Here are the composite totals from the Fantasy Index Open for kickers. Shayne Graham, I think, is the key guy at this spot. He was the first guy I ran individual numbers on.
If he’s a 16-game player, Graham has a good chance to finish in the top 10 at this position. Saints have a high-powered offense. But if the Saints also have Derek Dimke in camp, and supposedly he’s been better than Graham in camp. Younger, stronger leg, and Graham has never been a world beater anyway (I mean, why else would about 10 other teams have moved on from Graham over the years?).
If Graham gets cut and doesn’t latch on with another team, than everybody who included him in their top 20 will take a zero at that spot. And in this kind of scoring format, that’s huge.
Suppose, for example, that you ranked Graham 12th among kickers. If he scores 120 points, that pick would be worth 1,680 points in our scoring format (26 – 12) x (120) = 1,680 points. That’s a nice scoring total.
But if you omit Graham and stick in some other 16-game kicker (say, Caleb Sturgis) than you’ll get maybe 110 points, and you’ll only lose 140 in your Fantasy Index Open total.
If Graham gets cut, then those who didn’t list him at all start off with that 1,500-1,700 point advantage.
To me, it’s an easy call. You don’t list Graham.
But the Dimke/Graham story hasn’t gotten a lot of pub, so of the 166 players in our game, 141 of them ranked Graham. Only 25 of them (including me) left him out. I’m guessing that one of those 25 will be the high scorer at this position.
Stephen Gostkowski is the high man at that position. But not as much difference between him and Matt Prater as I would have expected. There were 67 entries that had Prater higher (over 40 percent).
Then a big drop down to Steven Hauschka and Phil Dawson. I have like both of those guys better than Prater (and Justin Tucker as well, but he’s been Mason Crosby).
Looking at the percentage totals, there isn’t much difference between those four kickers. Gostkowski-Prater is the top tier (if you want to extend the “tier” thinking to the kicker position), then those four.
The winner of the Fantasy Index Open will win a monster-sized trophy from the team at Affordable Trophies. In addition, the top 2 finishers will win berths in the Fantasy Experts Poll in the 2015 edition of Fantasy Football Index.
| FANTASY INDEX OPEN (kickers) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Rk | Player | Pct |
| 1. | Stephen Gostkowski | 91.8% |
| 2. | Matt Prater | 89.7% |
| 3. | Steven Hauschka | 77.2% |
| 4. | Phil Dawson | 76.6% |
| 5. | Mason Crosby | 76.2% |
| 6. | Justin Tucker | 74.8% |
| 7. | Dan Bailey | 64.1% |
| 8. | Adam Vinatieri | 61.6% |
| 9. | Robbie Gould | 58.6% |
| 10. | Nick Novak | 53.2% |
| 11. | Matt Bryant | 50.9% |
| 12. | Alex Henery | 49.8% |
| 13. | Blair Walsh | 47.4% |
| 14. | Shayne Graham | 44.9% |
| 15. | Greg Zuerlein | 40.3% |
| 16. | Mike Nugent | 36.6% |
| 17. | Ryan Succop | 30.9% |
| 18. | Shaun Suisham | 28.5% |
| 19. | Jay Feely | 22.5% |
| 20. | Nate Freese | 20.6% |
| 21. | Nick Folk | 17.0% |
| 22. | Caleb Sturgis | 14.2% |
| 23. | Sebastian Janikowski | 13.5% |
| 24. | Graham Gano | 12.6% |
| 25. | Josh Brown | 9.0% |
| 26. | Connor Barth | 8.8% |
| 27. | Dan Carpenter | 6.0% |
| 28. | Randy Bullock | 5.4% |
| 29. | Josh Scobee | 3.0% |
| 30. | Kai Forbath | 2.6% |
| 31. | Billy Cundiff | 2.3% |
| 32. | Maikon Bonani | 0.9% |
| 33. | Dustin Hopkins | 0.3% |
| 34. | Rob Bironas | 0.2% |
| 35. | Zach Hocker | 0.1% |
—Ian Allan