SDMB Fantasy Football DYNASTY League: Year 18

The Game Room
21

I posted in the He Hate Me thread (and that may still pan out as it hasn’t even been a full day) and I was digging through old SDMB leagues to find players who have been reliable in the past who aren’t in the two main SDMB leagues anymore, and the vast majority of still-active players are already either in this league or in HHM. I’m hopeful we can get a board regular with a reliable history to fill this role (either temporarily or permanently) but so far no response.

If anyone has a friend who is really into fantasy football, we’ve had a pretty good track records of inviting people’s off-board friends into various SDMB leagues. Explain to them how dynasty works, maybe sell them on the idea that this is one of the oldest running dynasty leagues in the world and has serious players and low turnover… maybe have them ignore all the minutia and rule discussions that started this thread since they don’t have to worry about that. I’ll keep working on a replacement from the boards, but if you’ve got a friend who’d be a good candidate and is willing to sign up for the boards, let us know.

For now, let’s put the cut deadline and draft start back 24 hours till Tuesday, pending further postponement while we work on this. You don’t have to wait till the last moment to get your cuts in.

22

I’m an IRL friend addition, so I will check with my friends to see if anyone is interested.

6 cuts for me. I believe this gives me 5 picks

Roster

QB
Lamar Jackson

RB
Chase Brown
Josh Jacobs
Christian McCaffrey
Aaron Jones Sr
Jacorey-Croskey Merritt
Jaylen Wright
Isiah Pacheco

WR
AJ Brown
Michael Wilson
DK Metcalf
Justin Jefferson
Davante Adams
Troy Franklin

TE
Mark Andrews
Harold Fannin Jr.

K
Cam Little

DEF

MIN
JAX
ARI

Cuts
Xavier Legette
Joe Flacco
Tory Horton
Jordon Whittington
Geno Smith
Luke McCaffrey

23

Warner Brothers cuts

Cuts:
Jerome Ford RB
Raheem Mostert RB

Brandin Cooks WR
DeAndre Hopkins WR
Ray-Ray McCloud III. WR
Tyreek Hill WR

Dawson Knox TE

24

HungryHungryHaruspex cuts

Ja’Lynn Polk
Kendrick Bourne
Audric Estime
DJ Giddens
Isaiah Bond
Dont’e Thornton
Carolina DST

That gives me 4 picks

25

Hope Omni’s okay, agree on delaying. We should try to line up an alternate asap, though, so they can start assessing his team for trades and whatnot.

I’m looking at my roster now, will have cuts soon.

26

New York Fanboys:

Jaxson Dart, QB, NYG
Jordan Love, QB, GB
Baker Mayfield, QB, TB

Saquon Barkley, RB, Phi
Kenneth Walker III, RB, KC
Cam Skattebo, RB, NYG
Blake Corum, RB, LAR
Ollie Gordon II, RB, Mia
Devin Singletary, RB, NYG

Puka Nacua, WR, LAR
Nico Collins, WR, Hou
DJ Moore, WR, Buf
Quentin Johnston, WR, LAC
Michael Pittman Jr., WR, Pit

Sam LaPorta, TE, Det
Travis Kelce, TE, KC
Theo Johnson, TE, NYG

Harrison Butker, K, KC

Jets, DEF, NYJ
Steelers, DEF, Pit
Browns, DEF, Cle
Giants, DEF, NYG

Keeping 22 (3 draft picks)

Drop:

Joe Mixon, RB, Hou
Hollywood Brown, WR, Phi
Daniel Jones, QB, Ind

Sad trombone noises for these three cuts. I acquired Mixon through trade but he was a stalwart for me for years. The other two were my top two draft picks in 2019, where I took both in the second round.

27

Here’s how the draft order is looking with all the trades, at least the first three rounds. Omni stockpiled high picks last year, and is now sitting on the 2nd, 3rd, 9th and 14th overall picks.

1.01 dale -
1.02 Omni -
1.03 Omni -
1.04 Gaffer -
1.05 Jules -
1.06 RNATB -
1.07 Retro -
1.08 Mundi -
1.09 Omni -
1.10 Ellis -
1.11 Beef -
1.12 Hamlet -

2.01 dale -
2.02 Omni -
2.03 Justin -
2.04 Gaffer -
2.05 Peteys -
2.06 RNATB -
2.07 Retro -
2.08 Jules -
2.09 Justin -
2.10 Ellis -
2.11 Beef -
2.12 Hamlet -

3.01 dale -
3.02 Omni -
3.03 Justin -
3.04 Gaffer -
3.05 Peteys -
3.06 RNATB -
3.07 Retro -
3.08 Mundi -
3.09 Mundi -
3.10 Ellis -
3.11 Beef -
3.12 Hamlet -

28

So I posted in the HHM league thread, which features 14 still active players with relatively little overlap with this league, and I looked through past league history in our old defunct leagues like the big league, all pro, and auction leagues, and found players who 1) seemed like reliable players when they played, 2) have posted on the boards within the last year, and 3) aren’t already part of the HHM thread and had 5 posters who received PMs. So far I have not heard back from anyone, though I just sent those yesterday. It’s possible that there’s someone interested who hasn’t seen the message yet, but I’m running out of people to ask.

A backup plan that I don’t love but might end up working well is to post a recruitment on the dynastyff subreddit to see if anyone is interested there. They’d have no connection to the SDMB or being a friend of someone, so it would be hard to guarantee their interest or stability. I could try to only accept people who have a long posting history to the dynastyff forums perhaps. I don’t know. I don’t love that option, but the SDMB has been shrinking for a long time and almost everyone who is an active regular fantasy football player has already been asked.

Does anyone remember anyone in previous threads that expressed an interest in joining? Or have any other ideas about how we might recruit a replacement?

I’m going to push back the draft one day at a time until we get this solved, so the draft will be postponed at least 24 hours until Wednesday at noon eastern. With Omni having 2 of the first 3 picks, we can’t really start it and figure it out later.

29

I wonder what everyone thinks about letting an AI agent manage Omni’s team? We would need to drop down some pretty clear rules, and it would rely on Beef doing the actual legwork each week and being trustworthy (which he undoubtedly, unquestionably is), but it would work.

For example, we could select a single AI (using multiple could cause issues with clashing or contrasting personality type/training sets and cause inconsistencies), and feed it Omni’s roster and tell the agent that this is a 12-team, half-PPR, dynasty league. Also feed it scoring settings. And we instruct it about not being able to trade picks more than a year out. As long as the team is managed through a single, persistent chat session, I think we would get a consistent result.

We could instruct it to cut players (by instructing it first to cut to 25, then cut to X in order to satisfy pick requirements, then cut players it thinks would be beneficial to cut for additional picks, in that order).

During the draft, we could feed it the running draft board and available players and let it draft for the team with each pick. This is straight forward.

For trades, we would need a few rules, I think. For example, any proposals sent to it have to pass a defined threshold of minimum acceptability. I suggest that trades must be listed as “Fair” or better on an agreed Trade calculator, KeepTradeCut being the most widely accepted (using a small variance slider). And I suggest trades must be 1:1, 2:2, etc. to prevent gaming the trade calculator. Proposals are emailed to Beef, and he feeds it to the AI to make the final decision.

Beef could also feed the AI all rosters in the league and ask it to generate trade ideas to offer every other manager, offering them one at a time in the order the AI decides best.

For waivers, I imagine it would be easy enough to instruct it to select players to add from the list of free agents, suggest a player to drop, and how much to bid. The AI would be able to make reasonable decisions based on training since there is enough waiver help content on the web each week.

For the record, I hate AI. And I don’t think this would be a reasonable solution for two owners. But if we’re going to die on an incinerated, inhospitable planet, we may as well do it for an important reason like dynasty football.

30

I am not a fan of AI, but even if I was, that sounds needlessly complex.

If we need to run Omni’s team, the easiest way to do it would be no trades and then just plug in the top scorers according to Yahoo every week.

31

That would be the easiest way, but then we are locking an entire roster out of possibly being open for trades, and we would still have to figure out waivers each week. Doing it the simplest way also makes one of three divisions much, much easier to win compared to the other two divisions who have active ownership.

The ideal solution is a replacement manager who is active and dedicated. We’re struggling to find that, so we should try to at least find a way to make that team active, right?

32

Good news! @Wilson has agreed to join our league on a temporary (if Omni returns soon) or permanent basis. This is a great result as I know Wilson is a good and dedicated fantasy football player with a long history on the SDMB, pretty close to the ideal candidate for our league. I’m not sure if Omni is gone permanently. We may have to figure out if there’s a cutoff point where it permanently becomes Wilson’s team, but it sounds like Wilson is happy to jump in and help draft and manage the team until/if Omni comes back or to take it over long term. We can cross that bridge if we come to it.

Omni was also a member of the He Hate Me keeper league so they’re also short a member this year. If anyone here is interested in taking on another fantasy league this year, it’s a good league and I recommend it. And it would be nice to help Wilson out to fill up the league after he stepped in to help us out. I’d do it myself, of course, except I’m already in it.

We’ll give Wilson some time to look over his roster and research rookies (since he’ll have 2 draft picks very early on), when he’s here he can tell us when a good start date for him for the draft is. Hopefully we’ll start this week, but the original alternate option of the 30th by the latest will be the start date.

33

That is the ideal solution! Just in time, too. Thanks @Wilson for jumping aboard!

I would be willing to take over Omni’s HHM league team, if needed. I was in that league before and did terribly, so it won’t change the balance of power

34

An AI managed team is an interesting idea and I was looking into the feasibility of doing it, like if yahoo would allow you to list all unowned players, all players on waiver, etc through the API, and it appears to. And I bet someone has developed a sort of protocol or instruction set and shared it for determining the procedures. But I think it might be more effort than it seems on the surface, though I do think with enough instructions, information, and context it could make good decisions. I think it would have to be babysat a decent bit while the kinks are worked out on how to handle every situation that came up. And lots and lots of player news searches potentially on dozens or hundreds of players every week, which it’s pretty good at doing that sort of thing. When I was making those stats, Claude caught on pretty quick to how our league worked and how dynasty differs from redraft, but the actual analytical work was just interrogating a spreadsheet with scripts. Making decisions with live information would’ve been a lot more complicated I think and we might end up getting some unexpected results. I’m relieved not to have to figure it all out this year, especially right before the league started, but it was a good proposal.

35

Happy to welcome Wilson on board. (Yay! 4th and 19, IIRC?) I’m hoping Omni’s okay but losing faith in his return, now that I think about how nicely his draft pick situation sets up a transition like this.

Here's Omni's roster

Ides of Martz: (4th & 19?)

Jayden Daniels, QB, Was
Caleb Williams, QB, Chi
Justin Fields, QB, KC
Will Howard, QB, Pit

Quinshon Judkins, RB, Cle
Travis Etienne Jr., RB, NO
Bhayshul Tuten, RB, Jax
Jaydon Blue, RB, Dal
Trevor Etienne, RB, Car
Brashard Smith, RB, KC
Jarquez Hunter, RB, LAR

Marvin Harrison Jr., WR, Ari
Alec Pierce, WR, Ind
Jalen Coker, WR, Car
Khalil Shakir, WR, Buf
Pat Bryant, WR, Den
Tre’ Harris, WR, LAC
Ricky Pearsall, WR, SF
Darnell Mooney, WR, NYG
Andrei Iosivas, WR, Cin

Jake Ferguson, TE, Dal
Cole Kmet, TE, Chi
Darren Waller, TE, Car

Evan McPherson, K, Cin

Chiefs, DEF, KC
Raiders, DEF, LV

That’s 26 players, meaning you must drop at least one to reach 25. Since through trades last year your first four draft picks are very high – 2nd, 3rd, 9th and 14th overall! – drop at least 5 players to give yourself all four picks. More is fine; they would become picks 3.02, 4.02, 5.02, etc…

We’re giving Omni until Wednesday, right? So I guess Wilson posts his cut list on Wednesday afternoon-ish, then we get the draft started? (We still also need cut lists for @Ol_Gaffer, @RetroVertigo, and @Really_Not_All_That_Bright.)

36

That schedule sounds reasonable but I would like Wilson to check in and confirm that it works for him. If he needs a little extra time it’s understandable because he hasn’t done any research or prep work for this and given the number of very high draft picks he has I would understand if he needs to take an extra day to evaluate his roster and the available players.

37

Agreed.

I wonder how trading should work? I’d be fine with Wilson making tentative trades now (today, Tuesday) however he pleases, and then finalize them on Wednesday if Omni doesn’t come back. Might be overwhelming with everything else to absorb, but could also help make the team his.

(To clarify for Wilson: We can normally trade at all times without restriction. During the draft, on the clock, throughout the season, all offseason, right now, whatever. Just maybe not during the playoffs.)

38

Omni may not have posted since April, but his account has logged on a few times over the last week. Most recently 9 hours ago. Even assuming someone else is using his computer, I don’t think he’s coming back if he hasn’t already. Wilson should operate as owner, and if Omni is resurrected, well he shouldn’t have died if he didn’t want someone to manage his team. That’s on him

39

Hmm. That’s odd. I recall looking at his full profile at some point - perhaps longer than a week ago? and not seeing a recent “seen” date but it’s possible I missed it. I think I was occasionally checking the discord reference link (@Omniscient) and looking for a “read (recently)” data point and not seeing it. But I also see the “last seen” activity now on the full profile.

I’m not positive it’s accurate. I checked the profiles of users who have stopped posting since the switch to discourse, including a user who died, who had a more recent “seen” date than their death, so I’m not sure every “seen” is a real signal. But if you’ve been noticing it being active several times in the last week there might be something there.

It would be odd to build up all the draft capital if he hadn’t intended to keep playing his team this year.

Let us know if you’re around Omni, and if you have an interest in continuing to manage your team. No one is gonna bite. It’d be good to know you’re okay and/or what’s going on with you.

40

I’ll have my cuts in by this afternoon.