For those of us who are going miss our fantasy football fix, this would be a little bit of pigskin methadone to help us come in for a soft landing. The idea is really simple: up to six people draft a standard fantasy starting lineup (QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, WR, TE, K, DEF) from among the NFL teams that made the playoffs. Those players then accumulate fantasy points according to a typical scoring set up (20/10/10, 6 for TDs, etc.), and at the end of the playoffs the team with the most points wins. No benches, no substitutions, so when you draft you have to balance a player’s typical per game fantasy value against the likelihood that his team will play multiple games.
Because there’s no roster management, and since we’d be drafting so few players, we could manage the whole thing (including the draft) on the Straight Dope. Now, since there’d be no pre-ranking or auto-draft, participants would have to be 100% sure they could make the draft (or that they could give plenty of forewarning if they wind up having to back out), and have at least a pretty good idea of which players are on the various playoff teams.
You really can’t have more than 6 teams taking part, but if there was a lot of interest we could theoretically split up into multiple leagues. The draft(s) would most likely occur on the Thursday or Friday before the start of the playoffs.
So, any interest?
I’m game for whatever; the system outlined in the OP is fine by me.
But as an alternative let me flesh out the redraft idea. The league would be eight fantasy players playing a two week regular season with a two week playoff. The regular season would be straight points, no head to head. The playoffs would be head to head.
Rosters would be QB, RB, WR, WR, TE, K, DEF so that everyone gets a starter at every position. Wildcard weekend we do an eight man draft. Divisional round those same eight players do another draft. Add the points scored for the two weeks, the top four scores move on to playoffs.
Championship round is the first playoff week, four fantasy players draft from those four teams. Two winners move on to a final Superbowl draft, where you only draft from the two Superbowl teams.
With seven roster spots and eight players, that’s 56 total draft picks at most. That could be done via regular SDMB postings throughout the week. Draft starts this Sunday as soon as the Jets-Bengals game ends with whomever has first pick just posting their pick whenever they can. (Sooner is better.) Each player in turn keeps checking thread and posting their pick when it’s their turn. In a pinch we could do some sort of chat on Thursday or Friday to finish off the draft if we’re running behind.
Scoring system is irrelevant, but since it would be hand tabulated the simpler the better. Ideally the defensive scoring would be crazy punitive like the keeper league, meaning you very much don’t want to get stuck with the shittiest D. heh. (Much like you really don’t want to be the poor schmuck starting Mark Sanchez.)
I like the idea without redrafting, actually. It adds a heavy prediction factor to the game - the player who gets second tier players but they’re actually playing on championship weekend might beat the guy who has stars on a team that lost in the divisional round. There would be additional strategy in the form of possibly choosing multiple players in one position as backups to ensure that you have certain positions filled come playoff time - we’d have to have a bench for that reason.
A redraft league would be fun too.
FYI, ESPN appears to be doing a Salary-Cap version already if we wanted to be lazy and let them do the leg work. Granted it’s a salary cap style game so it’s quite a bit different than the proposal here. Not sure if Yahoo is going to flip their Salary Cap league into the playoffs once the regular season is over, but it’s not posted now.
That said, I’d be eager for any excuse to do another draft!
I prefer the system suggested in the op rather than the re draft idea. I do think we can go higher than 6 though. 8 teams will make rbs kind of tight, but there are enough platoons that it is doable.
I’ve been away from my computer on vacation, so if I missed it, I understand. But I’d be interested in joining.
I’m with Senor with the idea that we shouldn’t redraft each round. If you want AP, Brees, Manning, or the like, you have to wait for the divisional playoffs before you get to score. It does give the wildcard players an extra week of scoring, but it’s also a lot tougher (especially this year) to figure out which team is going to advance. It shifts the focus a bit from knowing individual players to more team knowledge (and guessing) which teams are going to advance.
Just my 2 cents.
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! May it be a healthy, wealthy, and wise one for you all.
I’m down with that. My original thinking was that this is totally contrary to what FF is all about. It’s the equivalent of having your FF championship during week 17. But then again I’ve lobbied to do exactly that, so count me in.
11 posters have expressed an interest so far (myself included). I’m thinking there’s room for one more. We could split into two leagues, or do one, but reduce the roster size (1 RB, 2 WR). My *guess *would be that, without a draft app to help us move things along and keep track of draftees, two small leagues might be better than one big one. Splitting up would also let us have two different draft dates, making it less likely that someone would be unable to participate.
