FFCollusion
Footballguy
I love where your head is at, and in concept not only do I agree completely, but I preach it every year in my Draft Strategy write up. (It doesn't fit the character limit of this forum, even when I tried cutting it in half, but I tried)
In fact, I did the exact same exercise in the QB ranking thread, when people questioned why I didn't have Geno Smith in my top 15 QBs, despite his top 5 finish last year.
And my answer, much like the way you're thinking of Kelce, is that Geno's 18.5PPG last year, are garbage, and in an any year over the past decade, wouldn't even be top 12 QB scoring.
Steering this back to Kelce... it really depends on how you frame and measure your question. It requires a lot of arbitrary lines that it seems like 99% of people in this thread, will just use to disqualify my efforts, so there's not really much incentive. Do you sort by PPG? Total Points? Do you measure to the TE's within X points of him? The 2nd,3rd finishers? Down to TE6? TE12?
Like I said, no matter what way I chose to do it, people will insist it's an unfair way to do it.
Do we discredit Kelce for outlier seasons, like Andrews in 2021 and Waller in 2020? Does predictability count for anything? If not, are we discrediting Jefferson, because Christian Kirk had a great year last season? Do we discredit CMC because Rhamondre had a great year last season? At the end of the day, it's all lines in the sand, and you can never make everyone happy. The most prevelant retort you get is that people don't like the way their teams "look". I get it, it's very hard to break that stigma, and I don't blame anyone for feeling that way. But how you "feel" isn't really a talking point. Like, you're justified and allowed to feel anyu way you like. Your feelings are valid... but what am i suppose to do with them in regards to the conversation we're having? Ultimately no one cares how your team looks, they care how many points it scores. Your Win/Loss column doesn't know who you started.
Anyways, I agree with evaluating the talent pool and the ebbs/flows of the fantasy player pool, both positionally, and in totality. Gronk, Graham, Julius, and Witten are gone. Ertz, Rudolph, Cook, Hooper, Ebron have faded away. Andrews, Kittle, and Waller have emerged, but only one at a time, and once in 3 years each. Kelce is going to age out before long, and we just introduced the best TE class in a while with Kincaid, Musgrave, Meyer, and LaPorta combined with recent bloomers Hockenson and Pitts(kinda). If these guys all jump into the discussion, then the supply and demand will drastically change. If it happens this year, then there's a decent chance Kelce won't be worth his ADP. I don't know if it'll happen. I only know what I expect to most likely happen, and that's Kelce continuing to produce at elite levels, regardless of what the field does.
I made a similar spiel for WRs. Hopkins and K.Allen are 31. Kupp, Adams, Evans, and Lockett are 30, Tyreek, Diggs, Amari are 29, we are right in the middle of an elite WR transitional phase, where a dozen or so names, that have been perennial elites, are going to start fading or hitting cliffs, and there are going to be casualties along the way, that will drastically effect the draft success of the first 2 rounds for a few years, while yound studs like Jefferson, Chase, AJB, Lamb, etc are all taking over.
It's somewhat the same with RBs. Henry, Zeke, Cook are already slowing down. Ekeler, CMC, Chubb, Mixon, A.Jones are all creeping up there in age. Meanwhile young studs like Breece, Javonte, and Bijan are waiting to establish themselves next.
Kelce isn't the only one who probably just peaked over his landscape. So while it's a fair concern, I'm not convinced it carries any weight when the same can be applied to the other positions as well.
Kelce outscored TE2 last year by 6 points per game.
Jefferson outscored WR2 last year by 1 point per game.
A full 6 point advantage would be down to WR8, Jaylen Waddle.
Ekeler outscored RB2 last year by 1.7 points per game.
A full 6 point advantage would be down to RB6, Nick Chubb.
The hard part about this, is trying to apply it to the real world. I'm the 6th pick... what do I care what Jefferson or CMC's advantage is, they're long gone already. Comparing TE1 to WR1 means jack ish to me, if I don't have the opportunity to draft them. I'm looking at like WR4 or RB3. Other people drafting from 8 or 10, have completely different conversations and calculations. The 6 points advantage of Kelce vs the RB5 or WR5 available at that spot, completely changes the entire discussion. For CD Lamb to have a 6 point advantage on his hypothetical opponent's WR1... they have to hope the Kelce owner's #1 WR is... DJ Moore, WR25 last year.
That's why I think it's important to put this into real world scenarios that you can legitimately weight, in an actual draft. And that's just the advantage Kelce has over TE2. Let me rephrase that, Kelce's advantage over the 2nd best TE in the game, is the equivalent to the advantage CD Lamb(WR6) had over DJ Moore (WR25).
Kelce's advantage over TE12 was 9.4 points per game.
In order for Lamb to have a 9.4 point advantage over his an opponent WR, they would have to own... Hunter Renfrow, who was the 69th ranked WR on a per game basis.
It gets tough trying to identify total points, season long finishes, and quantify per-game advantages.
It's even harder when you have to try and align these PPG advantages to a draft board. TE12 was drafted in round 12? WR69 is probably undrafted.
I don't know, it's impossible to quantify in a way that will appease people and it's obviously a complex balance of last years results, this years production, while trying to account for the rise and fall of 50 other skill positions inbetween them, and moving target ADPs every day.
If someone wants to create their own projection for Kelce's cliff this year, I'll take them and do the math.
If anyone wants to chime in with what they feel would be an accurate way account for Kelce's value to his field over the past few years, I'm all ears.
My opinion is that Kelce's dominance in any given year, is never a fluke. The fluke is the 1 or 2 players, who unpredictably jump into his tier for a single season, before disappearing.
I mean, in 2021 Kelce was only at 16.6 PPG, finished as TE2, but still outscored TE3 by 4.4 points per game. Was is a fluke that Kelce was TE2, or was it a fluke that Andrews had a career outlier, and immediately returned to the production levels he had previously in 2022?
Is it a fluke that Kelce averaged 20PPG in 2020? Outscoring TE12 by double digits? Or was it a fluke that Waller had a career outlier, and has immediately returned to who he's always been the next 2 years after?
Kelce hasn't had an anomaly season in my opinion. His value is only questioned, in hindsight, after someone ELSE has an anomaly season.
That's an incredibly important point to differentiate.
Which brings me back to the question above. I've hit the 10,000 character limit, fml.
