There comes a time in every now-collapsed society when a symbol appears of their impending doom: Hawaiians seeing the ships of European explorers bringing all sorts of new disease over the waves of the Pacific Ocean. The Indigenous Peoples of North America seeing the ships of European settlers bringing land ownership disputes over the Atlantic. Prosperous African tribes seeing the ships of Europeans bringing the demand for slaves over the Mediterranean Sea.
Actually, come to think of it, there might only be one symbol of the impending doom of a culture: White people. In the case of the collapse of fantasy football auction culture, that certainly holds true: This symbol is the current average auction value of Justin Tucker.
I like to think of myself as the leading fantasy football auction information gatherer. I regularly get full 10-team auctions with a variety of people and document what every player goes for. You can see all my data, here. As of the time of publishing this article, I have run 8 ten-team auctions, most of which were full of all-humans who stuck around for the majority of the auction. At most, I had one bot. Here’s the Justin Tucker breakdown:
The first number next to his name is the average value of Tucker in my auctions. Now, even if you are not familiar with auctions, certainly you can see that this is the same value as Alexander Mattison, a highly sought-after running back in fantasy football. That’s ridiculous. There’s no logical reason for this: Even if you have some pathological need to feel bad about yourself, you could just buy Deshaun Watson (shown above) and save yourself a dollar.
The numbers on the right columns are the minimum, maximum, and mode (the most frequently occurring value). It says that Justin Tucker has not once gone for less than $3. Now, I am known to buck the common fantasy adage of only paying $1 for a kicker: If it means not having to worry about streaming a kicker and having to look up stupid stuff like wind speed in open-air stadiums Sunday morning, I say that’s worth 2 imaginary fun bucks. But $3 for a kicker is absolute madness: There are so many better uses for those 2, or in the case of the maximum, 6 extra fantasy football auction dollars. Here is a list of quality players going for an AAV of $5, in addition to Mattison: Jamaal Williams, Marquise Brown, Treylon Burks, Samaje Perine, and James Cook. I’m sorry, did I say “going for an AAV of $5?” Because I meant to say, “going for an AAV of even less than $5.” People are paying more for Justin Tucker than mid-round players. Tucker is the 79th highest AAV, which means he’s going for the equivalent of a eighth-round pick.
I’d like to point out that Justin Tucker averaged 1.2 fantasy points per game more than the tenth-best kicker in 2022. More importantly, he averaged only 0.1 PPG more than Daniel Carlson and 0.2 PPG more than Jason Myers, two kickers that have gone for exactly $1 in every single auction I’ve held. $5 Justin Tucker is a team-breaking move that is going to warp the fundamental laws of mathematics if it continues. With that comes the eradication of our entire reality.
Don’t destroy reality: Pass on Justin Tucker at the three-dollar mark. This has been my PSA, thank you.
