Apolyton Fantasy Football

[Al B. Sure!]

close but no cigar.

No one ever said it was a perfect indicator, just that it would probably be a good differentiation stat.

Had I scored 5 more points against Jaguar and beat him, Flash and I would have had identical records.

He would have out-scored me by 203 points but I would have had 56 more points against. It seems hard to justify giving me the playoffs because of more points against when he outscored me by 4x the difference in points against.

I don't know how common a situation like this is but the fact that it was 5 points in week 10 away from happening makes me wonder. Points Against does not say anything about what your team actually scored or how those points were distributed. A few blow-outs can inflate points against and one would be rewarded for, potentially, games where they score 50 points to their opponent's 200 being more valued than a loss of 99-100. Both losses count the same for the two players in their W-L columns but hard for me to justify the guy who scored 50 points getting the tie-breaker because of a game he was blown out in.

[MRT144]

If we harken back to last year's discussion about luck i made a very complicated and potentially useless measure of luck that took some of these things into account;

1. Being the #1 for the week was somewhat lucky.
2. Being the #14 for the week was somewhat unlucky.
3. Facing the #1 for the week was very unlucky
4. Facing the #14 for the week was very lucky.

In the first two cases, your luck is somewhat determined by draft and roster choices.
In the latter two cases, your luck is mostly determined by who you faced and their roster and draft choices.

Imagine the most extreme scenario where your team goes 0-13 because you played the #1 team each week. And each week you came in 2nd place overall. Also, imagine the opposite where you go 13-0 where you played the the worst team each week and each week you're 2nd to worst.

If we were running a league where that happened, it'd be hard to imagine anyone thinking the 13-0 truly deserved or earned their spot at the end of the season.

Maybe the best tie breaker measure is to count wins vs. league as a tie breaker.

[rah]

You can create "unfair" situations for any tiebreaker. In a single division fantasy league, after head-to-head, common opponents, anything else is possibly flawed so as long as everyone knows what it is at the beginning of the year, that's the best you can do. I only liked the points against since it shows what your team overcame. But as noted, not perfect.

[Al B. Sure!]

You can create "unfair" situations for any tiebreaker. In a single division fantasy league, after head-to-head, common opponents, anything else is possibly flawed so as long as everyone knows what it is at the beginning of the year, that's the best you can do. I only liked the points against since it shows what your team overcame. But as noted, not perfect.

I don't understand the logic though in points against when you can just go with points for.

Am I the only one missing this? You go with the guy who scored more points because his team was better in general. Yes, the distribution can be skewed where he had maybe 3 huge weeks, but generally speaking, more fantasy points scored trumps more fantasy points against. Your team could be ****ty but gave up a crapload of points against.

I'm not understanding how points against could be a valid tie-breaker in anything but a 2nd or 3rd tie-breaker situation after points for.

Points for directly corresponds to your fantasy team. Points against has NOTHING to do with your fantasy team and is 100% schedule.

[Donegeal]

Fantasy football is not comparable to the NFL in terms of tiebreakers. It's funny that Alby has been on both sides of this issue.

I remember missing the FF playoffs on the points tiebreaker and being outraged. It feels wrong, but at the end of the day, it's just a rule. When you agree to play in a league, you accept the rules and their consequences. My take on it is that total points makes more logical sense, in that it's a good estimate of the season-long strength when comparing two teams. But I can understand going the other way.

IRL, head-to-head is the dominant tiebreaker in pro sports. It's more emotionally satisfying, and makes the choice between two teams very straightforward. But real life is based on full teams, including awesome defenses and conservative gameplans designed to produce low-scoring games (and, obviously, victories). FF is all about putting points on the board. Defensive scoring is combined with offense, and there's very little "game planning" or strategy vs. a given opponent (other than trying nerf the opponent's QB by starting a marginal pass-catcher against him in PPR).

So on balance, I think total points is more fair.

And herein lies the problem with traditional FF scoring. It doesn't matter who you play against. You get the same points no matter your opponent. Not the case in category scoring.

There most certianly can be strategy in FF, just like in regular football. The same week Brady was on a bye this year, was the same week I was playing against Brees. Knowing that the top FA QB wasn't going to throw for more yards than Brees, I opted for a running FA QB to help in the rushing category. Sure I lost the passing category 7-0, but the move put me over the top in Rushing and I won Rushing 10-0.

Not only that, but traditional FF scoring results in football scores of 150.6 to 175.8. This is retarded. The most common score in category scoring is 27-24. Holy crap! A football score!

[MRT144]

Barring the gibberish emanating from the old coot above...

[rah]

I don't understand the logic though in points against when you can just go with points for.

I don't think I said anywhere that one is better than the other. I just LIKED one better than the other. I think all the later tie breakers are flawed.

[Al B. Sure!]

Barring the gibberish emanating from the old coot above...

I was just going to put a rolleyes smiley but I thought I was being harsh. Some people like vanilla, some people like chocolate, I figured. You are ballsy, MRT.

[-Jrabbit]

Alby, my recommendation re your money league is that you grit your teeth, grin and bear it. Those guys aren't going to change, and they will never believe that it's about anything other than the fact that it's your ox being gored.

Let it go.

[Al B. Sure!]

Yeah

[Donegeal]

:

Old coot. Not in the compay we keep HERE!

[-Jrabbit]

Yeah

Perhaps your most reasonable post ever!

[Berzerker]

I like pts, I'd do a pts league if not for liking h2h too (and that we've done h2h for years)... h2h adds a bit more to sundays that a pts league would be missing, but I value pts more than anything else.

maybe we can add a roto or pts league next year, I'd commish.

[flash9286]

It's very simple. For a TIE-BREAKER, it makes more sense to have it be points for because that rewards overall season performance rather than the outcome of two specific head to head games. This is not REAL football with gameplanning for your opponent. Fantasy football is about scoring points and, for the future, if two teams have identical records, the tie-breaker should be points for, not head to head

This is pretty much the argument for points as a tie-breaker. If he/she doesn't understand the logic, you can't do anything else about it. H2H values one sets of wins over another set of wins. If you have 2 teams (A and B) with the same records, and Team A has beat Team B, then conversely Team A has to have a lost to a team that Team B beat, in a simple round robin type of league. There is no reason for me to value one set of wins over another. Pts gives you a tie-breaker that takes the teams whole season performance instead of one or two games.

I don't see any reason why you would use pts against as a tiebreaker when you can use pts scored.

[-Jrabbit]

OK, playoffs start tonight for IDP.

A couple interesting notes on the final week of the regular season:
1. Mountain Goats (Jaguar) put a beatdown on Berz to push him out of the championship bracket.
2. Hairball Express (Tuberski) squeezed Electric Slide Jedi (Ben) out of the consolation bracket 8 seed by 0.65 total points (total scoring tiebreaker). That's gotta hurt.

Congrats to Guynemer on winning the regular season title (11-3) and the overall scoring title.

And yes, my Vicious Rabbits did manage to squeez into the consolation bracket as the overall #7 seed despite giving up more points than anyone else. Managed to finish 4th in overall scoring and ended the year with a 5-game winning streak. (Side note: Sloww really got pounded the last several weeks, nearly overtaking me in Points Against. That weekly average was about 156.66, down from 172 at midseason.)

So it's Deviations vs. Calamitous Intent and A Dead Horse vs. Mountain Goats in the championship bracket.

Good luck to all.

Quick reminder -- We have both Thursday AND Saturday games this week. Be advised.