I’m trying to get rid of kickers in the fantasy league I run, I vote no kickers.
Why don’t we have individual defensive players? They are just as integral to the game of football as kickers. (Answer: because it’s not fun, the same reason kickers suck.) Having a good kicker doesn’t matter squat in fantasy. What other position can you DROP your starter for a bye week, pick someone else up, and still pick your original starter back up on Thursday without using a waiver claim?
IDP doesn’t work because there is no real variance in the numbers they put up, meaning that it truly doesn’t matter who you pick as long as they’re in the top 100 IDP scorers for the week. Kickers have a huge variance, making your choice in kicker a much higher relevance than your choice in IDP.
I vote standard starting roster. Expanding the roster will reduce strategic decision-making by a decent factor, I would think. As I understand it, the thrust of this league is to have room on your bench to keep a bunch of future prospects. With an expanded starting lineup, it will become a trivial matter to simply start the current players and keep your prospects on the bench.
With a standard roster, there will be many more decisions to make about who the best players to start are. I don’t have any experience to back this up, of course, but this is my best guess.
I think for most rosters it’s actually the opposite - you’ll have 2 or 3 clear cut starters, and you plug them in every week barring injury or bye week, whereas if you had more starting spots you’d have to make harder decisions about your middle or lower tier talent.
To take some real examples from the all pro league (although obviously this league will run deeper so it’ll be even more of a difference):
Retrovertigo’s WRs… Andre Johnson, Anquan Boldin, Santana Moss, Steve Breaston, Percy Harvin. Need to pick 2 to start? Johnson and Boldin, slam dunk every week. No real decision. But what if you needed 3? Moss vs Breaston vs Harvin (if he’s any good) is a tough decision.
Petey’s WRs: WRs - Calvin Johnson, Terrell Owens, Bernard Berrian, Kevin Walter, Tedd Ginn Jr., Chris Chambers. Again, Johnson/Owens are going to start every game barring injury. If he had to pick 3 or 4 WRs instead, who would you take?
Omni’s RBs - RBs - DeAngelo Williams, Jonathan Stewart, Beanie Wells, Ahmad Bradshaw, Fred Taylor. He can get away with starting 1 RB because it’s a flex spot and he has good receivers. So you start Williams. Maybe it’s occasionally a tough decision between RB2 and Eddie Royal. But if he had to pick 3 RBs out of that group - much more of a decision.
The all-pro league isn’t so deep that I can come up with dozens of examples, but our dynasty league will be. We’ll have many more situations where there are 2-3 clear starters at a position and behind them 5 other guys who are guys who can still contribute but aren’t “plug in and forget it” type starters.
So if you have a position of “stud, stud, decent, decent, decent, marginal, marginal, marginal” it’s a trickier decision to start 3 or 4 than it is to start 2, which gives the better fantasy football prognosticators more chance to shine.
Even with 12 or 13 starters, we wouldn’t be that deep, relative to roster size - we’d still have only half our rosters starting, which is less than a 9 starter/7 bench league. You’d still be able to stash away long term projects, and players that are both long term projects yet have some productive use (say, Darren Sproles) would gain value since you’d start them sometimes. It also gives a little more value to currently productive players who don’t have huge sleeper potential, which allows for more strategy options in drafting regarding age, production, and upside.
This isn’t a dealbreaker for me - I’d still love to play in a dynasty league with 9 starters - but I think we’d more fully exploit all the benefits of the format this way.
I think it would result in more meaningful decisions, and more varied rosters from week to week. I’ve wanted to try the deeper starter thing for a while, and this format seems like the perfect place to give it a go.
What is the roster size of a normal dynasty league? Both starters and bench.
I’m trying to find that info, but dynasty leagues aren’t all that common (or at least discussed in detail). In a few places I’ve seen recommended total roster sizes in the 24-30 range, but nothing in the number of starting spots specifically. Dynastyleaguefootball.com recommends that at minimum your league should draft 300 players.
For the scoring system, are we adopting the all-pro system or a modified version of it? I support adopting the whole thing - I know Varlos doesn’t like the yardage bonuses (and they’re a minor thing in the grand scheme of things) or DSTs getting touchdowns. Not sure what else people may object to.
I’m gonna go ahead make a formal, provisional proposal for our scoring settings, just so we have a basis for discussion. Whatever we do will be fairly close to this, and might be this exactly.
Passing Yards 20 yards per point
Passing Touchdowns 4
Interceptions -2
Sacks -0.5
Rushing Yards 10 yards per point
Rushing Touchdowns 6
Receptions 0.5
Reception Yards 10 yards per point
Reception Touchdowns 6
Return Yards 25 yards per point
Return Touchdowns 6
2-Point Conversions 2
Fumbles -1
Fumbles Lost -1
Offensive Fumble Return TD 6
**Field Goals 0-19 Yards 3
Field Goals 20-29 Yards 3
Field Goals 30-39 Yards 3
Field Goals 40-49 Yards 4
Field Goals 50+ Yards 5
Field Goals Missed 0-19 Yards -3
Field Goals Missed 20-29 Yards -2
Field Goals Missed 30-39 Yards -1
Point After Attempt Made 1
Point After Attempt Missed -3
Sack 1
Interception 2
Fumble Recovery 2
Touchdown 6
Safety 4
Block Kick 2
Kickoff and Punt Return Touchdowns 0
Points Allowed 0 points 18
Points Allowed 1-6 points 12
Points Allowed 7-13 points 7
Points Allowed 14-20 points 3
Points Allowed 21-27 points 0
Points Allowed 28-34 points -6
Points Allowed 35+ points -12
** = If we wind up using Kickers.
No one seems to have a real opinion about divisional alignment. If that remains to be the case, I’m going to use alignment #1 from me previous post:
BosWash / Northeast Corridor
VarlosZ – New York, NY
Justin_Bailey – Upstate New York
Ellis Dee – SW Connecticut
furt – Orlando/DC
Midwest
Stringer – Chicago
Hamlet – St. Louis
RetroVertigo – St. Louis
The Mad Hermit – Pittsburgh
Sun Belt
RNATB – Florida
Petey – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
SenorBeef – Las Vegas NV
dalej42 – Phoenix (?), AZ
Of course, other proposals, suggestions, or requests (e.g. “I want to be in the same division as X”) are more than welcome.
As for the question of realigning the divisions every year to aid in parity, I suggest we decide that during the season.
The defense scoring scale looks a bit harsh on the penalty side. I’d prefer the “4” scale: 16 / 12 / 8 / 4 / 0 / -4 / -8.
I’d rather safeties be worth 2, since I don’t see rarity as a valid reason to increase points. For example, the two-point conversion is much rarer than the extra point but it doesn’t get a relative boost. Because safeties are so incredibly rare, it won’t matter either way. Just a conceptual thing. (The fact that it’s so rare as to not matter is what makes boosting them to an arbitrarily large value seem even stranger to me. Why not make offensive fumble return TDs worth 12 while we’re at it?)
Love what you did with turnovers. A perfect compromise between your and my differing opinions on fumbles vs fumbles lost, and the other passing stats are tailored to keep the -2 turnover value in line with the other scoring metrics. Well done.
In short, love the scoring with a couple minor nitpicks.
Divisions look good, though I’d keep the first one’s name as simple as the other two: “Northeast.”
Agreed. Maybe even wait until just after the season, or when the fantasy playoffs start.
Yeah, I know it’s unusually harsh. I just generally like the idea of points allowed being a somewhat bigger part of what makes a fantasy defense, so I wanted to throw that out there. Doing -6 and -12 for the last two columns could lead to a lot of wild swings, might want to tamp those down a bit. I’ll wait to see what other think.
I’m sending out PMs in a moment to get our randomized draft order. The question here is how to handle the whole serpentine draft question, since most people (myself included) think that the standard serpentine draft gives a meaningful advantage to those teams picking at the front of Round 1. Proposals include:
Standard serpentine.
Reverse the draft order after the first two rounds, then do serpentine from that point on. So, the team that picks last in Round 1 will pick first in Rounds 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc.
Reverse the serpentine order *every *two rounds. So, the team that picks last in Round 1 will pick first in Rounds 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, etc.
Standard serpentine, except that the draft order in the 3rd Round only is inverted. So, the team that picks last in Round 1 will pick first in Rounds 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc. According to this page, this method yields the fairest results, but keep in mind that they’re basing that off of pick values that were not arrived at scientifically.
Non-serpentine: standard order for the 1st Round, then reverse order for every subsequent Round. So, the team that picks last in Round 1 will pick first in Rounds, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.
I’m personally in favor of #2 as a way to level the playing field without being too radical, even though other options might well be fairer.
Ellis, how much work would be involved in running another couple of draft order proposals through your spreadsheet (or whatever it is)? This is mostly idle curiosity, so if it would take you more than 10 or 20 minutes please don’t bother, but I was wondering what the numbers for Beef’s proposal (#5) would look like if you gave a little more help to the teams at the top of Round 1. So, what if you did serpentine for the first, say, 6 Rounds before switching over to “Team 12 picks first every Round.”
Or what if you do serpentine for 4 Rounds, then go 12-1 for the next 5 Rounds, then 1-12 for the next 5, then go 12-1 in Rounds 5, 6, and 7, then 1-12 in Rounds 8-12, then 12-1 in Rounds 13-16.
Basically, I like the concept of breaking up the sandwich picks, and I’m wondering if there’s a way to do it that’s fair. It’s very unlikely we’ll wind up using one of these ideas on Wednesday.
Whoops, just realized my last post was partially incomprehensible. The third paragraph should read:
“Or what if you do serpentine for 4 Rounds, then go 12-1 in Rounds 5, 6, and 7, then 1-12 in Rounds 8-12, then 12-1 in Rounds 13-16.”
And, last but not least, there’s the question of how to handles waiver priority. It’s been proposed that one way to address imbalance would be give the worst teams perpetual waiver priority, rather than rotating priority as teams make claims. There are a couple ways to do this. Possible waiver systems include:
Standard rotative waivers. When a team makes a claim, it gets bumped to the end of the line. Initial waiver order set according to inverse draft order.
Free Agent Acquisition Budgets. Every team gets a set dollar amount to spend on waived players at the start of the year, and teams bid on waiver-wire players in a silent auction. Highest bid gets the player, and the amount of the bid is deducted from its acquisition budget.
Reverse order of standings. Every week, waiver priority is reseeded according to the standings, worst-to-first. A successful claim bumps a team to the end of the line for that week, but everyone is reseeded according to standings again after the waiver period. From Season 2 on, waiver priority would be based on last season’s end-of-year standings for the first, say, 5 weeks (so that a very good team that happens to start slow doesn’t snatch up the next Marques Colston).
Reverse standings, with shifting worst 4. Some people like the idea of #3, but feel it might give too much of an edge to a single bad team that always has first dibs. So, what we would do is have two tiers, the worst 4 and everybody else. In the everybody else tier, the best 8 teams in the standings would be ranked according to record, worst-to-first, and reseeded every week on that basis. For the worst four teams, waiver priority within their tier would be determined by the number of points scored over their last two weeks. Ellis talked about it in this post. Again, for the first 5 or so weeks we’d work off of the previous year’s final standings.
Keep in mind that if you voice support for either #3 or #4, it will be assumed that you’re in favor of seeding waiver priority according to standings in one way or another – so, if five players want #1, four want #3, and three want #4, we’d probably go with #3. If your preferences don’t work that way, be sure to mention that.
I vote NAY on the kicker.
I also vote for the #2 option for the drafting order.
As for the waiver wire I’d vote for the #4 option
I’m not knowledgeable enough on waiver systems, so I got no opinion on that but I like the idea of option 3 for draft order and I vote YES for kickers, they’re part of the game after all.
I should add that options 1 and 2 are joined together in the same way as 3 and 4. That is, if you say you prefer either #1 or #2, it will be assumed that you’re generally *not *in favor of reseeding waiver priority according to standings, unless you specify otherwise.
When I was on the fence about joining the league, the thing that clinched it for me was using standard starting rosters. An expanded starting roster doesn’t appeal to me at all.
However, don’t misinterpret this as an ultimatum in any way. I’ll play hard no matter what, staying active every week and making the best decisions I can on roster moves. I just wanted to clarify how strongly opposed I am to the idea. To wit, I wouldn’t have joined in the first place except that it while I was deciding, it was stated multiple times that we would be using standard starting rosters.
Regarding waiver claims, I think some tinkering would be needed to a reseeding system. I’m trying to envision the impact of reseeding every week, and I’m not loving the logistics.
In a normal FF waiver system, you have to weigh the potential reward of signing a nice looking recruit against the risk of going to the end of the line and next week having an awesome prospect come available that you’re now for sure going to miss out on.
In a reseeding system, there is no reason to ever not make a claim on anyone you’re even moderately interested in, since it won’t hurt your priority next week anyway. That doesn’t seem like the ideal situation, especially for everyone who isn’t in the bottom four because they’ll pretty much never snag a decent prospect off waivers.
I vote for the top 8 / bottom 4 reseeding system, but to only reseed 1-3 times all season instead of every week. (Note that waivers apply to 16 weeks including playoffs.)
Once: After week 8
Twice: After weeks 6, 11
Three times: After weeks 4, 8, 12
I’d be equally fine when any of these three, but if I had to pick one I suppose it’d probably be three reseedings, after weeks 4, 8 and 12. I do not actually object to any of the 4 systems presented, so I’ll be happy no matter what waiver seeding is use. (When it comes down to it, the free agency pool will be so slim that waivers will be an afterthought in this league.)