Hello, my name is Colin. Welcome to the 4th issue of The Wood Report, an eclectic smorgasbord of sports “news” and humor.
We are gonna jump right into it this week. Before we talk about the big events that happened and will be happening, I would like to use the main story this week to delve into something that is near and dear to my heart. It’s something I’m passionate about. Some might even call it a hill I will die on. It’s gonna require us to dig into some statistics. I hope you’re ready for some big DATA today. Put on your math pants because I did some deep research and made some graphs.
This Week’s Main Story
People who know me know I like to supplement my sports addiction… I mean, my sports fandom with a healthy dose of fantasy sports. I’ve been in fantasy leagues of all different types. It helps to add some rooting interest in almost any game being played. You can familiarize yourself with more players and understand their role on the team. It’s enjoyable to piece together a fake team and experience the highs and lows of a season full of euphoric victory and heartbreaking loss that you orchestrated.
Personally, and for many fans, fantasy football is the pinnacle of fantasy sports. The structure of football and the limited number of games played adds a heightened sense of urgency each week, especially with most games taking place within a 10 hour span. Fantasy football is wildly popular, leading it to have countless variations in league setups and rules. And I love every single bit of it.
Except for one.
Kickers should be removed from every league.
I know what you’re thinking. “Kickers score actual points in football games. How could you not include them when building a football team?” Easily! Fantasy football already takes countless liberties with roster construction, why should we feel beholden to keep dragging this relic with us when creating our own source of entertainment? Tradition be damned, I am trying to show you the light of a better version of fantasy football that ignores the guys that only play 5 snaps a game.
There are many problems with kickers that make them unsuitable for a fun fantasy experience. The most glaring problem is rooted in the fundamental part of any fantasy sport. Predicting success. It’s the cornerstone upon which analysts like Matthew Berry built an empire. You have to be able to choose who you think will score the most points for your team. That’s it, that’s the game.
But kickers don’t allow you to reliably set yourself up for wins. Their success is essentially random, both week-to-week and over a full season. It’s based on factors almost entirely out of their own hands. Even being able to identify a highly talented kicker guarantees you nothing. The greatest fantasy athletes are able to produce regardless of circumstance. Kickers do not give you that.
This is not just me talking crap either. Experts in the field of fantasy football have no ability to differentiate a kicker’s success. Using the 2020 season, here is almost every NFL kicker’s fantasy production versus their pre-draft ranking.
This looks pretty bad. I said almost every kicker because the 10th best kicker in fantasy this year, Cairo Santos, wasn’t even ranked prior to the season, so he doesn’t appear on the graph (along with many others). In particular, you’ll notice that the top 5 kickers at the end of the season were nowhere near the top of the rankings before the season.
For a quick and dirty test to determine if there is any correlation at all in this dataset, I used a trendline and R-squared values.
That R-squared value of 0.069 (nice) is atrocious. If you are unsure what that means, the 5 second lesson is that an R-squared of 1 is a perfect correlation, and an R-squared of 0 is no correlation. The correlation here barely exists, if it does at all.
This is a disaster. We are looking at a complete inability for even the “experts” to predict kickers.
Okay, so we can’t trust the rankings. What else are people looking for when choosing a kicker? A popular theory is that high powered offenses are the way to go. Makes sense. Kickers cannot move the ball themselves, they have to rely on 11 other players to put them in position to score points. A team that can move the ball easily will generally be in field goal range more often for the kicker to attempt to score points. Lets look at points from the kicker position for every offense in the NFL.
*All kickers for a team have been combined. Teams in orange play their home games indoors.
This tells us… really nothing. High yardage teams can produce a great kicker like outdoor kicker Tyler Bass of the Bills, or indoor catastrophe Dan Bailey of the Vikings. What about points? Kickers directly increase a team’s overall points scored, so high scoring offenses should have productive kickers.
This gives us our best correlation yet! But something feels off, doesn’t it? Let’s just zoom in on the top right of the graph. The best offenses with the best kickers.
From middle of the pack and up, the better an offense does, the worse the kicker. In fact, the best offense in the league, the Green Bay Packers, had their kicker only ATTEMPT 16 field goals all season. The Atlanta Falcons, who scored exactly league average in points, had the best kicker in fantasy.
Now, before this email gets too long and goes further off the rails (definitely too late for that), I will say that this same data generally holds up for past seasons as well. I have done the research, trust me.
What if this data doesn’t convince you? Can it at least help you select the right kicker next year? I guess the best strategy I can come up with is to look for a player who kicks indoors, plays for a very average offense, and avoid the Eagles. Is that really enough to warrant a significant piece of your imaginary squad? It shouldn’t be.
Don’t get me wrong. I love kickers as real football players. Those beautiful, talented leg swingers deserve all the respect in the world for handling some of the most intense pressure of any athlete ever. Unfortunately, they are not good for fantasy. Deep down, we all already know they don’t matter. The experts know they don’t matter. That’s why most don’t even take the time to rank more than 20 kickers before the season, but we get 36 quarterbacks ranked. You’ll never hear a podcast discussing the best kicker values of the week.
And you know they don’t matter. That’s why kickers are the last players drafted in every draft in the world. It’s why you laugh at the guy who took one in Round 10. It’s why you don’t think about them for more than 10 seconds during the week until they have a bye that screws up your bench. No one is grinding tape of kickers unless they are an actual NFL scout.
Kickers are a vestigial limb from a long-dead era of early fantasy sports. They are amazing athletes and a requirement for any great NFL team. But they are the worst part of fantasy football and every league should get rid of the position. It would be ten thousand times more fun to replace it with an extra flex spot.
#BanKickers
Gold Medal – Chloe Kim
My gold medal this week goes to snowboarder Chloe Kim for winning an actual gold medal this week! I’m sure she is even more excited about this second one.
Chloe Kim has become must watch TV since she started competing in the X Games at the age of 14. She made a name for herself by becoming the first woman to land back-to-back 1080 spins in a snowboarding competition and scoring a perfect 100, the second rider ever to do so, after Shaun White. Later, she absolutely dominated at the 2018 Olympics in one of the best runs ever.
After taking last year off from events, Kim returned for the 2021 Aspen X Games. She picked up right where she left off, winning her 5th gold in the halfpipe competition, one behind record holder Kelly Clark.
The most insane part of this win, is that Kim was just messing around.
“I really was not expecting to podium,” Kim, who went 22 months between contests, said on ESPN. “Really just wanted to go into this season with a new mindset, have fun and try new runs.”
In the run that put her in first place, Kim landed a frontside 1080, less than 10 minutes after falling on her first big trick attempt.
“Low key popped some ribs out on the first slam,” was posted on Kim’s Instagram between runs. “They do everything but stay in place.”
Chloe Kim is currently untouchable in the halfpipe.
Villain of the Week – NBA All-Star Game
At the beginning of the season, the NBA had said they would forgo the normal All-Star game for the 2021 season, which was slated to be hosted in Indianapolis. This seemed like a reasonable idea considering the ongoing pandemic and restrictions in place just to hold the season in the first place.
On Thursday, it was announced that the league and the Player’s Association had reached an agreement to hold an All-Star Game on March 7th in Atlanta. Although this came with the approval of the Player’s Association, the players themselves have been outspoken about not wanting the game this year.
While some might not take the opinion of a player like Fox very seriously, a much louder and more influential voice chimed in as well.
"I have zero energy and zero excitement about an All-Star Game this year," James said after the Los Angeles Lakers' 114-93 win over the Denver Nuggets on Thursday. "I don't even understand why we're having an All-Star Game."
Lebron called the idea a “slap in the face” and that he would “be there physically, not mentally.” He cited many reasons for opposing the game, including the pandemic, the site of the game, and the lack of a significant offseason.
No doubt Lebron speaking out against the game will encourage other players to let their opinions be heard, and could cause a big uproar from other likely All-Stars. Joel Embiid has already said he would consider skipping if selected.
This is all setting up to be a big fight between the league and the players, and the league already looks like the bad guys.
What to Watch this Week
Tomorrow is the BIG GAME. Yes, in case you didn’t realize, Super Bowl LV takes place on Sunday, matching up the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Important news, I know. If this is the first you are hearing of it, I honestly don’t know what to say, but I’m glad I could be that source for you. Some fun stuff to watch for:
With a TD reception, Gronk can break a tie and become the sole holder of 2nd place in Super Bowl receiving touchdowns, behind only Jerry Rice (with 8!). With 5, he could tie Jerry Rice for 1st (less likely to happen, but I guess possible). Kelce has 1 TD, so he has a chance to climb this list as well.
As for passing TDs, of course Touchdown Tom has the all-time lead at 18. For Mahomes, currently at 2 from last year, he could jump into the top 10 with just 2 more in 2020.
Through some weird scheduling mishap, they seem to have scheduled a concert on the same day as the Super Bowl, in the same stadium no less! Bad jokes aside, I am very excited for the halftime show. The Weeknd is primed to showcase his talent and vision. He has reportedly spent $7 million of his own money to ensure the production and quality of the show is up to his standard.
“We’re also using the field as well, but we wanted to do something we’ve never done before, so we built the stage in the stadium.”
Betting Corner
Free agents Colorado signs in the next 3 years? O/U 0.5 - The GM of the Colorado Rockies is actively trying to keep his team from winning and has exactly zero self-awareness about it. The quotes from both the GM and the owner contain this weird defeatist mentality that should never be present in someone who is pursuing a championship at the highest level of the sport.
"We know that we're not going to ever get out there and go for Gerrit Cole or some of the really top (level) free agents ... we're in a grouping, a mid-market team where we just can't take that risk." - Dick Monfort
Has he seen what San Diego has done this year? Why run a team this way? Why be an owner that admits he can't sign an elite FA? Why employ a GM who PAYS $50MM for the privilege of giving away the best player the franchise has ever had? They are somehow operating under the model of “We can only rely on home grown talents, but if those talents are too good, we have to trade them.” Insanity.
Numbers
2 - Number of points this dunk is worth, which seems low considering he also murdered a college student with it and then flexed over the body.
9 - Number of games in which Bruins forward David Pastrnak has scored a hat trick. It’s a wild number considering he has only play 393 games in total. The dude can just score. Its a rate of 2.3%, which is about the same as Ovechkin, one of the greatest scorers in the NHL. Fun fact: Wayne Gretzky had 50 career hat tricks, at 3.4%.
54 - Number of points scored by Fredderick Edmund VanVleet on February 2nd, 2021. It was a career high for him, as well as a franchise record for the Toronto Raptors. Fred VanVleet is the most underrated player in basketball and I attribute that fact entirely to his name. His name is not cool enough for people to want to talk about. But I will talk about Fred VanVleet because he deserves it.
INF - Number… well not really a number. But it is the theoretical value that can be attributed to Patrick Mahomes’ college pitching career. While Mahomes eventually transformed into the world-destroying quarterback we are prepared to watch play a 2nd straight Super Bowl, he also played some baseball at Texas Tech. He appeared in 1 game. In that game, he faced 3 batters. He walked two and hit a 3rd, and failed to record an out, giving him an ERA of infinity. Pat also had a batting average of .000, which I think led him to the decision to just be the best at something else.
Homer Bias Restricted Area
This may not concern any of “my teams” per se, but it concerns Klay Thompson, who I unabashedly love. He is my favorite player and any take I have about him can definitely be considered “homer area.” Here is Klay, as a booth analyst, casually analyzing Rodney McGruder. Never change Klay.
End Of Restricted Area
That’s all for this week. Full disclosure, I had to trim about 2/3rds of my original draft of the Main Story. Again, hill I’m willing to die on. If you disagree, PLEASE @ me. I dare you. I have plenty left to say.
Thanks for reading, don’t forget to sub, and share with your fantasy obsessed friend.
Keep Sports Fun.
Colin
Twitter - @ColinRingwood12
The Buzzer Beater
Just some very normal off-season training for Randy.
Can you please add a new section to your report call OnlyCharts? I'll pay for a premium sub.
Seeing the end reminds me of a show that existed where pro athletes went 1v1 vs animals to see who was better. #BanKickers