[QuikSand]

So, I have an idea. I'm kinda sick of looking at kickers who hit on 26 out of 31 attempts for a given season, and not really knowing what to do with that.

The idea would require some data collection, and then some implementation. I'm hoping that by laying out the idea here, we can refine it, and then maybe someone(s) with the requisite access/skills can help advance the ball from here.

-Core idea: develop a "net points from kick attempts" number, generated from any given kicker's various attempt distances

-Implementation: Well, we'd need a baseline to start from, presumably drawn from some data set of fairly recent FOF outcomes. But if we knew that a kicker taking a 42 yard attempt has, on balance, a 71% chance of making that kick... then the expected outcome from the play is 0.71 x 3 = 2.13 points. So, if he actually makes the kick, he netted his team +0.87 points over that baseline, and if he misses, he cost them -2.13 points. Extend that logic to all the attempts for FGs and PATs over a season/career, and we could have a reasonable metric for that guy's value, from kick attempts, over that stretch of time - the sum of those net outcomes.

-What we'd need to start with: A FOF data set we'd consider reliable, to establish those base expectation values. And then, eventually, a way to get this into add-on tools, or a web applet, or whatever you nifty coding types might come up with, to have this evaluation tool handy.



Poke holes in this, by all means.