Bruno Boys Fantasy Football

We’re talking kickers today. Now don’t stop reading already. I know kickers are kind of the redheaded stepchildren of fantasy football but when you get to this point in the season, you really need to be firing on all cylinders and that includes kickers. A crappy kicker can make a difference as I recently learned when losing an important game thanks to a big fat goose egg from my kicker. What makes it worse is that the kicker, Nick Folk, sits on my roster in several different leagues. Folk hasn’t exactly been lighting things up lately with more than his fair share of missed field goals and not a ton of opportunities for extra points. So I’m in the market for a new kicker and thought I’d share with you my process of determining which kickers I’m going to target.

As you guys probably know by now, I like to base my decisions on statistics and historical patterns. What I really wanted to know was, which kickers historically had success during the end of the season and what kind of defenses did they face? I started off by looking at the top 5 kickers during Weeks 12-16 from 2004 through 2008 (data/names pulled from Sports Data Hub’s Player Statistics section). Then using total defense rankings from ESPN, I looked at the caliber of defense each of those kickers faced during those 5 weeks and did a little averaging. Details are in the chart below:

Other than the fact that Detroit Lions kicker Jason Hanson practically owns Weeks 12-16 (the only year he’s not on the list is 2008), what else can we take from this chart? What I’d like to hone in on is whether or not the average ranking of an opposing defense means anything in dictating how well a kicker did in Weeks 12-16. Take a look at those numbers – notice anything? The mode, or most frequently occurring number, is 18 followed closely by 19 then 17. So my take is that those kickers that face opposing defenses that average between 17th and 19th are the kickers that I should be targeting for the end of the season.

Next step on this kicker enlightenment journey is to figure out which of this year’s kickers will face opposing defenses that average in the 17th to 19th range. Using current defense rankings again from ESPN, I did another round of averaging and here’s what we have:

I added in a few more details here – I scoped out what percentage of Yahoo players own each kicker, the current offensive ranking of the team the kicker plays for, and the kicker’s current ranking among all kickers so far in 2009. Interestingly, only Jason Elam plays for an offense in the top half of the league and really none of these players are owned very widely. 

So combining all of this information together, the kickers that I personally would plan to focus on are Dan Carpenter and Olindo Mare, though Rian Lindell and Jason Elam would be on my short list as well. Carpenter has only missed one FG all season and that was back in Week 2; Mare also has a solid track record – he’s only missed 2 FGs, both back in Week 3. Meanwhile Lindell is no stranger to putting up decent numbers during Weeks 12-16 and Elam is on an offense with enough firepower to give him several shots at extra points and field goals. 

A nice little bonus here is that in the process of pulling this all together, I created a handy little chart with those average opposing defense rankings for each of the 32 teams. So use this for good and not evil (or maybe just a smidge of evil) in putting together your winning team. See, you knew I wouldn’t leave you hanging with only info about kickers, right?
 

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The Bruno Boys are pleased to once again welcome guest columnist, Sara Holladay, back for her feature,A Librarian’s Touch, for the 2009 season. The woman behind the web-site, Fantasy Football Librarian, Holladay is someone all fantasy owners should be well familiar with if they want to win their league’s title as she provides some of the best fantasy football insight and resources found around the web!