Congrats Beef, you earned it, but you’ll always be the villain of this league to me. It probably should be Jules since he’s my division rival, but he’s always so damn personable it’s hard to be mad at him.
I’m hoping next year will be better for the old Gusterrhoids and I’m already putting together my draft board for next year.
Congrats Beef! You took advantage of one of the weirdest seasons I can remember. You have now established a pattern of winning every 5th year, so the rest of the league is safe until 2026.
Going into this season, I thought I had my roster settled to where I didn’t need to be as aggressive as in years past. The competing window was fully open. But, before the draft, I recognized I had a chance to conduct something of a “layered rebuild.” I tried to move the older parts of my roster for younger players and picks without affecting my starting lineup. The idea is to compete with my starting lineup while building a “second generation” roster on my bench, which was young enough to compete in a few years. I never really got a chance to see my roster work at full strength this season, but I think I did really well positioning myself to not have to rebuild once this current window closes. The most rewarding aspect of that strategy is that I now have 8 of the top 24 WRs according to consensus dynasty rankings. We may never see that concentration of value again in a fully attentive, competitive league.
In a dynasty league, everyone ends up with scars from players they just missed out on, or someone they got rid of too early, etc. My two biggest were overlooking Calvin Ridley before I refined my scouting process, and dropping George Kittle the season before he blew up. I got to exorcize both those demons this year, so what is left is just satisfaction and happiness with the state of my team, even after a brutal season. I just love this roster
This wasn’t my plan going into the season, but looking back through the thread I just noticed that I turned over nearly my entire roster in a single season. The only position players left from the start of this season are:
RB Alvin Kamara
WR Tyreek Hill
WR Jerry Jeudy
The Consolation Bowl doesn’t mean anything as is. I’ve been told there used to be a prize (better draft pick). As is, you’re better off tanking in the consolation bowl for better draft picks. I didn’t tank (and won the consolation bowl) as I have already traded my 1st and 2nd picks. But in the future, Even getting the 7th pick over the 8th is something, so at least both people in the consolation bowl have something to play for. It seems to me this would be more palatable to the league than giving the consolation bowl winner the 5th pick.
Giving extra FAAB was the next closest idea we had to reward the consolation bowl winner. Honestly, I don’t even see why there is a consolation bowl at all. It’s just raising a bunch of issues for no real benefit.
Tonight seems like a good time for a year in review of this season. Beef’s championship score is the only team score to qualify for the record books, and it slotted in as the 9th highest score in our league’s history. Justin Herbert had the highest score by a QB in week 5, which was the 11th highest of all time at that position. Jonathan Taylor’s week 11 (against me, grumble grumble) scored 51.9 points, which was the 4th highest game by a RB on record. Only Tyreek Hill qualified for the list at WR this year with a 42.1 score in week 4. At TE, the depth and evolution of the position was in full display with 4 players making the top 20 single games of all time, led by Mark Andrews with 36.2 points in week 5
One other interesting note is that this is the first season since 2015 in which Travis Kelce was not the #1 TE. Mark Andrews took the title
One of the things I find interesting is how the relative strength of each team in the league fluctuates over time, especially between seasons. While it isn’t perfect, I’ve totaled the positional rankings (except K and DEF) of each team’s starters based on the crowdsourced rankings at KeepTradeCut. Lower is better, since having the QB1 is better than the QB2, etc. This is a decent snapshot of the perceived value and strength of each team compared to one another, though obviously some positions are more valuable than others. It’ll be interesting to see how each team stacks up at the start of next season.
Justin: 211
Overly: 207
Omni: 201
Gaffer: 191
Dale: 182
Ellis: 163
Hamlet: 144
Retro: 137
RNATB: 134
Beef: 106
AlPetey: 84
Jules: 53
I’ll bet you I was over 200 before our big draft day trade.
Having each game in the final round of the consolation bowl be a contest for the two draft picks those teams are eligible for is something I haven’t thought of before. It’s interesting.
There are four consolation bowl participants, and they always get draft picks 5 through 8 in any system. Here’s a big picture overview of how those four picks get distributed, first in the list goes to the winner, then 2nd, 3rd, and last.
5th, 8th, 7th, 6th up until this year
8th, 7th, 6th, 5th under our new/current rules (EDIT: is this true?)
7th, 8th, 5th, 6th if the final round awarded the better of the two picks involved to the winner of each game
I don’t hate the idea. Not for this off-season, obviously. But in general. It has the same problem we fixed with the rule change this season, but it ameliorates that problem. I don’t know if it does so sufficiently, but I like it as a compromise between how it was and how it is now.
Just something to think about; at best we could change it next season to take effect the season after. I could easily be swayed to vote for this.
ETA: And unlike our new/current rules, there would be actual incentive to win a consolation bowl game. Even the 3rd place game. Less so in the first round of the consolation bowl, admittedly.
I was probably the biggest critic of how we set-up the consolation bowl to receive draft picks as a prize.
My reasoning was that there was usually a gulf of difference between the the 8th seed and the 5th seed (who usually could have been a playoff team if in a different division), and in fact the 8th seed has never won the CB, and only beat the 5th seed 3 times through the years in the 1st round match-up.
So to me it’s always been, what’s is stopping the 8th seed from dropping games at the end of the season to stay out of losing 3 draft spots?
I also might be remembering this wrong, but I thought the CB played no role in draft spots and it was based on final regular season records.
I don’t follow all that. Assuming the 8th seed loses both their consolation bowl games, up until this year that would have given them the 6th overall pick. Now this year they would instead get the 5th pick.
If instead they tanked the last couple weeks of the regular season to avoid the consolation bowl entirely, assuming they successfully end up the 9th seed, they would instead get the 4th overall pick.
Up until now the tanking you describe would improve their 6th pick to 4th. Right now the same tanking would improve a 5th pick to 4th.
Has anyone ever really tanked in this league? Yay don’t think I’ve ever seen it.
Prior to the rule change there was no reason. It will start properly this year and next as people see the opportunity.
Hasn’t it always been against the rules in this league to openly tank? I understand trading away assets and having a worse team, there’s nothing wrong with that, but to bench players who are objectively better for back of the roster guys who aren’t playing much? I always thought that was something that would get you a penalty of some kind
Why would tanking start now when it didn’t to stay out of the 8th spot?
I don’t know if we’ve ever codified an anti-tanking rule but it has always been understood that blatant tanking is totally wrong. We’ve never needed a specific rule because I think everyone gets that. The draft order is the main parity mechanism of the league, and we basically short circuit that by allowing tanking, and then there’s an arms race to tank earlier and earlier in the season, and then that will interfere with who makes the playoffs because some people will get more free wins than others (against tanking teams) and it breaks the whole league in both directions.
That was pretty much the whole argument for not charging the draft order mechanism. Cue shocked Pikachu face.
Keep in mind that all this applies equally to the third place game in the consolation bowl, which is not affected by the rule change. That game awards draft picks the same now as it did before: The winner gets the worse pick.
Could you clarify what you mean? Change the draft order mechanism from what to what?
I’m watching Josh Allen run in for 2 TDs and it’s like… Josh… fantasy season is over, cool it.
That’s absolutely nuts because you’ve pretty much rebuilt your team 3 times now, I think. I didn’t realize that you made so many trades this year.
I’ve come to realize that I am under-managing my team, as I almost never engage in a big rebuild. My team is too stable. I end up having a lot of players for their entire careers. I do keep the average age of my roster fairly young, but I never go through the rebuilding/contending cycle that most teams aim for, I just sort of stay a steady course and hope some of my players peak at the same time.
I think my team is in good position to contend for another couple of years, there’s no drastic negative changes to my roster on the horizon, but I may be just starting on the downslope of my current roster.
Allen is good, and Deebo is only 25 (almost 26) and I think he will continue to be a top 10 WR for a few years despite his unusual style, assuming he stays healthy. Tyler Lockett is only 29 and I think he can maintain his value and maybe slowly decline for the next 2 years. Allen Robinson is probably due for a big bump in value this year since he basically just gave up in Chicago and hopefully he signs somewhere good. Nick Chubb just turned 26 a few days ago and doesn’t have that much wear and tear - I could see him maintain his productivity next year. OBJ seems like he’s going to be pretty good for a little bit after he got out of Cleveland. Montgomery probably has 2 more top 15-20 RB years in him.
I get JK Dobbins back next year which is huge. No reason to think he won’t be very successful - no real competition in Baltimore, his injury was early in the season and he has plenty of time to recover. Rashod Bateman is looking like the right pick for me. Kyle Pitts was actually a little disappointing to me but that’s pretty silly - he’s up there with the best yardage rookie TE seasons of all time and will probably improve his touchdowns and will likely be really good.
My deep roster is not as high potential flyer heavy as it usually is, I should’ve been managing my roster more to make that happen. On the other hand, my IR has been so full this year that I’ll end up having to cut like 8 players before the draft anyway.
I used to offer everyone in the league to swap first round picks next year, which I must say is the most baller shit anyone does around here. I’m not that confident my team is a top team next year, but I’m thinking about making that offer again even if it’s slightly ill advised because it adds some fun drama to the league. Would anyone be interested if I wanted to do that?
Came in here to say just that, cut season before the draft is going to be a bit more interesting than the usual retirees and out of the league guys.
I have a feeling Antonio Brown will be on my cut list for next season.