Sunday is one of Mitch Kiper’s favorite days. Pancakes, beer shits, leftover pizza, leftover pizza shits… just by the sheer amount of extra time spent on the toilet, Sunday’s reputation as a day of R&R is well justified in Mitch Kiper’s book (coming out in 2019 to a self-publisher near you!).

But this Sunday was extra special, because there was a trade. A rare gem of a post-draft, pre-season trade, and an even rarer gem of a trade involving a 1st round draft pick and a… DEFENSE?! What was Haymitch Golden thinking? Are the Nickelsnatchers going to have to move on to their 3rd GM in 4 seasons? Mitch Kiper had to dig. He’s sure the Kai tumblr won’t want him spilling their secrets, but Mitch Kiper has never let fear stop him. He charges forward against the wind, a solo knight on a stable steed of numbers and hair concrete.

This article will take the perspective of Gakusei Kai, trying to examine their reasoning in making such a move, while also attempting to poke as many holes in their reasoning as possible. We’d do the same for Hammerfest, but frankly, their perspective is easier to understand, and this article is going to be long enough as is. KAI’s mind is a dangerous, busy place.

So before we start tackling numbers, Mitch Kiper wants to acknowledge that there are a few vague, circumstantial arguments for and against picking a top tier defense that he does not want to address, because they will take too much effort to quantify, or in some cases are not realistically quantifiable. Most of them deal with opportunity cost, and how selecting a top defense vs. a 1st round pick affects the other choices a team can make.

- PRO: OPPORTUNITY COST (BENCH SPACE) – Signing a top tier defense allows a dynasty team to start them nearly every week without worry. This eliminates the need for any more than two defenses on a total roster, and could even allow for 1 defense + a streamer on their bye week. This allows a valuable roster slot to be used on an extra developmental RB or WR, instead of a mix of D/STs that you can only hope will catch the hot hand.

- PRO: OPPORTUNITY COST (WAIVER WIRE) – Waiver slots are valuable, even more so now that the total roster size is expanded. There will be fewer chances to pick up quality players mid-season. Streaming defenses is an unnecessary drain on a team’s waiver priorities, all to select from a pool of the worst D/STs and hope that their matchup will give them a slight bonus over what is quite honestly a very low points floor.

- CON: OPPORTUNITY COST (DRAFT) – Because of the roster expansion, there will be fewer chances to pick up valuable players mid-season, which means the best way to cheap talent will be through the draft. Trading away a 1st rounder gives up one of KAI’s best chances to land a star.  

- CON: YOU JUST TRADED FOR A F***ING DEFENSE, YOU MORON: Who is Mitch Kiper to argue against conventional wisdom? Common fantasy knowledge says “Don’t ever do this stupid thing, you dipshit.” Either KAI has a genius contrarian idea, or they are throwing darts into the wind. Hopefully the following analysis will give us a clearer picture of the potential value (or lack thereof) of such a trade.

PART ONE: Player-to-player Comparisons – Raw Points (using the Composite FPts method)

This first section outlays one of the strongest cases in KAI’s favor. In it, we’re going to do a blind comparison of several players in the NFL, selected for various reasons, but mostly for having similar Composite Points totals.

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Reminder: Composite Points is a blend of 2018 CBS Projections + 3 Year Avg Point Totals. Mitch Kiper prefers this measure because it gives value to past performance, while also allowing for projections based on new roster situations, rookies, etc. The one caveat to this statistic is that all rookies are given a “0” avg. by CBS, since they have no historical data. Therefore, Mitch Kiper has had to weigh the composite points projections slightly towards projections so rookies can be adequately ranked by %ile.

The projection vs. historical average weighting blend is designed so a top rookie can be ranked as reasonably and realistically as possible—i.e. Saquon Barkley has an 85% composite percentile, which places him in the top 18 RBs, and in Mitch Kiper’s “Starter” category. Typical rookies are also more or less reasonably ranked by composite, i.e. Royce Freeman, who has a 58% composite, placing him in the “Spot Start/Flex” category for this current year. Obviously there is going to be some potential undercutting (Saquon could easily be top 10 or even top 5), but the point of Composite FPts is to be conservative as a measure.

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So without any other pre-explanation, here are the players Mitch Kiper has chosen to compare:

At first glance, without seeing any of the names or positions, we can see that the players are all reasonably similar from a raw points production, aside from the last one (who is included for reasons we’ll see later). They are all in the top 4-6% of the NFL player pool in terms of points production. One of these fantasy players is the Jaguars D/ST (obviously). But who are the others? Are they scrubs, average fantasy performers, or players that others wouldn’t scoff at trading a 1st round pick for? How does the Jaguars points production match up to other fantasy players, and does it even come close to 1st rounder production?

Let’s start pulling back the curtain with the top 3:

Here we have several extremely high performers: #2 OVR TE Rob Gronkowski, and two WRs, Amari Cooper and T.Y. Hilton, who are in the top 15% of all rostered Dynosteve players. This places them in Mitch Kiper’s “Starter” category—not stud must-starts, but solid players who outperform most of the league on a week-to-week basis, and should only be benched in rare matchup circumstances.

Mitch Kiper believes all three players here are worth 1st round picks. In fact, past league chats with anonymous team sources have proven that at least two of these players’ owners won’t accept an offer for these players involving anything less than a 1st round pick, plus additional consideration.

And then of course we have T.Y. Hilton, who has actually been involved in a 1st Round pick trade before.

Obviously there were other pieces, but when you look at what LONG gave up for the players he received, there’s more or less enough here to ascribe at least one low 1st round pick’s value to T.Y. Hilton.

Just to recap: you can argue the individual cases, but at least one of these players is worth an undisputed 1st round pick trade, and they all score in similar Composite Points range—their 3 year averages combined with 2018 projections—to the Jaguars D/ST.

Let’s move on to the next section of the list.

Here we have three players who have actually been selected with 1st round picks: Saquon Barkley (2018 1.01), Dalvin Cook (2017 1.04), and O.J. Howard (2017 1.08). For reference sake, let’s remember that the pick traded away by KAI to HAMM was a 2019 YESH 1st Rounder. Currently, Mitch Kiper projects YESH to come in 2nd place. Based on his roster composition, It would take a dramatic change (admittedly not unprecedented) for YESH to fall to the toilet bracket in the coming year.

Based on these composite numbers alone, the Jaguars D/ST contributes enough raw points over the course of a season to match up and even surpass some of the best 1st round picks you can make—and way more than even the above-average picks (i.e. O.J. Howard).

Now when we look at recent draftees with Composite FPts, we have to take it with a grain of salt. Their numbers are depressed by a lack of 3 Year average. Granted, this is done slightly on purpose, because rookie projections are routinely overblown. Based on these composite projections, Barkley and Cook are projected to average 10 ppw.

“Well that’s horse shit,” you might be saying, “Both RBs have a significant chance of outperforming those numbers. Composite is unnecessarily tanking them because of the lack of 3-year data. Gronk, Amari, and T.Y. we get, but the Jaguars do not realistically match up to these young players.”

Fair point, you. Let’s pull some former picks from the 2nd half of the 2016 rookie draft (the former rookies who have the most historical data, outside of our auction draft), and see how their composite stacks up.

These were the final five picks of the 2016 1st round. How do they look against our block of comparison players, and more specifically, the Jaguars?

Michael Thomas significantly outscores our players. He would be an argument against giving up a 1st round pick for a defense. Jordan Howard lends credence to the claim, too, though his advantage over the Jaguars in raw points is less than 1.0 PPW. The other players, the law firm of Boyd Prosise & Perkins? One is a Dynosteve Free Agent, and the other two are kept likely as handcuffs, considering their playing time thus far hasn’t materialized in a significant way. Both have newer, more promising rookies in front of them on their NFL depth charts, mitigating any future upside as well.

Of the picks in the 1.07-1.12 range, there was a 20% chance of reaching a PPW level to match the Jaguars D/ST. There was a 20% chance of matching it, and a 60% chance of failure. The Jaguars can perform worse, but they can’t get cut by the NFL. The chances of the Jaguars falling enough to be cut by a Dynosteve team is also unlikely for at least a season or two. The only way to acquire them would be by trade. Some may never want to give away that chance at a Michael Thomas; but when the other likelihoods are matching the Jags performance or worse, the trade doesn’t seem half bad from a raw points perspective.

“But wait,” you might be saying, “Raw points don’t tell the whole story. Don’t you, Mitch Kiper, always argue that %ile, as well as point differential in position battles, are also important? What are the negative aspects to the KAI side of the trade that you’re ignoring?

Good question, you. I do have answers for your concerns, and some strong arguments against the KAI trade to balance against this long Part One. However, that will have to wait until tomorrow, for the next part in the GAKUSEI KAI-HAMMERFEST TRADE ANAYLSIS MINI-SERIES.