The Hurry Up: How Do You Price Jordan Reed’s Injury Risk?
August 24, 2017 | By
Brian Malone
The Hurry Up keeps you up to date on the latest news through the filter of RotoViz tools and related content.
“[Jordan Reed] did good. He did everything today. We’re easing him into the lineup. He did some good things in the passing game, we put him in the running game a little bit – did good. He looks well.”
He is a critical part of our offense. We know that, so it is a comfort level when he’s in there.
Source:
Jay Gruden on Jordan Reed, Kirk Cousins and more – Washington Times
A thought experiment:
- If Jordan Reed had an average tight end’s injury risk, where would you draft him?
- If you knew Reed was guaranteed to miss the first six games of the season due to injury, but then he would return without heightened injury risk — just the average risk for a TE — where would you draft him?
The answer to (1) must be “mid-second round, at latest.” Picks 2.06 to 2.10 include
T.Y. Hilton,
Doug Baldwin,
Dez Bryant, and
Rob Gronkowski. Reed has scored at their level on a per-game basis over the past two seasons. And he’s a TE, which makes his production
worth a little more compared to a replacement-level player.
For (2), we have an obvious comparison:
Ezekiel Elliott, who
fell from 1.04 to 2.02when the NFL announced his six-game suspension.
Reed, meanwhile, is available at the 4/5 turn in 12-team leagues. That’s more than two full rounds off of his injury-agnostic price.
Player value based on ADP isn’t linear: the value gap between 1.04 and 2.02, for example, is larger than the gap between 2.06 and 3.08. But you’re getting at least as much discount on Reed as you are on Elliott.
That is to say, Reed is being priced as if he’ll miss six games
more than a typical TE. But Reed hasn’t missed more than five games since his rookie season, when he missed just seven. To be sure, he’s at risk for a season-ending injury — probably even an enhanced risk, even though he’s never had one — but more likely, he misses two or three weeks.
I don’t claim to be an injury expert, but this strikes me as an excessive discount on one of the handful of potential TE difference-makers. In the late fourth round, I’m all over Reed. For more on Reed, check out Cort Smith’s fantasy faceoff
advocating Reed over Travis Kelce (at price).
.
Boom. With the Edelman and Ware injury my team looks pretty dangerous. Cooks gets more targets and Hunt looks like he's the unquestioned 1 now
)
