What is this thread

It's clear some people miss the point, entirely, and prefer to stay that way. Nevermind. FFLs need fish, too.

I asked you to show me where it was that you predicted Marshawn falls off a cliff in 2015 BEFORE the actual season, not to postdict it now. and where's the data showing RBs slow way down at his age?

also obviously if you could get gronk in the second round and take someone else in the first you'd do it. what a ****ing hilariously banal point which is a COMPLETE non sequitir to your original point, which NECESSARILY implies that said player has a first round ADP. why the **** would we even be discussing drafting a player with a second round ADP in the first and then calling that -EV because you could have waited to get that player????? is that all you meant when you said that drafting TEs is -EV? that all the TEs in your league go in later rounds and therefore regardless of how they produce (even if they score 1000 VBD), it would be "-EV" to take them the first because you could have gotten them later??? that's not even a remotely meaningful observation. it's wholly trivial.

the way any reasonable person approaches your statement, then, is in assuming it says "TEs who we are considering drafting in the first (i.e. have a ~first round ADP) do not perform at that level, therefore it is a -EV play to draft that player in the first," which is demonstrably false. gronk has produced at a first round level in 3 out of his 5 years in the league, and even in the season where he got injured 11 games in, a replacement-level TE for the remaining 5 games would put your total TE VBD at 15th place that year. that's a level of performance and consistency that very few players can boast. your statement is trivially false.

your complete and utter confidence in the value of your own judgment should be pretty concerning considering everything I've seen you say so far is utterly unsubstantiated or fallacious. you can read about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunnin...3Kruger_effect

LOL.... Obvious troll is obvious.

I guess, in your semantics and straw man rage, you don't understand -EV. Of course KJ is going to hit the flop every once in a while. Should you call a pre-flop re-raise with it? Probably not.

All I said was it's not a strong play to draft TEs in the first round. Even your fanboy research below bares that out. If I knew you were gonna whip yourself up into a rage tempest, I'd have offered more comprehensive legalese to soothe your irritability.

LOL @ 3 out of his 5 years, (you're adding a technical 4th year because an injury prone player actually got injured?).... Generally, it's pretty f***ing stupid to risk first-round value on a position that, optimally, offers a 60% rate of expected return on investment.

You just underscored my entire point.

Sounds like some grade-A projection right there. Anyhoo:

You stick with your strategy of drafting Gronks in the first round based on their 60% success rate, and relying on aging running backs while ignoring their mileage.

I'll stick with my strategy of always finishing in the money by recognizing well-established axioms as a foundation of draft prep.

Uh huh... Well, while I don't really give a **** what you demanded, I wasn't in this forum back then. If I was, I'd have clearly offered an RB list that had Lynch a round or two later than goofy you would have. There's a reason I dropped him in my 3-Keeper league last summer, and it paid of nicely.

I'll say it again: Always let 30+ RBs be someone else's gamble, regardless of the outliers. Get it yet?

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! With this challenge, it's clear you're an awful fantasy footballer, and I should just leave you be. All ponds need stocked fish. But, just because you're one of the most obnoxious and angry individuals I've encountered in sports debate, I'll clue you in on what the rest of us were pretty clear about 15 years ago:





But keep drafting the way you do. And keep kicking your dog by November.

It's hard to tell who's trolling who anymore

first of all, let me apologize for my tone. people who have a misplaced confidence in their own abilities is one of my biggest pet peeves since it's SUCH a dangerous and destructive bias to have, but that still doesn't give me the right to chew you out. i'm sorry for that.

you did not only say that it was not a strong play to draft TEs in the first round. you said that it is not a strong play, and that one of the reasons for this is that if a TE is available in the second you have no reason to draft him in the first. you said that here:

this is still a trivial statement and a straw man. no one is advocating drafting a TE in the first round that would be available in the second. obviously that would be "-EV." you have still not addressed my point that this statement is pointless and tangential, nor have you provided us with any cogent analysis on why you hold the stance that TEs should not be drafted in the first round.

analysis that would look something like this: Gronk has performed at a first round level in total VBD and at a high second round level in VBD per draftable year since 2010 despite missing 16 games in that timespan and having limited snaps in several games in 2014 (he is 11th and 15th place respectively). I included 2010 because many players on this list had seasons where they were draftable but didn't play much, and I didn't want to unfairly bias this towards gronk by only including his starting years. in fact, this list is biased AWAY from gronk towards players who have been starters for every year from 2010-2015.

furthermore, those VBD figures are for a non-PPR format. seeing as he is behind 4-5 RBs, his standing will of course improve even more in a PPR format, though that is only relevant insofar as it shows your statement cannot be construed as being format-dependent.

it isn't clear how many games Gronk will miss on average, but his average of 12.8 games played per year since becoming a starter (less if you take into account his limited snaps in 2014) is quite low for a starter, so there is reason to suspect that 12.8/yr is probably not his true mean. additionally, we have the benefit of knowing whether gronk is healthy going into the season or not, and a healthy gronk is even more prone to deliver first round value.

for all these reasons, my metrics placing him at low first round/high second round value are likely too pessimistic for how we can retroactively assess his average return (particularly when healthy), and are likely too pessimistic for how we can expect him to perform in the future. in other words, gronk being healthy going into the season returns first round value in any reasonable scoring format. even closing your eyes, ignoring his preseason health, and making fairly parsimonious predictions about his ability to stay healthy would still return you low first round/high second round value.

the excel spreadsheet of VBDs i made can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5w85d4qnxt...20v2.xlsx?dl=0

i just showed that gronk has historically returned near first round value even when taking into account poor expectations about his health. i do not see that your "60% rate of expected ROI" figure (i.e. "percentage of seasons in which player X has played 15 games or more") is even close to meaningful enough to warrant talking about. simply knowing this figure doesn't proffer much precision in figuring out how many games gronk plays on average (a trivially more useful figure), nor does it take into account how dominant that player is in the games he does play. in the case of gronk, we have a player that has played 80% of his games since becoming a starter (which, while low, is far above 60%), and is an absolute lock for first round value if he plays even a near-full docket. additionally, like i said, on average he returns first round value even taking into account injury risk. "60% rate of expected ROI" doesn't tell us any of that.

because i am fair and balanced, i will point out that this doesn't take into account the fact that playoff games are more valuable than regular season games. however, i do not feel this is enough to assert "TEs are not worth first round picks" for several reasons:
a) in leagues with strong competition where playoff contention is more questionable, playoff games are only marginally more valuable than regular season games
b) we are still dealing with incredibly small sample sizes, so i do not see that we can assume gronk is so likely to miss playoff games that his overall value falls out of the first round. keep in mind one of those missed seasons was due to a freak accident and isn't likely to be indicative of a chronic susceptibility to injury
c) we have an even smaller sample size on how frequently healthy-preseason-Gronk makes it to the playoffs. occam's razor dictates that it should be only slightly below average. at the very least, our small sample size has thus far validated this conclusion.

your statement is therefore false. it is abundantly clear that drafting a healthy gronk in the first round is perfectly fine, particularly in PPR, the most common format. healthy preseason gronk in PPR probably returns mid-first value on average.

given how prone most people are to retrodiction, you'll have to forgive me if i'm skeptical of your claim. furthermore, the logic for your decision is demonstrably unsound, which gives me further pause in trusting you. per FBO, since 2011 the SEA O line has ranked as follows in run blocking:

19-4-9-4-4

in adjusted line yards, that translates to:

4.01-4.42-4.05-4.23-4.18

which averages out to 4.178. seeing as SEA came in at 4.18 last year, their O line last year was actually above average for marshawn, and significantly above average compared to the league. this is a far cry from the rapidly regressing O line play you incorrectly retrodicted.

sports science has improved dramatically every decade since 1970, so this graph does not take into account that athletes now enjoy the benefits of better nutrition, training, medicine, etc. so not only does this graph not show what we want it to show (how do RBs age today?), it doesn't even show what you claimed. there is no significant drop off at 29, 30, or 35. it shows that RB production decreases in an almost perfectly linear fashion from 26 to 36. given Lynch finished at places 4, 6, and 3 the previous 3 years and had shown otherworldly durability and consistency at a position regularly lacking those characteristics, docking his performance a bit because of wear and taking him in the latter half of the first was the most reasonable move. again, this is how every expert on the planet saw him. your logic is unsound even if your conclusions are true (a claim which we still have yet to verify).

this graph literally shows no marked dropoff for 2000s RBs (which are different from 90s/80s/70s RBs) until age 32. it only reaffirms what i just said about improving sports science. the sample sizes are also probably painfully small and biased since there is no plausible reason why RB production shouldn't decrease from 29-32.

to conclude, i've made an extremely strong case that a healthy gronk is worth a first round pick. i've also shown that your reasoning for marshawn declining last year was faulty and misinformed, so your conclusions are irrelevant. i eagerly await your rebuttal.

K... but all you're doing with what follows is softening your aggression for passive aggression, coated by paralysis by analysis.

WHAT?????

I'm pretty sure your entire word salad here is pushback in defense of the notion that drafting a tight end (in this case, the one extreme outlier of the last 15 years) in the first round is sound.

I maintain that is isn't, ever. Even in the case of Gronk.

Of course, the last time I presented cogent analysis, you shifted to "behold the wonders of modern science" while simultaneously conceding a straight trend line downward from age 29 on for RBs.

I don't need to follow you down every rabbit hole you jump into. It's painfully obvious, but TEs don't, on average, run a route tree that sends them down the field nearly as consistently as WRs. Thus, their yardage is capped to a certain degree. Pointing to Rob Gronkowski as a contradiction to that well-known axiom doesn't change the axiom. Elite TEs need optimal conditions to even be in the conversation with the top 10-15 WRs in terms of fantasy scoring (depending on your scoring system).

Yeah, VBD is useless for the context of this argument. A 90s metric comparing a player to the baseline player at his position doesn't really say much of anything about his draft round value.

Irrelevant.

LOL! Cept he's already not healthy. ... And considering the rate of serious injuries he's already suffered, a savy drafter will recognize how overdue he is for yet another.

Yeah, cept you're NOT actually taking into account the poor expectations about his health.... (NOR his questionable QB situation that currently exists) ... You're focusing on his per game average for his career, not the two seasons where his draft value failed miserably due to (expected) injury. I expect him to be banged up yet again this year.

Looking backwards at past fantasy stats for the vast majority of your analysis, while largely ignoring the likely outlook to come, is a surefire way to fantasy failure.

Tight end is a rugged position, prone to considerable injury risk, which you discount by presenting his average games played per season over six years. (?)

Ummm.... because you're pretty much doomed if your first round pick puts up paltry numbers due to injury, it's entirely meaningful.

Unbelievable.... You're conflating total games played across a 6-year career to what we were talking about: The five seasons since (and including) his outlier season of 2011. In two of those five seasons, he was badly hurt and absolutely did not justify a first or second-round draft value. So the other three (60% of what we're talking about), he did put up numbers worthy of a first or second round pick. My point remains: He's not worth the risk that early. Period. .... The absolute best case scenario you can present for fanboying TE value, Gronkowski, is STILL not worth it.


You're not. More like selective and situational, and largely dishonest as a result.

Too bad I'm not making the playoff argument. You've created a strawman here. Good job against him, though.

Irrelevant.

Yeah, cept he already isn't healthy ... further solidifying my point that an oft-injured player at a rugged position with a limited yardage ceiling is simply not worth the risk. Ever.

All you've done is apply an irrelevant metric (VBD) and run with it.

The only reality needed is that Gronkowski - even excluding his rookie season - has not put up fantasy points worthy of a first or second-round draft pick:

2015: 39th per game, 31st total
2014: 20th per game, 26th total
2013: 28th per game, 181st total
2012: 19th per game, 67th total
2011: 12th per game, 12th total

Avg.: 23.6 per game, 63.4 total

So the absolute best TE example of the past 20 years provides fantasy points barely worthy of the last pick of the second round, on a per game average. And he's already hurt.

You can argue TE demand relevant to the rest of the position all you like. But is that worth missing out on a rapidly depleting blue chip RB, WR or QB tier in the second round? Not to me it isn't. Not even close. It's even more laughable trying to justify first-round value for the best TE in the world.

But keep doing what you do. I absolutely love guys like you in my leagues. I'll stay with guys like Kelce later, and enjoy Robinson in the 2nd...While you hope for the best with Gronk, while praying guys you're left with later like Tate and Maclin pull you through.

+1
And B. Marshall is not going to lose production. I remember when people kept giving up on Steve Smith 4 seasons too early in FFB. A beast is a beast. Dude isn't an RB, he's healthy, and has chemistry with Fitz.

ok, Jiggs, I'm going to try and be as explicit as possible in this post. if you continue to ignore my points, shift the goalposts, construct strawmen, and fail to defend your reasoning I'm not going to respond any longer.

why did you chop off the second half of my sentence? what about that sentence (the entire sentence) is unclear to you? here is what happened in chronological order:

1. you said that drafting a TE in the first round is -EV because you could have gotten that player in the second round.

2. I pointed out that this is a meaningless statement & a strawman.

3. you responded by stating you "only" said drafting a TE in the first round is not a solid play.

4. I point out that this is untrue. you did not "only" say that. you said that, and then you added along with it your reasoning, which is that you should not draft a player in the first that you could get in the second. I quoted you saying that. I then reiterated that this is still meaningless, and still a strawman, and you still have not addressed that. no one ever advocated that as obviously you would not draft a player in the first that was available in the second. we are not debating whether or not to draft a player with a second round ADP in the first round. we are debating whether or not a TE is worth drafting in the first round. I don't know how to make this more explicit for you.

putting it in quotes doesn't make it irrelevant. the data you provided is uncontrolled and unscientific. advancing medicine is an incredibly relevant variable that has changed dramatically over that period of time. regardless, the graph STILL doesn't support your position.

I didn't "concede" this point. I never denied that RBs decline with age. I took exception with this statement:

you STILL have not provided any data to support this statement. THOSE GRAPHS DO NOT SHOW RBS SLOWING WAY DOWN AT 29. they show a gradual decline at his age, as well as in the 3 years prior and the 7 years subsequent. a "gradual decline" is not "slowing way down." so far as the data we have shows, 29 is not a special year.

PLEASE stop ignoring this point. either a) modify/clarify your original reasoning, or b) concede the point.

the debate is not whether or not TEs can match WRs in terms of fantasy scoring. the debate is whether or not TEs can match WRs in terms of fantasy value, so once again you are making an irrelevant and tangential point. I am assuming, by the way, you have a separate slot for TEs in your fantasy leagues.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha oh my god I can't believe I just wasted so much time responding to the first part of this post and every other post when you're actually this ignorant. and then at the end you just start directly comparing FFPPG across positions lmao. alright, have a nice life. peace dude.

lol... only dogs can hear you at this point, dude. I notice you have a new wall of text. Unfortunately, I stopped reading your screed when you started masturbating to VBD and quibbling about semantics.

In any event, how is AP doing this season? Jamaal? Gore? Was Gronk worth drafting in the first round again this year? The second? I wasn't sure. But I went ahead with my reliable axioms for draft strategy and avoided them all. Pays off nicely, as it does every year.

But you'll cite outliers like Forte, while ignoring the tendency. I have no doubt you're a second-division fish all big-money leagues depend on. Keep doing you, though.