as is.”:

Greetings from Midway airport in Chicago, where Mitch Kiper has been upset at an astronomical level by the removal of Potbelly’s, which has been replaced by a shop called “Home Run Pizza,” a White Sox themed bar that doesn’t even serve Giordano’s or Gino’s or anything not resembling cardboard covered in candle wax. For those who are interested, Mitch Kiper had a sad hot dog. Chicago Midway is officially the worst airport in the Greater Chicago Area.

Speaking of things that were at one point officially the worst, welcome to the preseason analysis for everyone’s favorite Friendzone Fenoms!

2017 – High Scoring, but Keeping Things Friendly

The Fenoms had one of the more interesting seasons last year, scoring 4th overall in total points, but placing 9th overall in the standings. For those who are paying attention (mainly Thatcher, Will and Ben, because Mitch Kiper doesn’t trust that anyone else actually reads this), the Fenoms scored enough where on points alone they should be in the winners bracket, but ended up in the toilet bowl instead. Even though the Fenoms scored enough to be a title contender, they kept things friendly and decided “Nah, let other people have the glory. We’ll just chill and discuss our dreams on the beach.” 

How did this happen? Or, as Will once said in a shitty student film, “What’s the dealio, Emilio?” Well let’s take a look.

Our First Clue: Expected Scores vs. Actual

What you’re looking at above is a comparison of Actual Standings to the Expected Points for a team in that slot. (This was calculated by finding the difference between the highest and lowest weekly averages in the league, and dividing into 12 equally distributed “Expected Weekly Scores”)

Right away, you can see that the biggest overall disparities belonged to the Yeshivas, who seemingly overperformed their weekly average. A 2nd place team, according to Mitch Kiper’s Expected Weekly Score™, should score in the range of 110.48 per week. YESH scored 99.01 per week.

We see the opposite picture when we look at the Fenoms. A 9th place team should be around the 90 point mark, if life were fair and Chicago Midway still had Potbelly’s. But they don’t, and the Fenoms had to fight their way out of a toilet while the likes of Gakusei Kai managed to play in the Midwest Living Bowl.

Yet as we all know, Total Points aren’t the whole story. And as we all remember from the most important of tests—the eye test—the Fenoms were not as strong a team as their total points indicated, mainly due to their reliance on the…

Apologies, Mitch Kiper’s resident artist thought I said to make a logo on Adobe Pumpkinshop. Who the hell hears it as Pumpkinshop?

When the Cheefs went off, so did the Fenoms. When they didn’t, the Fenoms tanked. The questions for us are: 1). can we demonstrate this through stats, and 2). Do our Mitch Kiper Roster Ratings™® have any metrics that could better predict the standings, even more than total points or points projections? Answers: Yes, and Maybe! (See what I did there? It’s called dangling a hook to keep you reading.)

Weekly Deviation: Demonstrating Jordan’s Wild Swings

Not to be confused with his wild swinging; that crazy guy.

I want to put this up top: part of this is an exercise to show objectively the limits of grading a team by Total Points. Obviously, points are important—they are how you win. But the strength of a team should and cannot be measured by Total Points alone. If they could, Neil would be winning a lot more (Sorry Neil.)

To hammer the point home with a simple example, look at the following two hypothetical teams after a hypothetical Week 3.

Team A: Averages 89 points per week.

Team B: Averages 100 points per week

Right away, you’d assume Team B was better. But then we look closer…

Team A: Scored 66, 100, 100 in the first three weeks. (+/- 34 max score v. min)

Team B: Scored 150, 75, 75 in the first three weeks.  (+/-75 max score v. min)

Total points, and the weekly averages that we derive from them, are not the whole picture. They are a piece of the puzzle. Another important piece is weekly deviation (hat tip to the one and only FLEAFLICKER for calculating this over the years in my other league, and inspiring me to try it out in Dynosteve).

So how do the Fenoms Fare when it comes to deviation? Here’s how they stack up against the rest of Dynosteve 2017:

 Well shit. As we can see from the chart above, a low standard deviation is in fact NOT a pre-cursor to success, nor for failure. The results are pretty widespread. There’s really no correlation at all between raw standard deviation and the success of a team. Some successful teams have wild swings, and vice versa. All this really teaches us is that while we thought the Fenoms were a boom-or-bust team, they had one of the lowest deviation rates in the league. Go figure.

So what’s the story here?

Based on weeks 10 and 11, it looks like a simple diagnosis of “They got fucked,” something Fenoms owner Dr. Rees is used to saying, although usually it involves an inanimate object of some kind, usually in tandem with an anus and an X-ray. He’s got a weird job.

2018 Outlook: Are the Fenoms for Real, or was Last Year a Fenomenal Fluke?

Considering I couldn’t even explain why the Fenoms did so poorly last year other than blind bad luck, there’s very little I can do to predict the Fenom’s 2018 performance.  Yet even though my deviation theory was debunked (something that happens to Mitch Kiper from time to time), I’m Mitch Kiper, so I’m going to plow ahead with a prediction anyway, with all the unearned confidence of my namesake.

This is my prediction for the league standings, based on a complicated predictive score that mixes Projected PPW with 3 Year Average PPW, and the %ile ranks of each team’s starters and bench. Don’t ask how or why I think this will work. I’m not sure it will, but I’m going to blindly stick to my guns, and use it to figure out where I think the Fenoms will land.

What’s actually interesting is that the Fenoms potentially have the best starters in the entire league (highest %ile rank of Dynosteve), yet a middling bench (7th). Yet even with the highest percentile rank of starters, his composite points prediction is low. This would imply that his top-tier players are in low scoring positions.

On a related note, the Juneboshers have a weirdly low %ile for their starters, yet a very high composite PPW prediction. So how is it that the Fenoms have the highest average starter %ile, yet a low PPW prediction, and the Juneboshers have a lower starter %ile than half the league, but are predicted to score more points than all but Goose?

… Because Mitch Kiper has a flaw in his system©.

No, it’s not lactose—well, not at the moment. It’s that he’s ranking all positions equally when it comes to %ile rank, i.e., top tier %ile TEs are given equal weight to top tier %ile RBs and WRs. To be fair, this is part of his thesis: a 2 point differential in a TE battle is just as important as a 2 point differential. What is not being accounted for at the moment, however, is the massive disparity that can pop up in the RB and WR categories. The difference between a 95th percentile RB and an 80th percentile RB is much more pronounced than the difference between a 95th and 80th percentile TE. Case in point:

This is a flaw Mitch Kiper will have to adjust, so he can better assess team strength and his future predictions. For now, though, we’ll work with the numbers we’ve got. And those numbers say… *sigh, I hate typing these words*… the Fenoms aren’t half bad, and will likely land in the middle of the pack.

… With one caveat!

The Fenom’s lack of bench strength seems to imply that a single injury will derail them. Aka, if Tyreek Hill or Kareem Hunt goes down, so do the phenoms.  ZIMBAB or YESH do not have this problem, because they back up their great starters with phenomenal benches. Also worth noting: Neil. Poor guy really never gets a break.

So that’s it for this long awaited section of Mitch Kiper. Tune in next week. Hopefully he’ll get his act together and write a new article quickly. The Longships await.

[mitchkiper-blog]

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.

THE STAT CATEGORIES

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:

AARON RODGERS

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.

CONCLUSION

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.