I know this is blasphemy in a dynasty thread.
But I'm wondering what Josh Gordon owners are going to do with that roster spot if he gets banned for a year. I'm in a salary cap league, so it's not just a question of a roster spot. Furthermore, do any of you have confidence that this is the last time Gordon pulls a knucklehead move like this?
Obviously tons of Gordon discussion going on in other threads, but in short, I personally have zero confidence in him staying clean moving forward. I'd be selling like crazy before anything official hits.
I saw an ESPN commentator go on and on about Gordon squandering all this money. And I think that's kind of missing the point. When Gordon's career is over, it's not the money he's going to miss most. It's all that greatness that could have been.
Given the somewhat similar issue that is facing Blackmon. (yes I know tomato/tomato, potato/french fry.)
Do we have to start factoring in character concern, and at the 1st signs of smoke, at least consider selling?
Maybe start classing players tier 1 - talent , but if they are tier 2 character and perhaps tier 2 injury prone, try to move that player based on their talent tier.
Makes sense in a vacuum, practically, things are too much of a crapshoot to attempt to properly quantify these tiers though.
Will have to ponder this moving forward.
I'm a big proponent of "pricing risk". Basically, you need to clarify the differences between expectations and expected value. Expectations are what you think are the most likely outcome. Expected value is the average of all possible outcomes weighted by likelihood. So yes, if someone presents with an additional risk, you need to objectively evaluate that risk and price it appropriately.
At the same time, we need to be smart about the "objectively evaluate the risk" phase, too. Most people who use drugs are not addicted to drugs. If a guy fails a single drug test, then that should increase our estimated chances that he's an addict, but by far the most likely explanation remains that he is not. It's not until we start getting multiple failed tests (especially in a short period of time) that the preponderance of the evidence begins to point to addiction rather than recreation. Josh Gordon wasn't a risky buy because of his suspension last season, he was a risky buy because of his suspension *IN ADDITION TO* the multiple failed tests in college that resulted in him transferring out of one program, never playing a down for a second program, and entering the league through the supplemental draft process. Likewise, Justin Blackmon's pre-draft alcohol problems should have raised some eyebrows (especially just how far above the legal limit he was on his last DUI- it was truly Herculean, iirc), but suspicions shouldn't have reached full alert until he added that NFL suspension to the rap sheet. After all, plenty of other players have had DUIs with nothing coming from it. Vincent Jackson had a pair of DUIs (and a "holdout" that wasn't actually a holdout since he wasn't under contract), and I was arguing to the hills that he wasn't a character risk. At the same time, I wrote an article during the middle of Blackmon's hot streak arguing that his owners should sell him quickly at his current market value. Not all risks are created equally.
Injury risks are one of those risks that I don't think are created equally. I think a lot of the "injury prone" talk results from the fact that random is random, and often streaky (while still remaining truly random). If injuries were randomly distributed, we should EXPECT to see some players accumulating a couple in short succession. We should also expect that those players are no more likely to accumulate any more going forward. Nevertheless, the human mind is built to discern patterns and is very proficient at the task, often finding patterns where none truly exists. As a result, it tends to over-price the injury risk in previously-injured players (and, simultaneously, under-price the injury risk in previously-healthy players). There are a few situations where a player is at a legitimately heightened risk for future injury (Danario Alexander comes to mind, and that's not hindsight bias- I called him injury prone before he tore his ACL again last offseason), but for the most part, Doug Drinen had it right a decade ago when he said that EVERYONE is an injury risk.
So... yes, we should be pricing risk profiles into player value, but it's not as easy as just making blanket declarations about which players are "risky" and which are "safe". Everyone is risky, and it's up to us to quantify that risk and apply it fairly to each player's value.
