SDMB Fantasy Football big league (league full)

The Game Room
21

We’ve got 15 people already, so I’m guessing this league will fill up. So we should discuss the league settings with 20 players in mind.

My initial proposal for rosters was:

QB
RB
RB
WR
WR
WR
RB/WR
TE
TE
K
DEF

Is that too deep? This would result (in terms of starters) with 20 QBs, 40 RBs, 60 WRs, 20 more WR/RB flex spots, 40 TEs, 20 kickers, and 20 defenses. Is there enough talent to go around?

I personally am fine with the idea of spreading the talent very thin so that the people who know NFL rosters well can find gems. Everyone would be starting depth players - third or fourth WRs, third down backs, second TEs, etc. You might have Adrian Peterson (MIN) on your roster with a projected score of 22 for a game starting next to Adrian Peterson (CHI) with a projected score of 2.2. Sounds interesting to me.

But, even with more conservative rosters like QB, RB, WR, WR, RB/WR, TE, K, D the talent would still be spread relatively thin. What do you guys think?

22

I’d vote against 40 TEs. A lot of teams hardly ever even throw to their TEs, so there’s really only 20 out there. Maybe add a flex position that can be any player?

23

The available flex position types are WR/TE, WR/RB, WR/RB/TE, QB/WR/RB/TE

Would that last position which allows any type offensive player be good to use? I’m guessing it would unbalance things, as there are only 32 starting QBs and then we’d have potentially 40 slots to fill them - since QBs tend to be among the biggest scorers, that would leave most of the league starting 2 QBs but only able to start 1.

Let’s add 10 defensive players to everyone’s roster too and make the draft take 7 hours!

(kidding)

That does give me an idea. Anyone ever been part of a defensive FF league? A roster made up only of defenders… hmmmmmmmmm.

24

I brought this point up in the first fantasy football thread, but after doing some research I found that 40 TEs had 20 or more receptions last year.

It might not be any fun to scour the listings for a TE who might get one catch a game, but it is at least possible. But if we put it to a vote, I’d agree with you.

25

I’m fine with 2 TEs.

26

I’d vote for the RB/WR/TE flex position instead of the second TE. Eliminates the issue raised with the QB/RB/WR/TE option, but still provides more flexibility than having to find a second TE…

27

In as “Donte’s Torino”

28

I’m in.

My team is RELATED SIBLINGS

Sorry, it was the best I could do after a few beers

Now I’m not sure if I will be here for the draft… How do I set the autodraft option? (Yes, I’m dumb)

29

On the main http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/ page, you should see something like:

"Live draft in: 28 days, 18 hours, and 54 minutes. Add to Calendar

Until then, feel free to edit your Pre-Draft Player Rankings"

The “edit your Pre-Draft Rankings” part is a link. As far as I know, this will create the list that the autodrafter will use should you not be part of the live draft (I’ve never actually used it).

I’d strongly suggest if possible everyone here makes the draft - it’s probably the most fun part of the season. You can chat with everyone as the draft progresses and make fun of their horrible biased homer picks :slight_smile:

30

Team Fightin’ Quakers had this suggestion in the league forum:

This is a good idea, especially since a lot of 4th receiver/kick returner type players will be used.

In fact, I was going to propose the scoring system we use for our SDMB All-Pro league. We came up with it after some discussion and I think it’s a lot better than the default yahoo scoring system.

Here are the scoring settings for that league:

Offense League Value Yahoo! Default Value
Passing Yards 20 yards per point; 1 points at 200 yards; 1 points at 325 yards
Passing Touchdowns 4
Interceptions -2
Sacks -.33
Rushing Yards 10 yards per point; 1 points at 100 yards; 1 points at 175 yards
Rushing Touchdowns 6
Receptions .35
Reception Yards 10 yards per point; 1 points at 85 yards; 1 points at 150 yards
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
Kickers League Value Yahoo! Default Value
Field Goals 0-19 Yards 3
Field Goals 20-29 Yards 3
Field Goals 30-39 Yards 4
Field Goals 40-49 Yards 5
Field Goals 50+ Yards 6
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
Defense/Special Teams League Value Yahoo! Default Value
Sack 1
Interception 2
Fumble Recovery 2
Touchdown 6
Safety 2
Block Kick 2
Kickoff and Punt Return Touchdowns 6
Points Allowed 0 points 15
Points Allowed 1-6 points 10
Points Allowed 7-13 points 6
Points Allowed 14-20 points 3
Points Allowed 21-27 points 0
Points Allowed 28-34 points -5
Points Allowed 35+ points -10

A summary of the changes:

We reward quarterbacks more for efficient play than the default scoring system. They have a -2 penalty for interceptions instead of the default 1. They get -.33 points for every sack they take. To compensate for this somewhat, we give more points for yardage - 1 point per 20 yards instead of 25.

It’s a partial points per reception league. We decided that 1 point per reception changes the scoring too much, but that .35 points per reception adds some value to WRs and RBs that are used in the passing game a lot without massively changing balance.

We gave individual return yards (for kick and punt returners) at 25 yards per point (as I mentioned earlier).

The default system is to subtract 2 points from a player for losing a fumble to the other team. We broke that up into -1 point for fumbling at all, and -1 point for losing the fumble (recovered by the other team). That way you still get -2 for a lost fumble, but you also get half the punishment for a recovered fumble, since your player still screwed up.

We made 30+ yard field goals worth a little bit more, but at the cost of adding a penalty to missed field goals and missed PATs, making accurate kickers more valuable.

We changed the defensive scoring to win or lose more points based on the points allowed. If your defense does really well, they get well rewarded (15 points for a shutout, 10 for 1-6 allowed) but if you get blown out you get a much bigger punishment (-5 for 28-34 points allowed, -10 for 35+)

And we gave credit to a D/ST for kick return and punt return touchdowns. After all, you’re drafting a defense/special teams, not just a defense, and we thought that aspect was undervalued in the default scoring system.

This is just a proposal. We can stick with the default yahoo scoring system if everyone prefers that, or even make our own new modifications to the system for this league. What do you think?

31

Woohoo!

Looks like i snuck in with team number 20.

I’m the Master Baiters, in Division 4.

32

How does everyone feel about the divsions feature? I’m tempted to use it simply because I’ve never used it before. I’m thinking it may make the FF experience more familiar in the same way that head to head matchups seem more personal than straight scoring since you’re competing with a specific person rather than with the league in general. With this setting you feel like you’re up against your division rivals every week too.

But… it doesn’t seem to affect scheduling. Maybe in a smaller league it would, but with a 20 man league, we don’t even have enough weeks for everyone to play everyone else once, so it’s not as if you play divisonal teams more often. It’s also random/arbitary, not like the actual divsions in football that have survived long enough to create rivalries.

The only effect it really has is with playoff seeding - divsion winners get a playoff spot. If we do an 8 man playoffs (which seems reasonable for 20 people) we’d get the 4 division winners in the playoffs and 4 wildcards.

Still, in the interest of trying something different, I’d like to have 4 divsions. What do you guys think?
Edit: I do have complete control over the schedules. If we wanted to make a divison-centric schedule where you played everyone in your division twice that would be possible. Or I could set it up so that I play against Quentin’s Jammers every week - hey, easy wins.

33

Divisions! Divisions! Divisions! Divisions!

34

Durn it!

If anyone has second thoughts, I’d like to be the alternate.

35

I like all of the scoring features you listed except for two. I think FGs should be worth 3-3-3-4-5 instead of 3-3-4-5-6; Kickers already play too large a role in fantasy football for my tastes, and there are a hell of a lot of 30-39 yard FGs.

Also, I’d *much *prefer decoupling special teams TDs from defenses. There’s no necessary connection between the two, and you can already benefit from special teams though your use of Kickers and return men. In fact, in a league this deep, and with 25 return yards per point, players who do little else besides return punts and kicks will probably be a regular feature on everyone’s starting rosters, so there’s no need to double up on their TDs.

(And, since the issue is still technically in doubt, I should point out that however we set up scoring, points for return yards will be an absolute necessity for us with about 180 non-K/DEF starting slots to fill every week, more than twice that of a typical league. We may even want to increase their value from 25/p.)
As for the divisions, I’m in favor of trying them. If we have wild cards, then each team should play only four intra-division games in order even out the strength of schedule as much as possible. If we don’t, then each team should play eight intra-division games (maybe).

36

Missed the opportunity for this. Bummer.

37

I opted to sit this league out. As an impartial observer, the question of divisions intrigues me. Can you set up something like conferences, where you know ahead of time which two divisions make up each conference?

If so, I’d recommend the following schedule:

8 divisional games
5 conference games (the entire other division in your conference)

Alternately, if you want to get some inter-conference action going:

4 divisional games
5 conference games
4 inter-conference games (2 teams from each division in other conference)

Then again, maybe two divisions might be the better way to go.

9 divisional games
4 inter-division games

If you end up using any kind of scheduling other than the default – be it one of the above ideas or something similar – I volunteer my services as a database programmer and impartial spectator to generate the actual schedule for you.

38

As far as I can tell, the only division-related options are creating 2, 3, or 4 divsions. There’s no conference structure and there’s no way to set up the playoffs so that each conference plays it out and then the last game is the conference vs conference championship.

The playoff options are: Divsion winners get top seeds (in an 8 team playoff, division winners get seeds 1-4 based on their wins, and the wildcards get seeds 4-8, even if a wildcard has a better win total than a division winner), division winner gets playoff bid but win/point rankings determine all seeds, and divsion winner is not granted playoff berth (in which case the divsion system is irrelevant as far as I can tell).

2 divisions would create a somewhat more conference-like schedule, but the playoffs would ultimately be the two divsion winners getting seeds (who’d undoubtedly get seeds anyway) and the rest seeded as wildcards by win record/score.

Thanks for the offer, and we may.

Since we’re all essentially random players, and only a few of us have a history with each other, I’m not sure how much extra interest playing the divisional format would bring.

In fact… maybe we should organize divsions by familiarity. We could group up the people who know each other from previous FF leagues or some other way and then just randomly place anyone who didn’t really have a connection to anyone.

39

That’s a good idea. Also worth noting is you could seed players based on best yahoo record. This would be particularly useful for a 4-division league.

That stinks that they don’t let you set up a conference structure, but I guess that would start interfering with how fantasy playoffs generally work.

40

Bloody hell- it’s full already!