I hate kickers in fanatsy football. am i the only one?

[FantasyBandit]

I have Janikowski in most of my leagues so I enjoy having Kickers when I see him come out for a 56 yarder and drill it with ease. Its practically scoring a TD as a 56 yarder is 5.6 points in my leagues. (32 is 3.2 points, 44 is 4.4 points...etc.)

[Steelersfan]

Sebastian Janikowski tied an NFL record Sunday with three field goals of 50 yards or more in the same game.
Janikowski connected from 54, 55, 50 and 42 yards out for a monster fantasy day. He now has five field goals of 50-plus yards this season. SeaBass' previous career-high is six. Rotoworld

I have a 2012 1st from a team that's currently 0-5... Naa, can't do it...

[RobertBobson]

the point of me not liking kickers is it's no fun to root for. I hate kicking in general, and I think they should eliminate the kick option of the extra point, and it would make football alot more fun. Either just make touchdowns worth 7 points, or always make you run a play for the extra point, but kicking for an extra point, it makes no sense. I don't like rooting for kickers to miss, or watching a game, and hoping the team DOESN'T score a touchdown, so I can get a field goal.. it's just crappy. I like rooting for touch downs and position players.

I think its plenty fun to root for kickers and punters...otherwise field position wouldnt matter.

Well, I'm talking about for fantasy purposes and punters really aren't a fantasy position, but usually I'm rooting against a coach using a punter at all, because most decisions teams make to punts are bad ones. Punts between the 40's are terrible calls from most down distances. It's one of the things I love about Belicheck is he correctly goes for it on 4th down a great deal of the time.

[Water Buffalo]

there's more strategy than you think in choosing kickers. i like them on a good offense, but not that good. the more they stall in the red zone the better. i also like it better if they are accurate. my kickers are usually what makes me beat the other team. along with my defense.

I think you think there's more strategy in choosing kickers than there actually is. I maintain that it's one giant unpredictable crapshoot. I propose we play a little game to hopefully prove my point. It could blow up in my face, but I'm willing to take that chance.

I have randomly picked 6 kickers not named Sebastian Janikowski. I used random.org to pick numbers from 2-32, and assigned those numbers to the kicker and his overall scoring rank this year. Those kickers are, in the order they were picked:

Dan Bailey (1)
Dan Carpenter (2)
David Akers (3)
Robbie Gould (4)
Matt Bryant (5)
Graham Gano (6)

I will then assign each of these players a number, 1-6, the number of sides on a 6 sided die. That's the number in parentheses behind the player's name. Each week, I will roll the die as many times as it takes to randomly generate an order of "best" to "worst". That's the order that random chance will select for how the kickers will finish that particular week.

If you think you can beat random chance, pick the order that YOU think they will finish in that same week. I hypothesize that if enough people tried it, on average, random chance would perform no better or worse than the humans trying to guess, myself most definitely included.

[Misfit74]

I have one league that doesn't use a K spot. It still seems weird - but I like it. I have a 2nd league that the scoring for Kickers is reduced quite a bit, as well. Kickers should not make or break a weekly H2H matchup...but they often do.

[standard_variance]

there's more strategy than you think in choosing kickers. i like them on a good offense, but not that good. the more they stall in the red zone the better. i also like it better if they are accurate. my kickers are usually what makes me beat the other team. along with my defense.

I think you think there's more strategy in choosing kickers than there actually is. I maintain that it's one giant unpredictable crapshoot. I propose we play a little game to hopefully prove my point. It could blow up in my face, but I'm willing to take that chance.

I have randomly picked 6 kickers not named Sebastian Janikowski. I used random.org to pick numbers from 2-32, and assigned those numbers to the kicker and his overall scoring rank this year. Those kickers are, in the order they were picked:

Dan Bailey (1)
Dan Carpenter (2)
David Akers (3)
Robbie Gould (4)
Matt Bryant (5)
Graham Gano (6)

I will then assign each of these players a number, 1-6, the number of sides on a 6 sided die. That's the number in parentheses behind the player's name. Each week, I will roll the die as many times as it takes to randomly generate an order of "best" to "worst". That's the order that random chance will select for how the kickers will finish that particular week.

If you think you can beat random chance, pick the order that YOU think they will finish in that same week. I hypothesize that if enough people tried it, on average, random chance would perform no better or worse than the humans trying to guess, myself most definitely included.

But thats stupid because you can apply the same logic about anybody outside of the top 30-50 coming into the season....so are you then proposing that fantasy leagues should just not have flex spots as well since they arent as reliable or predictable as you would like them to be? Why not just be in an 8-10 team PPR league where you only start 1 QB,RB, WR and TE? Because ultimately that is what your point is boiling down too.

[standard_variance]

I have one league that doesn't use a K spot. It still seems weird - but I like it. I have a 2nd league that the scoring for Kickers is reduced quite a bit, as well. Kickers should not make or break a weekly H2H matchup...but they often do.

In theory no ONE PLAYER should make or break a weekly H2H matchup. So whats the difference between Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady putting up a 50 spot and a kicker putting up a 20 spot? The only difference is our expectations for each position.....and the level of investment we put into building each position. Many people invest in everything BUT a kicker, many people expect next to NOTHING from kickers....so much that when they actually prove to be a difference maker, or have value, people throw a fuss about it.....you have a team full of 10-15 guys....and you vilify the kicker? C'mon man. Man up. The chances of you picking the right player at flex every week is just as slim, and as much of a crapshoot (especially in deep leagues) as you picking the best kicker every week...unless your bench is absolutely terrible....in fact the chances that the highest scoring 150 players are on a roster EVERY WEEK is basically a crapshoot....why try to make fantasy sports easy, simple, and predictable when thats nearly impossible regardless of kickers or not?

[Water Buffalo]

there's more strategy than you think in choosing kickers. i like them on a good offense, but not that good. the more they stall in the red zone the better. i also like it better if they are accurate. my kickers are usually what makes me beat the other team. along with my defense.

I think you think there's more strategy in choosing kickers than there actually is. I maintain that it's one giant unpredictable crapshoot. I propose we play a little game to hopefully prove my point. It could blow up in my face, but I'm willing to take that chance.

I have randomly picked 6 kickers not named Sebastian Janikowski. I used random.org to pick numbers from 2-32, and assigned those numbers to the kicker and his overall scoring rank this year. Those kickers are, in the order they were picked:

Dan Bailey (1)
Dan Carpenter (2)
David Akers (3)
Robbie Gould (4)
Matt Bryant (5)
Graham Gano (6)

I will then assign each of these players a number, 1-6, the number of sides on a 6 sided die. That's the number in parentheses behind the player's name. Each week, I will roll the die as many times as it takes to randomly generate an order of "best" to "worst". That's the order that random chance will select for how the kickers will finish that particular week.

If you think you can beat random chance, pick the order that YOU think they will finish in that same week. I hypothesize that if enough people tried it, on average, random chance would perform no better or worse than the humans trying to guess, myself most definitely included.

But thats stupid because you can apply the same logic about anybody outside of the top 30-50 coming into the season....so are you then proposing that fantasy leagues should just not have flex spots as well since they arent as reliable or predictable as you would like them to be? Why not just be in an 8-10 team PPR league where you only start 1 QB,RB, WR and TE? Because ultimately that is what your point is boiling down too.

Are you for real? How do you not see the crater sized gaping hole in your argument before you even presented it? I won't even shred your argument to the core, which would be simple as well, but the entire premise behind your argument is laughably silly.

Yeah, there's a lot of luck outside of the top skill players, and if you want to throw out a completely arbitrary number of 30-50, that's fine. But there's 100% luck in almost every (You could argue literally every) kicker. If you literally picked a kicker's name out of a hat at the beginning of the season, you wouldn't necessarily be better or worse off than trying to "do research" on them. If you took the top, say, 200 skill players and threw them all into a hat and drafted your league's teams on pure random chance though, some teams would be drastically better than others based on the players they received.

Also, why are you arguing flex positions. I don't get it. This is an argument about kickers, not flex positions.

[standard_variance]

Also, why are you arguing flex positions. I don't get it. This is an argument about kickers, not flex positions.

Because flex position players are just as invariable and unpredictable as kickers are! You are basing your opinion on the idea that kickers undeservingly influence the game because of their unpredictability....so in order for you to believe THAT you would HAVE TO BELIEVE that the majority of players on fantasy rosters are predictable to begin with....otherwise your entire point about kickers would be moot.

[hamburglar]

Granted I'm the OP... but im 100% with waterbuffalo!!!

[jnormy]

I realize it can never completely mirror the real thing, but I still like my fantasy football experience to be as close to managing a real team as possible. Kickers score points in NFL games, so I think they should be a part of fantasy football. It's really not that big a deal to me... unless you have an elite performer (i.e., Janikowski or Akers, who's consistently among the fantasy leaders every year), you just try to play the matchups like with D/ST.

[bigcsr67]

Also, why are you arguing flex positions. I don't get it. This is an argument about kickers, not flex positions.

Because flex position players are just as invariable and unpredictable as kickers are! You are basing your opinion on the idea that kickers undeservingly influence the game because of their unpredictability....so in order for you to believe THAT you would HAVE TO BELIEVE that the majority of players on fantasy rosters are predictable to begin with....otherwise your entire point about kickers would be moot.

The unpredictability of football is what makes fantasy so great. Yeah kickers can make or break you if you single them out, but if your other guys would have scored better it wouldnt even matter. Sounds like a case of "laces out dan!".

[standard_variance]

Also, why are you arguing flex positions. I don't get it. This is an argument about kickers, not flex positions.

Because flex position players are just as invariable and unpredictable as kickers are! You are basing your opinion on the idea that kickers undeservingly influence the game because of their unpredictability....so in order for you to believe THAT you would HAVE TO BELIEVE that the majority of players on fantasy rosters are predictable to begin with....otherwise your entire point about kickers would be moot.

The unpredictability of football is what makes fantasy so great. Yeah kickers can make or break you if you single them out, but if your other guys would have scored better it wouldnt even matter. Sounds like a case of "laces out dan!".

My point exactly ^^^^

Anybody who has a problem with unpredictability in fantasy football has a problem with fantasy sports in general.....not just kickers.