Everyone is welcome to join any of these leagues. There aren’t a set number of teams nor does it hurt anyone should you drop out, so if you’re new to this give it a try.
Pick 'em:
In NFL Pick 'em leagues, each player predicts the outcome of every NFL game. There are three different types, and we run all three. You can join any or all of them.
Straight up: You simply pick the winner of each game, and get a point if correct.
Spread: A spread is determined for a game (like with sports betting), where one team has a certain amount of points given to them, and you have to pick the game with that adjustment taken into account.
Confidence: The most complex one, but in my view also the most fun. There are no spreads, so you pick the winner straight up. But you get a confidence value you can assign to every game, 1 through the number of games being played that weekend, and can only use each number once. So if there are 16 games that weekend, you’ll assign the confidence number 16 to the game where the outcome seems most clear to you, 15 for the next one, all the way down to 1 for the one you’re least sure of. If you pick correctly, the confidence value of your pick is added to your weekly score. If you only play one league, I suggest the confidence league.
Survival:
Each player picks one team that has to win each week. If your picked team fails to win, you get a strike. You can only use each team once. Using two strikes before you’re eliminated last year seemed to work well, so I think we’ll go for that again this year.
These leagues can hold up to 50 players each, so we’re not really at risk for filling up, and you’re competing against the whole league, not one other team per week like fantasy football, so it’s not a big deal if you end up dropping out. I’d like for everyone to play all the way through the season, but it won’t hurt anyone if you don’t, so feel free to sign up if you’re only a little interested.
Salary Cap:
The scoring works like fantasy football, but the way the game works is different.
There are not a limited number of teams because teams do not exclusively own players like in traditional fantasy football. Which means, like pick 'em and survival leagues, the more the merrier.
How it works is that based on past and projected performance, each player in the NFL is assigned a salary. When you add someone to your team, you buy them at this salary.
As their performance changes, their price can go up or down - in the event that it goes up, you can retain them at the price you originally bought them for - and if it goes down you can recover the money. You have a limited amount of cap space to work with, so if you sign Adrian Peterson, he’s going to cost enough that you’ll have to go for some cheap players at other positions.
In effect, you’re trying to get the most value of your players rather than necesarily having the best in raw production at any given position. You can find sleepers who you feel are about to break out and buy them up early for cheap, benefiting from their later better performance for the same price, or you can switch out your players every week based on who you feel has the most favorable matchup relative to their cost, or any combination of strategies.
The scoring rules and roster positions of the league are fixed, and salary updates are automatically provided weekly. There’s no head to head format, the winner is the person who scores the most overall points.
I would suggest using a name in these leagues that either includes your SDMB name or makes reference to your SDMB name so we know who everyone is.
You should be able to get to the signup page for all the leagues here. The password for all groups is “cecil”. The group numbers are:
Straight pick 'em #42480
Spread pick 'em #44417
Confidence pick 'em #44416
Survival #19852
Salary cap #3467