Fantasy Football Discussion Thread

[Al B. Sure!]

Why?

Everybody hates change and freedom

Also, racism.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Why?

I know I'm not in the IDP league but you all are silly. Why restrict what team owners can do senselessly? More choices the better!

 

[-Jrabbit]

All it does is present another option for people who don't have a draft strategy and/or have a bad matchup at W/R. It's not "expanding choices" so much as it's providing an extra safety net for the weak.

Frankly, if there was going to be a change, I would rather eliminate the Flex and just make it a third WR. Because three RBs makes no sense at all.

[snoopy369]

TEs in IDP, similar to the DST league, score very little once you get past the first three tiers. The #20 scoring TE in IDP scored 80 points, or 5 points per game.

Further, TE is actually one of the least interesting positions from a strategic standpoint. Not only do you have a very well known set of potential draft choices - there are only 1 TE per team that's worth taking in 90% of cases (only Fred Davis-TE-WAS is really worth considering as a second TE in this year's draft), and there is a well known subset of those TEs that actually catch passes, as many TEs are not pass catchers. That means there are fifteen to twenty potential draft picks, with a fairly well understood order and very few sleepers of any potential. There is some variation to the order inside that 15 to 20, but it's not usually very substantial; in DST Jason Witten most substantially deviated from his expected relative ADP (expected 3rd, actual 6th). That's nothing... look at QBs (Eli Manning, Joe Flacco), RBs(Shonn Greene, Joseph Addai), etc. - much more movement in quality up and down, and as we get to the end of the starters you'll see a ton more shifts that are quite significant. TE, however, we'll see nearly exactly the top 14 ADP as starters, and I doubt we'll see a single significant sleeper drafted (as there really aren't any). Looking at lists of "sleepers", experts either name top 10 TEs that they think will perform slightly better (ie, Vernon Davis, Owen Daniels) or TEs just outside the top 10 that they think will fall just inside the top 10. They never name people outside the top 15, and for good reason - there's nobody worth naming. On the other hand, WR, QB, RB have lots of sleepers that are well outside of normal starting - a lot of the "sleeper" QBs, the only similar position (1 starter), are in the mid to even high 20s in the Yahoo rankings and ADP, for example.

Finally, TE is in some ways similar to K in that scoring is somewhat random. PPR helps this some, but even so, TEs still need TDs to be elite. However, the number of TDs that a tight end catches is as much a factor of luck as of skill. Sure, a TE that catches more balls scores more; but they'll score in proportion to the number of times their team is inside the 10 yard line. Some teams happen to have more of those chances in any given year, and some fewer; so even Gates/TGon/etc. will have substantially up and down years based on how often their team gets the ball between the 5 and the 10 (prime scoring range for the tight end). Sometimes the Chargers WRs/RBs happen to fall down on the 6, and sometimes they fall down on the 2, after those long runs/catches - the difference being fairly small, except that at the 2, it's probably going to be rush-rush-rush, while at the 6 one of the first two downs is likely a pass. TE scoring doesn't correlate as well as it we'd like, particularly once you're past the top TEs and into the middle (10-20); there's too much randomness to predict if Dustin Keller or Jeremy Shockey is going to have a bigger year. Increased randomness means decreased strategy, which is bad - hence, there's no attempt to increase K scoring variations in order to improve the K position's ADP.

[MRT144]

All it does is present another option for people who don't have a draft strategy and/or have a bad matchup at W/R. It's not "expanding choices" so much as it's providing an extra safety net for the weak.

Frankly, if there was going to be a change, I would rather eliminate the Flex and just make it a third WR. Because three RBs makes no sense at all.

You just like conformity and expected outcomes you can cope with.

[-Jrabbit]

Listening to opinions from members of the IDP League.
Trolling by you and Al = pretty meaningless.

[Berzerker]

so much for that idea

shall we vote on eliminating the flex option for a 3rd WR?

[Al B. Sure!]

They're all just stodgy old men, Berzerker. If you ask me, I would have a rule change every year just to spice things up and make things more interesting Add a point if your RB gets over 100 yards in a game, 2 points if over 150 yards; Maybe draft a team's QB's instead of one QB meaning that if your starting QB goes down, you automatically get his backup just like in the real NFL; draft offensive lines and like how defense starts with a base value and subtracts the more points they give up, have offensive lines start with a base value and subtract every time their QB gets sacked; there's so many unique rules you can come up with that can make the game so much more interesting from year to year and spice things up.

Why so much conservatism over what's supposed to be fun?

[SlowwHand]

You still have time to set up a league, Al B.

[Al B. Sure!]

An auction PPR keeper league with offensive lines, Team QB drafting, IRR, and contract inflation from year to year?

But no one would want to play

(also, realistically, we'd have to do that manually since I don't think any free online service is set up to handle something like that)

[snoopy369]

ESPN would do most of that. Offensive lines is just silly, there aren't the quality of stats for they, and Team QB is stupid.

[Al B. Sure!]

ESPN would do most of that. Offensive lines is just silly, there aren't the quality of stats for they, and Team QB is stupid.

We know when a QB gets sacked. You could also do something like give points for team rushing average per carry. A team whose RB's average 5.0 ypc will get more points than one that averages 4.0 ypc.

Team QB is not stupid. People often already draft handcuffs for their starting RB's but people rarely draft QB handcuffs. It gives more to think about... Do you go for Romo knowing you have a capable Kitna behind him or Brady knowing you're going to have to rely on Brian Hoyer? It gives incentive to consider the QB's on teams like the Raiders or Buccaneers last year or the Seahawks, Browns, and Panthers this year... you have the feeling that the Seahawks are going to have a solid enough passing offense but who knows if it's going to be Hasselbeck or Whitehurst under center.

It spices things up.

I've realized you're just against interesting changes. It doesn't matter if it ends up being a bad idea. The point is, it's a fun new thing to consider and try out.

[snoopy369]

I'm very much for changes that make sense. I wish we could have offensive lines, but there aren't enough stats that meaningfully describe OLs to justify the added complexity. Differentiating the Shaun Alexander OL from the Walter Payton OL is impossible by RB yards (the former was awesome and responsible for basically all of his yards, the latter was sometimes good, sometimes not, and not particularly necessary for WP's success). Really, I'm pretty happy with the positions in standard fantasy; IDP is nice for a change, but actually the simpler the better in a lot of ways.

Team QB I just don't like because it's a wussy way of dealing with either Seahawks/Vikings type issues, or injuries. You want to get the Vikings' starting QB week one? Draft Favre and Jackson. Deal with it.

Auction I love, contract inflation is necessary in an auction keeper league. I like interesting things, just don't like interesting things solely for the sake of 'spicing things up'. You want spicy, eat a habañero.

[-Jrabbit]

No vote on turning flex into WR3, unless there's a bizarre, sudden groundswell of support for it. Which I doubt will happen. That wasn't an actual proposal.

I'll put the IDP league settings and draft/BAPAY rules in a fresh thread tomorrow. Draft will start Monday or Tuesday.

[MRT144]

I feel like I should start an auction flex TE league just to eff all you haters.