I think Harstad says it at the top of his rent a kicker article…
No position is more unpredictable in fantasy football than kickers. Year after year after year, no position has a lower correlation between where they're drafted before the season and where they finish after the season. No position has a lower correlation between how they score in one week and how they score in the next. No position has a lower correlation between projected points and actual points.
In addition, placekicker is the position that has the smallest spread between the best players and the middle-of-the-pack players for fantasy. Finally, most fantasy GMs will only carry one kicker at a time, which means a dozen or more starting kickers are sitting around on waivers at any given time. Given all of this, it rarely makes sense to devote resources to the position. Instead, GMs are best served by rotating through whichever available kicker has the best weekly matchup.
He's wrong. Again.
But there is a larger context.
Field goal production is based on opportunity, which is a function of field position. The largest practical determinant of field position will be applying the Pareto Principle to any given special teams unit.
I'll give a current and a non current example. A current example is Cody Davis going down for the Patriots. Most FFers will know Matthew Slater's name based on longevity and the Patriot's overall long terms success. They'll remember Steve Tasker. Those kind of players. They aren't paying attention to guys like Taiwan Jones on any given roster. Losing Davis is a big deal for New England. Under Pareto, and it's true in the NFL, a small number of core special teamers make a dramatic impact on a ST's overall success and production.
A non current example is Neiko Thorpe. I saw plenty of him when I bought into Medina and saw a decent number of Seahawks games up close. Whether a guy like Thorpe, in his prime, was available or not or winged up makes a dramatic difference in overall field position.
There was no greater advocate of this principle than Big Tuna Parcells, who would lavish Reyna Thompson with more praise than maybe even his own storied linebacker corps.
The context is the average FF player is not well versed on special teams play and production. Just like nearly all have no basic conception of the value of offensive line play. The other issue is most FF pundits never played the game, never coached the game, and certainly have no background/interest in bread and butter attrition based special teams. And if I'm being fair, someone who watches a lot of game tape like @MattWaldman will be seeing a lot of players outside of the role they end up in while in the NFL. The general roster limitations of the NFL and how special teams units become clearing houses for 2nd and 3rd stringers, only makes the information flow even tighter.
Can you make lock down predictions on a kicker? No. But Harstaad is just repeating what everyone else says and tries to push a Peter Brand spin on it. Well, he's no Aaron Sorkin. I wouldn't say he could even pen a script for She Hulk. I guess even parrots with word processors can get a pay check these days. It's undignified.
Can you start to unwind practical field position dynamics by looking at availability and production of core special teamers. Yes. But the context is there can be diminishing returns based on the scoring and settings of that league in question. If it's a league where kickers are neutered point wise, it's not so much of a help. If it's a league that carries an IDP stack as well as offense, then that too dilutes the value of those kicker points.
Football is a metaphor for war. Wars are won by understanding how to control the space around you and how to take away the practical space of everyone else. The average FF pundit will shed their tears when a RB1 goes down. However they will stay completely silent when a good gunner goes down, and not realize the overall impact of what is actually lost there.
