Got a busy weekend but after that I’ll try to re-read and condense rules discussion down into a few votable rule proposals. Feel free to make the case for any of them.
I guess I’ll spend hours watching preseason games so I can draft yet another rookie RB bust!
I love the idea of the mini draft for the two new owners, but as a point of consideration, do we actually need it? It isn’t as if one of the two teams is awful. One team won the title last year, and the other is a perennial contender and 2x champion in this league. It’s not like anyone would need to be bribed to take a team with Odell and Antonio Brown.
Even the idea of including the draft picks into the mini draft is an awesome idea, but what do we do about Varlos’ trade with **SenorBeef **from last year for this year’s picks? Does that go into the pool to be drafted? That seems really weird. So we would have to figure out the new owner draft format, which takes time. Then handle mini-complications that come up (such as last year’s trade), which takes time. And then the actual mini draft is going to take a lot of time. Last year our draft started on 08/25/2018 and we barely, barely made it. We had those crappy supplemental picks happening up to the first game of the season. And we still haven’t gone over rules proposals.
Speaking of proposals, I casually mentioned that we didn’t need the rule about balancing picks. **Ellis Dee **did a good job convincing me otherwise. I don’t know if it ever elevated to an actual proposal, but if it was considered as such, I’d like to withdraw it.
I think we’re close to ready for a new thread for the upcoming year. I’ll officially list out my proposals regarding rule changes in a bit.
I’m cool with however you guys want to do it, whether assigning or splitting up the two teams. Admittedly, I would be less than devastated having to take over a league champion or perennial contender. In either case, the pool of players is deep and impressive so however we make it work is fine with me.
Regarding proposals:
PROPOSAL:
I propose that we codify the distinct draft phases, as outlined in my earlier post (post #581, linked here). I re-read through all the previous years draft threads again, and this would eliminate probably 75% of the confusing nonsense regarding the draft. And excepting the withdrawn proposal above, no rules would really be changed. We would just be structuring things in a clear manner and actually getting the system down in writing. The draft became a bit of a mess because it evolved organically from year to year, without the rules ever being compiled together in an easy reference. It was interesting to see it handled in “real time” between seasons 1 and 2.
PROPOSAL:
I also propose that we scrap the supplemental draft entirely. It caused a ton of confusion last year and ended up having something like 10 picks. If someone goes on IR after being kept, or drafted, you have to make the choice to use FAAB before the season starts to get a replacement, or risk missing out on someone when waivers clear before week 1. I think that’s an interesting choice!
PROPOSAL:
I suggest we reduce the time limit to make a pick to 8 hours, with each team getting a few (?) allowances per draft to stretch this to 12 hours if they are negotiating a trade or waiting for offers. This league always struck me as the elite fantasy league on these boards, so high participation should be expected. Life happens, everyone knows that, but every year we come up against week one while drafting, which is problematic. Someone once suggested we do a quasi live draft for the league with everyone getting on Skype or Google Hangouts or something. I don’t know if that is possible, but it would be fun. Not super adamant about this proposal, to be clear.
I think we came to a resolution against contracting teams (obviously), and against reducing roster sizes (since the person who suggested it is no longer in the league). **Stringer **also suggested changing how the draft order works. I think the way the draft order works is pretty simple, but it was never really outlined anywhere. I think I had to go back four years to specifically find where in the thread it was actually proposed and implemented. A year afterwards there was still confusion and misinformation about it. So instead of changing it, how about we include a brief summary at the start of each new year’s thread referencing:
•Picks 1-4 go to the four worst teams by record
•Picks 5-8 go to the consolation bowl participants, with the winner getting pick 5 and moving backwards by order of finish
•Picks 9-12 go to the playoff teams in reverse order of finish
I would vote no to change how this works since it has been working fine for several years.
***** 2017 Trade Log *****
#1 (draft)
Jules Andre gets:
1.01 [RB Leonard Fournette, Jax]
2.01 [RB Marlon Mack, Ind]
Dalej42 gets:
RB Todd Gurley, LAR
6.03 [K Wil Lutz, NO]
#2 (draft)
SenorBeef gets:
1.05 [WR Corey Davis, Ten]
3.05 [QB DeShone Kizer, Cle]
Really Not All That Bright gets:
1.06 [RB Kareem Hunt, KC]
2.06 [RB D’Onta Foreman, Hou]
#3 (draft)
SenorBeef gets:
RB Isaiah Crowell, Cle
Ellis Dee gets:
2.04 [TE David Njoku, Cle]
#4 (draft)
SenorBeef gets:
2.05 [RB Samaje Perine, Was]
2018 3rd round pick
Varlos gets:
2.12 [QB Deshaun Watson, Hou]
2018 2nd round pick
#5
Jules Andre gets:
WR Amari Cooper, Oak
Hamlet gets:
RB Marlon Mack, Ind
#6
Jules Andre gets:
WR Doug Baldwin, Sea
RB CJ Spiller, KC
Dalej42 gets:
WR Jordan Matthews, Buf
RB Andre Ellington, Ari
#7
Really Not All That Bright gets:
QB Jameis Winston, TB
2018 3rd round pick
Justin Bailey gets:
QB Andy Dalton, Cin
2018 1st round pick
Total Points Scored: 18,333.07 (-752.72 from last year)
Average Points/Team: 1.527.76 (-62.72)
Average Team/Week: 109.13 (-4.48)
Scoring was significantly down from last year, and I imagine at the lowest level in the history of the league. I suspect this had to do not with a lack of offense in the NFL, but the loss of so many elite players to injury throughout the season.
Top Scores of 2017 (150+)
RetroVertigo (w3): 177.10
RNATB (w7): 169.77
Varlos (w8): 159.10
RNATB (w4): 158.70
Jules Andre (w9): 150.07
This shows just how far scoring has fallen. Five games of 150 points is the fewest in six years. And I only say six years because I didn’t bother to go back beyond 2012.
2012: 14
2013: 18
2014: 16
2015: 13
2016: 7
2017: 5
Highest Losing Scores
Jules Andre (w6): 145.70
Hamlet (w14): 140.05
Omniscient (w12): 135.42
SenorBeef (w14): 130.20
Hamlet (w11): 127.95
Welp.
All-Time Win/Loss Though Nine Years:
Stringer: 83-43 (.659)
SenorBeef: 79-47 (.627)
Petey: 73-53 (.579)
RNATB: 70-56 (.556)
Justin_Bailey: 69-57 (.548)
VarlosZ: 69-57 (.548)
Hamlet: 61-65 (.484)
furt/Jules Andre: 59-67 (.468)
Omni/Hermits: 54-72 (.429)
Ellis Dee: 52-74 (.413)
RetroVertigo: 46-80 (.365)
dalej42: 41-85 (.325)
Unlike last year, there was a slight change in the all-time rankings. By finishing with the best regular-season record in the league, **RNATB **moved into the top four. I look forward to the end of this season when I go 16-0 and have enough games to justify my own entry, separate from furt.
Highest All-Time Single-Season Point Totals: (1800+)
Hamlet '09: 1935.30 (138.23/g)
Stringer '11: 1921.40
Varlos '15: 1885.04
Justin '13: 1876.51
Stringer '12: 1859.98
Stringer '14: 1857.14
Beef '13: 1852.78
Beef '14: 1846.39
Stringer '10: 1837.62
Beef '11: 1829.03
Petey '10: 1823.43
RNATB '09: 1817.75
Petey '14: 1815.86 (129.70/g)
RNATB '17: 1811.58 (129.40/g)
Unlike 2016, where scoring was higher throughout the league but more evenly spread out, someone finally broke the threshold to join this elite list. Following the suppressed-scoring of recent seasons, it was the lowest qualifying season.
Highest All-Time Single-Game Point Totals: (175+)
Hamlet (w7 '09) - 202.60
RNATB (w15 '17) - 186.44
Hamlet (w14 '09) - 185.60
Varlos (w9 '12) - 181.14
Varlos (w9 '15) - 178.45
Hamlet (w15 '13) - 178.32
Petey (w3 '11) - 177.95
Petey (w11 '10) - 177.50
RetroVertigo (w3 '17) - 177.10
Petey (w12 '10) - 176.75
Omniscient (w4 '13) - 176.35
Stringer (w5 '12) - 175.93
SenorBeef (w1 '13) - 175.85
Two teams made it into the highest scores list for the first time since 2015. **RNATB **did it in the playoffs (against me, of course), and RetroVertigo whooped up on dalej42 on the way to a disappointing season.
At this point I almost need to change my name to the Cleveland Fanboys, what with two of my key players (Jarvis Landry and Carlos Hyde) going to the Browns this offseason. Luckily I managed to re-acquire Travis Kelce last year so I won’t be playing Njoku that often, but there will definitely be at least a week or two I’ll be starting three Cleveland skill positions. Gah!
The problem we had last year was some people were seriously slacking off when it was their pick. Not to call anyone out by name, but let’s take a look back and see who the guilty parties were, and call them out by name for public shaming:
Pick 1.04 happened 8/28 7:36pm
Pick 1.05 happened the next morning around 8:30am, 13 hours total.
This pick was actually a trade. Overnight trade, only 13 hours? Not a problem at all. Even better, the trade involved consecutive picks, both of which were posted in the same post. So only 6.5 hours per pick, overnight. Well done.
Pick 2.12 happened 8/31 10:40pm (Almost 2 full rounds in 3 days)
Pick 3.01 happened 12:27pm the following afternoon.
That’s 14 hours, but it’s overnight, and dale worked the overnight shift that night. Not great, but not the end of the world.
Pick 3.05 happened 9/01 10:01pm
Pick 3.06 happened 9/02 9:00am
11 hours isn’t terrible for an overnight, but it’s kind of a bummer when primetime gets wasted like that. We could have had 2-3 more picks by 1am easily. However, Justin planned ahead by sending pre-ranks to the commisioner, so I give him a pass on this delay. (Note that the commissioner was VarlosZ, who was in the process of going MIA, which he has been ever since.)
Pick 3.10 happened 9/02 7:51pm
Pick 3.11 happened 9/03 5:13pm
Now we’re getting into trouble. Over 21 hours to make a pick this far into September is bad. Retro was traveling, offline for 3 days, but had sent his prerankings to the now officially-MIA VarlosZ. So Retro is off the hook for this one.
Pick 4.01 happened 9/03 6:44pm
Pick 4.03 happened 9/04 12:33pm
And now all hell has broken loose in the draft. Pick 4.02 was VarlosZ, who had been offline for 36 hours. We waited a reasonable amount of time, but after 18 hours on the clock we skipped him, with Jules making a pick.
No more analysis is needed, I believe. Much or all of the delays in last year’s draft can be attributable to the commissioner going MIA in the middle of the draft, which means the conscientiously submitted preranking lists were wasted effort, plus the extra delay of waiting for an MIA owner’s pick which never happened.
I’m confident we won’t have those issues this year. (Right, Beef?)
Thanks Jules for that info. I won’t be home until later. I’ll get the new thread posted tomorrow and get things sorted.
I don’t think the draft will be a problem. We do get slow parts but we’ll finish on time.
Do we want to set a date for Roster Cuts?
Say Thursday 1159pm est?
I guess we might need the two new Owners to do their draft first, so nevermind.
That seems too complicated. Just have the #9 draft pick slots and the #12 draft pick slots as one draftable entity each. So whoever chooses a draft pick in lieu of a player first gets all the draft slots associated with the #9 pick, and the other person gets all the slots associated with the #12 pick.
That didn’t.
Huh. Had no idea that 186 was an all-time number. I thought we’d had a few 200+ games.
I wonder what the most dominant season we’ve had was points-wise.
I like this, good thinking.
Last year we started the draft 8/28, and the season started 10 days later on 9/7. It was a late start, and we had multiple long delays, so I’m much less worried about running out of time than I was.
Proposed schedule:
Aug 14-21: New owner draft
Aug 21-24: Keeper declaration
Aug 25-Sep 5: Draft
Sep 6: NFL kickoff
EDIT: The all-important 3rd week of preseason should wrap up Friday the 24th or Saturday the 25th.
I personally like having every pick up for grabs. It has the following advantages:
It adds more flexibility and strategy options in terms of how to invest the special draft picks into regular draft picks. Someone could decide to go heavy or light on new draft picks, which makes the options at every special draft pick more interesting. As an example, someone could choose to have two first round picks at the cost of giving up valuable players to the other drafter.
It essentially eliminates the cut process for those teams. They’re choosing their ratio of players and draft picks based on how they pick them in the draft, rather than having to draft players (in the special draft) and then cut down for more draft picks.
On the downside, using the ABBAABBAA format, the first person to grab a draft pick could suddenly grab both first round picks, which might end up being irritating to the other player. Not sure if this is something that should just be considered part of the strategy or not.
I’m not married to the idea but I think it’ll make a more interesting draft. Anyone else have any opinions? I guess we should get the ball rolling on the special new team draft soon, although I suspect it won’t take that long since if the two owners are around it can go pretty quick.
No one would be getting shafted by taking either of those teams, and I wasn’t proposing it as a parity mechanism. It’s just a unique opportunity (first time we’ve replaced two people) to allow people more control over the team they start with. Even though they’re working with a limited draft pool, they have more control to get their guys and form a team that they can feel like they crafted by choice to some degree rather than simply inheriting someone’s roster. A sense of ownership of your team is important to dynasty and I see in this a chance to increase that factor.
Yeah, we’d include that. It’s slightly weird but not really a problem - so Varlos’ pick bundle will be 2 second rounders and no third rounder, which isn’t complicated. Perhaps slightly weird if we allow each draft pick to be drafted in the special draft, but it would’ve been available from the picks Varlos owns, so it makes sense I think.
Sure, I think the balanced pick thing works for us. The only time it gets complicated is if an owner ends up with multiple “and their last round pick” type trades.
Put me behind this proposal as well. I hate the “last pick” nonsense and having a clear set of draft picks laid out like this would solve all of that.
I also agree with this. The supplemental draft doesn’t serve much purpose, especially with the caliber of players being drafted. So why have it?
Although it may not net you Sequin, the #2 pick (which I own according to yahoo) is for sale.
And I do think Saquon should officially, and not just autocorrect, change his name to Sequin Barkley.
I don’t, because it doesn’t play nice with ABBAABBAABB format. It essentially guarantees that someone will start with two first round picks and someone else will start with none, and that’s not great. I didn’t realize this until you pointed it out, but it’s a real problem.
RNATB’s suggestion of drafting the draft position (9 or 12) is much better.
I don’t understand why you still think this. There is no cut process for the new owners; they just stop drafting at 20 players or whenever they want, and the rest of their slots are their draft picks.
They don’t have to stop at the same time, either. At 19 Charles can say I’m out, resulting in 6 picks in the draft, and Gaffer can draft 3 more players, stopping at 22 and getting 3 picks in the draft. Totally fine and workable. (And clearly obvious…)
The idea of drafting all 25 then immediately cutting 4-5 of them would never have even occurred to me. Obviously they just stop drafting and they’re done; the rest of their slots are draft picks.
I would object if it didn’t favor a new owner, but it does so sure. If they had to trade their 2nd to you for your 3rd, though, I would object. Note that it doesn’t apply until after the new owner draft. Once that’s all done, whoever selected the 12th picks trades their 3rd to you for your 2nd and we’re done.
This is the primary reason I was so strongly against trading future draft picks: Replacement owners taking over and having to pay for trades from the previous year.
Why stop there? He can be Sequin Sparkly. Also, I’m interested in moving up in the first round of the draft.