SDMB Fantasy Football DYNASTY League: Year 13

The Game Room
1

12 years down, can you believe it? Hopefully we have a more normal season this time around. Please be sure to read below because we have a lot of housekeeping with the changes in the NFL scheduling.

League dates

Preseason begins: Thursday, Aug. 5th
Final roster cuts: 12:00p ET Monday, Aug. 30th
2021 Dynasty rookie draft opening day: 12:01p ET Monday, Aug. 30th
NFL opening day: Thursday, Sept. 9th

2020 Final Results
  1. HungryHungryHaruspex (Jules Andre)
  2. Warner’s Brothers (dalej42)
  3. JB’s Gusterrhoids (Justin Bailey)
  4. Ides of Martz (Omniscient)
  5. Moridwon (Hamlet)
  6. Isotopes (Petey)
  7. Overly Sentimental (Overly Sentimental)
  8. The Great Old Ones (Ol’Gaffer)
  9. New York Fanboys (Ellis Dee)
  10. No Use For A Name (Retrovertigo)
  11. Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
  12. Nine Inch Neils (RNATB)
Hall of Champions

2020 Champion: Jules Andre
2019 Champion: Hamlet
2018 Champion: Ellis Dee
2017 Champion: VarlosZ
2016 Champion: SenorBeef
2015 Champion: VarlosZ
2014 Champion: Stringer
2013 Champion: VarlosZ
2012 Champion: Hamlet
2011 Champion: SenorBeef
2010 Champion: Stringer
2009 Champion: Really Not All That Bright

Points Leaders by Year

(Including weeks 15-16)
2020: Jules: 2131.96
2019: Hamlet: 2190.75
2018: Hamlet: 2204.75
2017: RNATB: 2095.71
2016: Petey: 2018.97
2015: VarlosZ: 2183.64
2014: Stringer: 2177.27
2013: SenorBeef: 2132.81
2012: Stringer: 2095.83
2011: Stringer: 2229.75
2010: Stringer: 2167.03
2009: Hamlet: 2207.00

2021 Draft Order

This includes the trades (1 2 3) from last year
1.01 - Nine Inch Neils
1.02 - Exploding Pancakes
1.03 - No Use For A Name
1.04 - New York Fanboys
1.05 - Moridwon
1.06 - The Great Old Ones
1.07 - Overly Sentimental
1.08 - Isotopes
1.09 - Ides of Martz
1.10 - Nine Inch Neils (from JB’s Gusterrhoids)
1.11 - Warner’s Brothers
1.12 - Warner’s Brothers (from HungryHungryHaruspex)

2.01 - Nine Inch Neils
2.02 - Exploding Pancakes
2.03 - No Use For A Name
2.04 - New York Fanboys
2.05 - Moridwon
2.06 - The Great Old Ones
2.07 - Overly Sentimental
2.08 - Isotopes
2.09 - Ides of Martz
2.10 - JB’s Gusterrhoids
2.11 - Warner’s Brothers
2.12 - Warner’s Brothers (from HungryHungryHaruspex)

3.01 - Nine Inch Neils
3.02 - Exploding Pancakes
3.03 - No Use For A Name
3.04 - New York Fanboys
3.05 - Moridwon
3.06 - The Great Old Ones
3.07 - Overly Sentimental
3.08 - Isotopes
3.09 - Ides of Martz
3.10 - JB’s Gusterrhoids
3.11 - HungryHungryHaruspex (from Warner’s Brothers)
3.12 - HungryHungryHaruspex

So on according to cuts.

Not a lot of bookkeeping this year, just the following notes which aren’t included in the above order:
-HungryhungryHaruspex gets Warner’s Brothers’ last pick
-JB’s Gusterrhoids gets Nine Inch Neils’ last pick

Important draft/trade information

• Dale needs to start with at least four picks, otherwise the last pick he sends to Jules would be his 2nd rounder, which is a bad idea. Since he also had one player on IR, he should cut at least five players
• RNATB had two players on IR, so he needs to cut at least four players so that his last pick is in the 2nd round.

Previous Threads

Year 12
Year 11
Year 10 (and Archive of other threads)

We have had some topics come up over the last few seasons for things that should be considered as changes, but it was pretty informal. Nobody really tallied votes or anything, and not everyone chimed in. Topics to go over include whether to change the draft order to get rid of the consolation bowl incentive, locking down the trade deadline, removing kickers (and/or defenses), and whether to move to Super Flex down the road. None of these must be addressed because, aside from the consolation bowl incentive, nobody has voiced strong preference either way. Still, it would be nice to have an official tally that we can look back on with some finality.

The other issue is the change in the NFL schedule. It would be easy enough to push our playoffs out a week and be done with it, but there are a few interesting things to discuss. The first is that we have a very clean scheduling format in which everyone plays everyone else once, and everyone in your division twice. We would have to come up with an impartial way of addressing the extra game (how would we determine which teams play, etc.). Not a huge issue

The second aspect is more cosmetic. We have 12 years of history for things like points per team per season, highest scoring season, points per player per season, etc., and adding an extra game would make all that info irrelevant. Not a huge deal, either, but I personally find all those years of information interesting to compare. Plus, it would be harder for me to go undefeated and pulverize what is left of the league’s withering appetite for resistance.

The final issue is the league schedule. We normally draft after the third preseason game since the fourth was useless. There won’t be a fourth this season, and there isn’t much indication out there about whether teams will treat the third game in the way they treated the fourth in years past. So I set the schedule as normal, after the third (and now final) preseason game. We can adjust this to start earlier, giving us more time to draft. In the past couple seasons we have been collectively pretty bad about drafting on time

It would be great if everyone could check in, and especially to speak up if you want to bow out of the league. No hard feelings, we have another owner lined up who will jump in as a replacement. Earlier is better than later, if you are on the fence. Good luck, everyone

2

This is a good point, but it was also a good reason that the NFL shouldn’t have expanded to 17 games either.

Is there a way to extend the playoffs an extra week, keeping the same regular season?

3

Answering my own question, I guess if we added two more wildcards (three total) we could have a three-week playoff between six teams, with the top two division winners getting a first-round bye.

Then in a perfect world, the six teams who didn’t make the playoffs would all be in the consolation bowl, which would have the same structure of first-round byes, etc… I don’t think Yahoo supports this kind of consolation bowl, though I’m not sure why they wouldn’t and why I think they don’t.

If this is possible this would be my vote, absolutely. Keeps everyone involved throughout the entire playoffs, that’s a win. Would probably also remove some of the weirdness around draft order.

So regular season stays weeks 1 to 14, playoffs expand to weeks 15 to 17, with no fantasy the last week of the season week 18. Is that possible? If so, that’s my vote.

4

I have no problem with an expanded playoff and giving out two byes. Heck, even a bye might not be good enough. I understand how they benefit you in fantasy, but it isn’t nearly the same as in the actual NFL. I might even prefer if the #1 seed got to pick their opponent a la reseeding the playoffs (assuming it was even possible within yahoo). Still, no problems with that.

Keeping the consolation bowl doesn’t make sense to me, though. The #7 team would be the best team in that bowl, but if they win they get the fifth pick? That doesn’t seem like quite the right idea. What about the worst team? If they win, do they get the 5th pick? Or are we making the consolation bowl for the 1st overall pick? I say get rid of it entirely, myself. It has always been a little strange to me that if you are the 8th best team in the league, you lose draft spots by being worse than better teams who need the help the least. This league has been around over a decade with only 4 or 5 changes in ownership. We’ve never had anyone even get accused of tanking. I don’t think we need this incentive.

5

Fair points.

The regular season point totals should lock in picks 1 through 6, with 7 through 12 going to playoff participants in reverse order of finish. Meaning the consolation bowl would not affect draft order, because I think you’re right, I’m not seeing a good way to make that work.

So I guess the consolation bowl just for fun and bragging rights and for something to do during those three weeks?

6

Thanks, Jules, for starting the thread. I’ve become lazier and less interested in fantasy over the last few years and Jules has really stepped in to help do a lot of the commish and organizational work, which I appreciate.

I hate the way adding an extra week ruins the good and consistent setup we’ve had with the schedule and comparing stats across years. Maybe for that last week we could have a designated rivalry week. We can sort of propose who we consider our biggest rival and pair up that way. Might be messy with people having no preference or multiple people considering one person their rival, but it’s a fun idea if it worked, especially if it was the last week of the season with playoff implications.

In the HHM league with 14 people, I advocates that we switched from a 4 man to a 6 man playoffs, but 6/14 felt better than 6/12 does to me, so I’m not as enthusiastic about it in this league. I’ll give it some thought. I don’t object strongly, so if that’s what people want to do, that’s fine with me.

7

Just spitballing so we have options to choose from, maybe four divisions of three teams each? Play both your division rivals three times each for six games total, every other team once for nine more to total 15.

Alternately, instead of three games each in the division, two each in the division with the last three games being strength of schedule games against the other three divisions. If you won the division last year you play all three division winners, etc…

Playoffs would be four division winners, no wild cards. The consolation bowl would then be the second place in all four divisions. Or maybe highest points?

8

Regardless of any changes with the schedule, we should get rid of the consolation bowl prize of winning a better draft pick. Consolation bowl should be for pride, and the more I think about it, the more I think draft order should be based on regular season point totals alone. No records, no playoff performance, no consolation bowl. Just points.

This year’s draft order is already set. To help visualize it:

Pos Player Results
1 RNATB 4-10 1467
2 Beef 4-10 1573
3 Retro 5-9 1679
4 Ellis 6-8 1561
5 Hamlet 7-7 1759
6 Gaffer 7-7 1668
7 Overly 7-7 1576
8 Petey 7-7 1603
9 Omni 4th place
10 Justin 3rd place
11 dale 2nd place
12 Jules Champion

Our middle 4 picks are essentially reversed for what they should be in terms of parity, which doesn’t seem great. The fact that they’re all 7-7 makes me feel better about it, but in general, this is bad design and should be changed. Nothing changing this year but ideally it should have gone like this:

Draft Player Results Actual
1 RNATB 4-10 1467 1
2 Ellis 6-8 1561 4
3 Beef 4-10 1573 2
4 Overly 7-7 1576 7
5 Omni 8-6 1594 9
6 Petey 7-7 1603 8
7 Justin 9-5 1649 10
8 Gaffer 7-7 1668 6
9 Retro 5-9 1679 3
10 dale 9-5 1692 11
11 Hamlet 7-7 1759 5
12 Jules 11-3 1827 12

This seems entirely more appropriate to me. Ignore the postseason, ignore records. Draft order based purely on regular season point totals.

Also, compare me and Beef. His division is much harder than mine, so his slightly higher points results in two more losses. On the one hand, he should get the higher pick because his stronger division means he needs it more. But from a parity perspective, basing it on records instead of points helps better divisions stay better and worse divisions stay worse, which is anti-parity.

Hamlet drafting 5th is a clear sign our system is untenable. (But that also would have been solved if we did 6 team playoffs since he wouldn’t have been in the consolation bowl to begin with.)

9

As the Hamlet in question, I will point out changing draft order to base it on points will further fuck over teams that were already fucked over by luck the previous year and further reward teams that were lucky enough to win with minimal points.

I am against using wins to determine standings and points for draft order. We should be consistent in our metrics.

Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back.

10

I think what you’re saying is that if you score a lot of points but your opponent scores even more and you lose, then you got fucked. To make good on that fucking, at least you get a higher draft pick out of it. To instead rank draft picks on points would fuck you again. Am I parsing that correctly?

If that is what you’re saying, I don’t find that to be a compelling basis for draft order, but I’m only one vote. I think the draft order should primarily focus on parity. The second highest scoring team in the league does not need the 5th pick in the draft to help recover from missing the playoffs. Logic dictates they’ll probably make the playoffs the following year regardless.

Also, you didn’t put your two cents in. What do you want to do with the extra week we get?

11

I’m not keen on arranging the entire draft by points. I get the reason, and it makes sense in terms of promoting parity, but it divorces the draft from what is actually the whole point of the league. As a compromise, I would be fine with organizing the top 8 picks by points scored, but leaving the final 4 picks as the order of the finish in the playoffs. Otherwise, I say we just go by league record finish.

If we are definitely going to add the extra game, I like the idea of reorganizing to 4 divisions. That format sounded good to me and wouldn’t be hard to work up for the scheduling template I have been using to generate our schedules.

12

On to the more fun stuff with a year in review

Scoring
Total Points Scored: 19,652.16 (+1319.09 from last year)

Scoring rebounded significantly from last season, which is a surprise with the major injuries in 2020. This boost didn’t come from the top teams - scoring at the top was below average - but rather from the bottom of the league coming closer to the pack. The lowest scoring team scored more than it ever has in this league’s history

Top Single-Week Scores of 2020 (150+)
RetroVertigo (w4): 203.19
Justin_Bailey (w2): 175.80
Ol_Gaffer (w13): 165.58
Dalej42 (w7): 162.80
Dalej42 (w1): 162.00

I cut this off at 5, but there were 14 qualifying weeks, which is almost triple the number from last season. Notably, Retro set the new highest single-week scoring record. That record had stood for 11 years!

It gets strange after that. The second highest score doesn’t fit in the highest 20 scores all time, and the highest scoring team of the season wasn’t in the top 6 highest weekly scores. Aside from the one outlier week, no one truly separated from the pack last season

Highest Losing Scores
RetroVertigo (w3): 144.63
Ol_Gaffer (w2): 131.95
Hamlet (w7): 130.10
Hamlet (w1): 129.55
Ol_Gaffer (w1): 129.05

Hamlet led the league in opponent scoring, which is probably the only thing keeping him from the playoffs, so his inclusion here makes sense. We all collectively did our jobs with that one, well done, league. Ol_Gaffer didn’t finish in the top half of opponent scoring, so that is a bizarre result to see him on the list twice. And then there is Retro, the new single week scoring champion, getting stomped out worse than anyone all season. And just a week before dishing out that kind of stomping to the next poor fool he met. What goes around, as they say.

All-Time Win/Loss Though Twelve Years:
Jules: 43-27 (.614)
RNATB: 94-74 (.560)
SenorBeef: 93-75 (.554)
Justin: 92-76 (.548)
Petey: 90-78 (.536)
Ol_Gaffer: 22-20 (.524)
Hamlet: 87-81 (.518)
Omni: 63-77 (.450)
Ellis Dee: 74-94 (.440)
Overly: 17-25 (.405)
Dalej42: 64-104 (.381)
Retro: 63-105 (.375)
LEGACY
Stringer: 83-43 (.659)
Varlos: 69-57 (.548)
Furt: 46-52 (.469)
Hermits: 10-18 (.357)

It feels good to finally separate myself from the furt anchor. As time has gone on, the team I inherited proved to be better than I originally anticipated. But he still drafted Bishop Sankey first overall one year, so… Good riddance

13

Ha! Was Bishop Sankey 1st overall worse than me taking Tavon Austin first overall the year before instead of Gio Bernard? Not that Gio was any world-beater. In hindsight, I should have taken Le’Veon Bell first overall. If I really wanted a WR first, DeAndre Hopkins seems reasonable. Tavon fucking Austin. Jesus Christ.

For fun, looking back at the following year’s draft with Sankey, holy shit what an awful RB class. Some good WRs (Sammy Watkins, Mike Evans, OBJ) but look at this lineup of RBs we got to choose from:

(round.overall)
2.53 Bishop Sankey, Ten
2.54 Jeremy Hill, Cin
2.57 Carlos Hyde, SF
3.69 Charles Sims, TB
3.75 Tre Mason, StL
3.94 Terrence West, Cle
3.96 Jerick McKinnon, Min
3.97 Dri Archer, Pit
4.103 Devonta Freeman, Atl
4.113 Andre Williams, NYG
4.117 Ka’Deem Carey, Chi
4.124 De’Anthony Thomas, KC

This is grim. These guys are so no-name that I don’t even know who Andre Williams is/was and he was (apparently) a Giant.

As the frequent “just missed the consolation bowl” guy I typically draft 4th overall, which I did that year. I ended up with Hyde. In hindsight, Hyde may have been the top choice, and Hyde sucked, so good choice by me? Yikes. (CMC was my best 4th overall pick by a mile. Let’s see how this year’s 4th overall works out…)

The only names I recognize on this list are Carlos Hyde (because I drafted him) and Devonta Freeman, but I only know him because the Giants signed him last season. It’s not like Freeman was good in Atlanta.

14

Regarding draft order, after sleeping on it I have to backtrack. I do find @Hamlet’s reasoning to be compelling. If you determine winners by record, it’s unfair (or at best very weird) to then rank draft picks by points. I certainly don’t want to switch from head to head to points for the season, so it probably shouldn’t be used for draft order either.

How about if you don’t make the playoffs, your draft order is based on regular season record? Seems to work for the NFL. Our consolation bowl would then be just for fun, which is fine. Better than where winning the consolation bowl makes your draft pick worse, anyway.

15

Hello Gents,
I’m back, back in the ring to take another swing.
Glad to login and see that we’re all debating some tweak to the rules. Some things never change.
I gather the crux of the issue here is how to use the consolation bracket towards draft order. As currently stands, the consolation bracket ‘winner’ gets to draft fifth, with the other three consolate teams drafting 6,7,8? This is opposed to the consolation winner drafting 8, and the other teams going 7,6,5?

Somebody verify this please and then I’ll weigh in.

16

You’ve got the right idea, Overly. Welcome back. Don’t forget to check your PMs, too!

We originally set up the consolation bowl incentive to prevent people from tanking and giving that tournament a more compelling reason to exist. (This is my understanding from the threads back in the day) But those incentives don’t really need to be around, at this point. Why complicate the draft order and cause some frustration (the person finishing 8th, who would draft 5th, almost always drafts 8th instead, which is anti-parity)? Looking forward to your thoughts.

Don’t forget to chime in about kickers and the schedule, even to confirm. It would be nice to get a rock solid vote on the record so we don’t have to talk about it each season

17

Quick drive-by to say that I’m in.

18

I’m in.

I’ll read through the thread tonight and respond as appropriate.

19

Definitely in. Heading to bed, I’ll read the thread in the AM

20

Our choices so far:

  1. Add a rivalry week to the regular season. Would require coming up with the six pairs of rivals.

  2. Go to 6 team playoffs (three weeks). Would require changing the consolation bowl draft order rules, because applying our current rules would award the #1 overall pick to the consolation bowl winner.

  3. Re-align to 4 divisions of 3 teams. Three games against both division opponents (six games total) plus one game each against everyone else (nine more) for a 15 game season. Would require choosing new divisions.

  4. Do nothing. We just lose out on a potential extra week of fantasy. On the plus side, no extra effort would be required.

  5. Any other suggestions?

EDIT: I just thought of a variation on rivalry weeks. Instead of rivals, how about one extra strength of schedule game? This one we could base strictly on points. So the top two point scorers this season face each other next season, the lowest two play each other, and every pair in between.

I kind of like this but I just thought of it like 30 seconds ago so I haven’t fully thought it through yet. It also may not play nice with Jules’ schedule maker. (But then it wouldn’t need to. The parity games could all be in the same week and just drop right into any week.)