King is Dead, long live the King. Of Punting.
Swantavius King is shortly about to announce his retirement; this did not come as a shock to anyone as he is the oldest player in the league. At only 353 TPE, King will be bowing out after a 13 year career that saw him peak at more TPE than anyone else in league history. He did so at a usually unheralded position, Kicker, but was stalwart from basically the beginning of his career. He's had numerous finishes as one of the best players at his position in the league, and currently boasts great stats across the board, minus one single area.
This one area has at the very least a decent shot at keeping the league record holder in points, extra points, field goals, and many punting statistics outside of the Hall.
King's status as one of the greatest Punters of all time is unimpeachable; in sheer volume he has the 6th most punts and the 5th most yardage, the longest punt in league history, the most punts inside the 20, the 2nd best average and the 9th best ratio of punts inside the 20. 44% of King's punts were fielded inside the 20. Only a few retired players can even compete with King's legendary punting ability, all of which are Hall of Famers or Hall of Fame worthy: Dean Jackson, Micycle McCormick, Matty McDairmid, Alex Dasistwirklichseinnachname, even among this group it's a very short list. There's also a couple of players who are competitive with him now but might not remain that way when their careers are wrapping up in Ray Baker and Zenzeroni Xystarch II.
Compared to the Median Hall of Fame placekicker, Swantavius King looks like not just a slam dunk Hall of Famer, but one of the greatest to ever actually put their foot to the ball. There is one slight problem, which is that sim differences both intentional and unintentional have made it so that punters in the new sim are resoundingly better than punters in the old sim, but even then it's still jaw dropping. The median Hall of Fame Punter has an average 46.96 yard punt, with a 19% rate of punts inside the 20. King's marks are 48.50 and 44%. The only worthwhile argument that King is not one of the greatest punters in ISFL history is that he is the single greatest punter.
But that's not enough to get a player in the Hall. Matty McDairmid is in my opinion the perfect example of this, as a fellow Inner Circle Hall of Fame Punter that did not manage to make the Hall. Kicking has always seemed to be the more important of the Kicker/Punter split; whenever people list their greatest placekickers in ISFL history they're likely to place more emphasis on the kicking stat than the punting stat. And this is where King's Hall candidacy falters.
King's stats on Extra Points are great; they also matter a third as much as his stats on Field Goals. As such, despite him blowing out the median Hall of Fame kicker at extra points (98.81% to 96.38%), King's Hall of Fame status will undoubtedly rest on his Field Goal percent. Indeed, an interesting statistic is that there are more Hall of Famers in the bottom 20 (both Alex D and Turk Turkleton) all time by XP% than in the top 20 (just Jake Fencik).
The median Hall of Fame Kicker has a 90.98% make rate on field goals. King has an 83.98% rate as of writing, a full 7% worse. That's about 30 field goals worse than he should be. The difference between the highest placekicker of all time (who is, of course, in the Hall) and the lowest kicker in the Hall is 19 places and 4.3%, bottoming out at 88.68%. This is a smaller gap, both in terms of places and percent, than from said lowest kicker in the Hall and King himself, with Swantavius qualifying as the 47th best kicker of all time by straight FG%. Some of this has to do with what King's been asked to do over his career compared to the Hall of Famers, but not all of it.
From 18-29 is a range where the median Hall of Famer hasn't missed a field goal, and no single Hall of Famer has missed more than one. King is perfectly in line here, making all of his 127 field goals from this distance. This is 29.1% of his total attempted field goals, a little under the average Hall of Famer. He's not as lucky as, say, Kulture Fulture or Dougie Smalls, but he's nowhere near as unlucky as Micycle McCormick or Jake Fencik in terms of the rate of freebies. King actually beats out the average Hall of Famer from 30-39; the median is 95.75% and King, having made 90/92 from this range, is at 97.83%. Only one kicker with a significant amount of attempts from this range is better all time, which coincidentally enough is Matty McDairmid, a non-Hall of Famer. This range is still really easy for most kickers, but King is actually a little unlucky in terms of Field Goals from this range. Only 21.1% of his kicks were in this bracket, which is a full 7% lower than the next lowest Hall of Famer.
Being asked to make field goals from 50+ yards is terrible for a career. Only 5 people have made 50 yarders at a rate over 85%, and only 13 have made them at a 75% rate or higher. As such, being asked to make a bunch of these murders a player's make rate by itself. As you might expect for a kicker with such a long career, King has been asked to make more 50+ yarders than anyone else in league history; he's at 65 with the next closest being 49. At 14.9% this is over 5% more than the average Hall of Fame kicker was asked to kick in their career, but it's hard to say that helps King out that much when he's not that good at this sort of kick. With a 63.08% make rate, he's still decently below the 70% median mark for a Hall of Fame kicker. He's 39th among all kickers from this range, which is just above the halfway mark for all ISFL kickers. Still, there are the seeds of an argument excusing King's awful field goal percentage here.
With just the information King has been a great kicker at anything up to a 39 yard field goal through the course of his career, has been generally unlucky with only 50% of his field goals coming from under that range, and while he's not great at field goals from over 50 yards out, he's not awful at them either. He seems like he should be a Hall of Famer with that in mind. But I skipped over a specific range for a reason: King is infamously awful on field goals from 40-49 yards out. The seeds of the argument that King is a Hall of Fame kicker that has merely been asked to kick from longer distances than the average Hall of Famer get unceremoniously doused with weedkiller and left to rot in the sun when a Sarasota drive stalls out from the 23-32 yard lines.
40-49 yards is the inflection point from field goal you should make basically every time to field goal you will most likely make in the sim, it seems. Only 13 people are at or above 85% from this range all time, and 36 people are at 80% or higher. The 2nd number includes every Hall of Famer and basically everyone who you could possibly see in the Hall, with one very notable exception.
King has attempted 153 field goals from 40-49 yards over the course of his career, a record similar to his record for field goals from 20-29 yards and over 50 yards. But this one's a bit larger, the next highest mark is 117; King's taken 36 field goals more than anyone else from this range and might extend that lead before the end of the season. King has only made 109 of those 153 field goals, a rate of 71.24%. Technically, taking over 35% of your field goals from this range is dramatically unlucky, especially when combined with how many field goals he's taken from over 50. I've made arguments about kickers like this before, such as McDairmid belonging in the Hall, or McCormick being the single best kicker of all time even with the half career handicap due to this. But I feel like a percentage this bad is past the point where that argument holds weight. Missing over a quarter of one's attempts from this range is inexcusable for a Hall of Fame career, and King has only gotten worse at this range in the twilight of his career. At this point, King would need to make his next 23 field goals from this range just to reach 75%, and it seems unlikely that he even has 23 field goal attempts left in his career.
The median Hall of Fame kicker from this range is 83.76% accurate. The worst Hall of Fame kicker from this range, Jake Fencik, is at 80.56%. Of 86 kickers in league history, King is 63rd in accuracy from this range. He's over 9% worse than the worst, and 12% worse from the median. To compare, 63rd in accuracy from other ranges would be 94.87% accurate from 20-29, 87.5% accurate from 30-39, and 50% accurate from 50+.
Hall of Fame kickers can survive having one thing they're catastrophically bad at, at least sometimes. Dougie Smalls was nearly as bad at 30-39 yarders as King is at 40-49 yarders, placing 56th among all kickers, but Smalls was not a slam dunk candidate and is a kicker who really only made it as a result of bad prior awards voting compounded on by bad Hall of Fame voting. Outside of the worst Kicker in the Hall by a mile, there's a lot of bad extra point kickers in the Hall: Kulture Fulture at 53rd, Dougie Smalls at 56th yet again, Dean Jackson at 58th, Micycle McCormick at 63rd, Alex D at 71st, and Turk Turkleton at 75th, but all of these are bad extra point kickers, which is only costing their team 1 point about a 20th of the time, compared to King being bad at a field goal range costing his team 3 points nearly 3/10ths of the time. The other really, really bad mark attached to a Hall of Famer is Dean Jackson being T-57th in FGs from over 50 yards out, but this, ironically enough considering what King's claim to fame is, is mostly a sample size problem. Jackson was 8/15 for his career from 50+, which isn't really enough to hurt his legacy as a great kicker from 49 yards and shorter.
King has the opposite problem; he had the leg to make kicks from 40-49, and oh so very often, he missed them.
King could still make the Hall; the voters seem to like sheer volume stats more than I do (how else would Dougie Smalls make it as long as literally any deep dive was carried out), and King has those in spades. He will retire as one of the greatest punters in league history for certain, if not the single greatest to ever grace the sport. He also has more awards than my personal choice for the best kicker/punter currently not in the Hall. But if King manages to make the Hall, he will be a massive outlier in just how bad he was as a kicker, and it all comes down to a single, tough but makeable range, that King was never able to conquer.
Swantavius King is shortly about to announce his retirement; this did not come as a shock to anyone as he is the oldest player in the league. At only 353 TPE, King will be bowing out after a 13 year career that saw him peak at more TPE than anyone else in league history. He did so at a usually unheralded position, Kicker, but was stalwart from basically the beginning of his career. He's had numerous finishes as one of the best players at his position in the league, and currently boasts great stats across the board, minus one single area.
This one area has at the very least a decent shot at keeping the league record holder in points, extra points, field goals, and many punting statistics outside of the Hall.
King's status as one of the greatest Punters of all time is unimpeachable; in sheer volume he has the 6th most punts and the 5th most yardage, the longest punt in league history, the most punts inside the 20, the 2nd best average and the 9th best ratio of punts inside the 20. 44% of King's punts were fielded inside the 20. Only a few retired players can even compete with King's legendary punting ability, all of which are Hall of Famers or Hall of Fame worthy: Dean Jackson, Micycle McCormick, Matty McDairmid, Alex Dasistwirklichseinnachname, even among this group it's a very short list. There's also a couple of players who are competitive with him now but might not remain that way when their careers are wrapping up in Ray Baker and Zenzeroni Xystarch II.
Compared to the Median Hall of Fame placekicker, Swantavius King looks like not just a slam dunk Hall of Famer, but one of the greatest to ever actually put their foot to the ball. There is one slight problem, which is that sim differences both intentional and unintentional have made it so that punters in the new sim are resoundingly better than punters in the old sim, but even then it's still jaw dropping. The median Hall of Fame Punter has an average 46.96 yard punt, with a 19% rate of punts inside the 20. King's marks are 48.50 and 44%. The only worthwhile argument that King is not one of the greatest punters in ISFL history is that he is the single greatest punter.
But that's not enough to get a player in the Hall. Matty McDairmid is in my opinion the perfect example of this, as a fellow Inner Circle Hall of Fame Punter that did not manage to make the Hall. Kicking has always seemed to be the more important of the Kicker/Punter split; whenever people list their greatest placekickers in ISFL history they're likely to place more emphasis on the kicking stat than the punting stat. And this is where King's Hall candidacy falters.
King's stats on Extra Points are great; they also matter a third as much as his stats on Field Goals. As such, despite him blowing out the median Hall of Fame kicker at extra points (98.81% to 96.38%), King's Hall of Fame status will undoubtedly rest on his Field Goal percent. Indeed, an interesting statistic is that there are more Hall of Famers in the bottom 20 (both Alex D and Turk Turkleton) all time by XP% than in the top 20 (just Jake Fencik).
The median Hall of Fame Kicker has a 90.98% make rate on field goals. King has an 83.98% rate as of writing, a full 7% worse. That's about 30 field goals worse than he should be. The difference between the highest placekicker of all time (who is, of course, in the Hall) and the lowest kicker in the Hall is 19 places and 4.3%, bottoming out at 88.68%. This is a smaller gap, both in terms of places and percent, than from said lowest kicker in the Hall and King himself, with Swantavius qualifying as the 47th best kicker of all time by straight FG%. Some of this has to do with what King's been asked to do over his career compared to the Hall of Famers, but not all of it.
From 18-29 is a range where the median Hall of Famer hasn't missed a field goal, and no single Hall of Famer has missed more than one. King is perfectly in line here, making all of his 127 field goals from this distance. This is 29.1% of his total attempted field goals, a little under the average Hall of Famer. He's not as lucky as, say, Kulture Fulture or Dougie Smalls, but he's nowhere near as unlucky as Micycle McCormick or Jake Fencik in terms of the rate of freebies. King actually beats out the average Hall of Famer from 30-39; the median is 95.75% and King, having made 90/92 from this range, is at 97.83%. Only one kicker with a significant amount of attempts from this range is better all time, which coincidentally enough is Matty McDairmid, a non-Hall of Famer. This range is still really easy for most kickers, but King is actually a little unlucky in terms of Field Goals from this range. Only 21.1% of his kicks were in this bracket, which is a full 7% lower than the next lowest Hall of Famer.
Being asked to make field goals from 50+ yards is terrible for a career. Only 5 people have made 50 yarders at a rate over 85%, and only 13 have made them at a 75% rate or higher. As such, being asked to make a bunch of these murders a player's make rate by itself. As you might expect for a kicker with such a long career, King has been asked to make more 50+ yarders than anyone else in league history; he's at 65 with the next closest being 49. At 14.9% this is over 5% more than the average Hall of Fame kicker was asked to kick in their career, but it's hard to say that helps King out that much when he's not that good at this sort of kick. With a 63.08% make rate, he's still decently below the 70% median mark for a Hall of Fame kicker. He's 39th among all kickers from this range, which is just above the halfway mark for all ISFL kickers. Still, there are the seeds of an argument excusing King's awful field goal percentage here.
With just the information King has been a great kicker at anything up to a 39 yard field goal through the course of his career, has been generally unlucky with only 50% of his field goals coming from under that range, and while he's not great at field goals from over 50 yards out, he's not awful at them either. He seems like he should be a Hall of Famer with that in mind. But I skipped over a specific range for a reason: King is infamously awful on field goals from 40-49 yards out. The seeds of the argument that King is a Hall of Fame kicker that has merely been asked to kick from longer distances than the average Hall of Famer get unceremoniously doused with weedkiller and left to rot in the sun when a Sarasota drive stalls out from the 23-32 yard lines.
40-49 yards is the inflection point from field goal you should make basically every time to field goal you will most likely make in the sim, it seems. Only 13 people are at or above 85% from this range all time, and 36 people are at 80% or higher. The 2nd number includes every Hall of Famer and basically everyone who you could possibly see in the Hall, with one very notable exception.
King has attempted 153 field goals from 40-49 yards over the course of his career, a record similar to his record for field goals from 20-29 yards and over 50 yards. But this one's a bit larger, the next highest mark is 117; King's taken 36 field goals more than anyone else from this range and might extend that lead before the end of the season. King has only made 109 of those 153 field goals, a rate of 71.24%. Technically, taking over 35% of your field goals from this range is dramatically unlucky, especially when combined with how many field goals he's taken from over 50. I've made arguments about kickers like this before, such as McDairmid belonging in the Hall, or McCormick being the single best kicker of all time even with the half career handicap due to this. But I feel like a percentage this bad is past the point where that argument holds weight. Missing over a quarter of one's attempts from this range is inexcusable for a Hall of Fame career, and King has only gotten worse at this range in the twilight of his career. At this point, King would need to make his next 23 field goals from this range just to reach 75%, and it seems unlikely that he even has 23 field goal attempts left in his career.
The median Hall of Fame kicker from this range is 83.76% accurate. The worst Hall of Fame kicker from this range, Jake Fencik, is at 80.56%. Of 86 kickers in league history, King is 63rd in accuracy from this range. He's over 9% worse than the worst, and 12% worse from the median. To compare, 63rd in accuracy from other ranges would be 94.87% accurate from 20-29, 87.5% accurate from 30-39, and 50% accurate from 50+.
Hall of Fame kickers can survive having one thing they're catastrophically bad at, at least sometimes. Dougie Smalls was nearly as bad at 30-39 yarders as King is at 40-49 yarders, placing 56th among all kickers, but Smalls was not a slam dunk candidate and is a kicker who really only made it as a result of bad prior awards voting compounded on by bad Hall of Fame voting. Outside of the worst Kicker in the Hall by a mile, there's a lot of bad extra point kickers in the Hall: Kulture Fulture at 53rd, Dougie Smalls at 56th yet again, Dean Jackson at 58th, Micycle McCormick at 63rd, Alex D at 71st, and Turk Turkleton at 75th, but all of these are bad extra point kickers, which is only costing their team 1 point about a 20th of the time, compared to King being bad at a field goal range costing his team 3 points nearly 3/10ths of the time. The other really, really bad mark attached to a Hall of Famer is Dean Jackson being T-57th in FGs from over 50 yards out, but this, ironically enough considering what King's claim to fame is, is mostly a sample size problem. Jackson was 8/15 for his career from 50+, which isn't really enough to hurt his legacy as a great kicker from 49 yards and shorter.
King has the opposite problem; he had the leg to make kicks from 40-49, and oh so very often, he missed them.
King could still make the Hall; the voters seem to like sheer volume stats more than I do (how else would Dougie Smalls make it as long as literally any deep dive was carried out), and King has those in spades. He will retire as one of the greatest punters in league history for certain, if not the single greatest to ever grace the sport. He also has more awards than my personal choice for the best kicker/punter currently not in the Hall. But if King manages to make the Hall, he will be a massive outlier in just how bad he was as a kicker, and it all comes down to a single, tough but makeable range, that King was never able to conquer.
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