Apolyton Fantasy Football (not soccer damnit)

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Ok, well, if nobody else volunteers I'll do it.

[Berzerker]

ru volunteering for commish of the idp league?

[Koyaanisqatsi]

There was a condition attached to it, I believe...

[Ben Kenobi]

In Texas that's called an appetizer.

Exactly!

[SlowwHand]

Well, well. What have we here?

Here's something you don't see every day: a former New York Giant sticking up for a Dallas Cowboy. Even more incredible? The Giant in question decided to stick up for Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, saying he was a better signal-caller than former teammate Eli Manning.

The player in question would be Amani Toomer, who spent five years playing with Manning, and caught more passes than any Giants receiver during the team's 2008 Super Bowl win over the then-undefeated Patriots.

Not really a big surprise to people with a brain.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/dallas-cowboys/headlines/20120706-ex-giant-amani-toomer-cowboys-tony-romo-better-than-eli-manning.ece

[Al B. Sure!]

8-3 postseason record with two Super Bowl wins vs. 1-3 in the playoffs.

Yeah. People with a brain sure prefer Romo

[SlowwHand]

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[Berzerker]

I will be on vacation and have poor internet access until August 12.

I dont know when Jag starts his vacation but he is re-doing settings and they'll be used in at least 1 other league, maybe all 3 to an extant

[Jaguar]

Vacation starts August 4. I'm tempted to let the draft start during that time and leave Snoopy in charge. I have settings I believe to be fairly good that should put Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, LeSean McCoy, Calvin Johnson, Ray Rice, and Arian Foster in roughly the same ballpark for draft value.

[Jaguar]

Also, note that D/ST has 12 players currently. Unless someone really wants to get in, I'd prefer it stay that way. 14 players leads to a bottleneck where starters at key positions - particularly, QB - become too scarce. 12 is, in my view, preferable.

[snoopy369]

Sounds good to me. You'll give me the first pick if I watch it for you, right?

[MRT144]

Also, note that D/ST has 12 players currently. Unless someone really wants to get in, I'd prefer it stay that way. 14 players leads to a bottleneck where starters at key positions - particularly, QB - become too scarce. 12 is, in my view, preferable.

Agreed

[Jaguar]

Please tell me if you disagree with any of these rule changes. It's very, very difficult to design ideal fantasy settings, and it's very useful to hear people's input about what they see as "fair" or "unfair." In an abstract sense, we're just betting on a bunch of loaded random number generators. No rule is necessarily objectively "better" than any other. But if most people say "this player shouldn't have scored so highly, because he threw too many interceptions," then I can discover that you believe the game would be more fun if the interception penalty was increased. I try to listen to what people like or what they complain about, so that we can tinker with the settings for the next year. Given that, here are the settings I have tentatively changed.

Waiver Change
Game Time Waivers. Reduces the time that players spend on waivers. Waiver restrictions need begin only when players actually begin playing their game. The only purpose of waivers is to make sure that everyone gets an fair chance to make a claim on a player who just had a breakout game. It is not to impede people's general team-management ability. From Wednesday to game time, you can collect any player you want.

Position Requirements Change
RB-WR Flex has become RB-WR-TE Flex. Some people wanted this change, and there's no strong imbalance reason against it. In practice, I expect very few people to be able to use two TEs effectively; the flex spot will still be occupied mostly by WRs and RBs.

Major Scoring Change

The primary change was to boost other players relative to quarterbacks.

The largest source of perceived unfairness last year was that five QBs - Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Cam Newton, Tom Brady, and Matthew Stafford - scored overwhelming numbers of points and could win games virtually by themselves. In previous years, QBs were powerful picks, but not overwhelmingly better than top RBs. That changed when all five of these players accumulated at least 4750 total yards and 35 total touchdowns. Eli Manning also reached 5000 and 30.

In real life, quarterback performance has become a dominating factor. It's hard to imagine building a dominant team without one of those players. But in fantasy, we prefer that several positions be valid first-round picks.

This environment gives people more strategic options and reduces the importance of pick order. If elite quarterbacks are far more important than elite WRs or RBs, the third overall pick this year will be very uninteresting, because everyone agrees who the best three quarterbacks are. The game becomes more interesting and strategic when people aren't sure how LeSean McCoy should stack up to Calvin Johnson or Tom Brady. A greater variety of good options at the top reduces the importance of pick order and increases uncertainty about the draft.

Last year, we had six QBs and eight RBs in the first round, and they were pretty well mixed. The year before, five and seven. We successfully gave people interesting choices for the climate of 2010. But post-2011, I think we will have four or five QBs in a row at the top of the draft if I don't either dial them back or boost other players.

-----

I chose to boost other players. The problem with dialing QBs back is that they get so many points from their touchdowns, and I think there are strong aesthetic reasons to give six points per touchdown. In general our league places less emphasis on touchdowns and more on yardage; I think most people find it irritating when a 2nd-string TE catches a one-yard touchdown pass and outscores Andre Johnson.

We will use the 2.5:1 scoring ratio for yards from scrimmage points to pass yardage points. (This is used in standard fantasy scoring.) However, we will do this by giving 0.1 points per passing yard, and 0.25 points per yard from scrimmage.

We will retain the efficiency-related reforms from last year that give a mild boost to passers and rushers who create more yards-per-play. An eight-yard run is better than two four-yard runs.

Overall I expect several positions to play starring roles this year. I expect we will see a healthy mix of QBs, RBs, and even a possible WR in the first round. By Yahoo!'s projections, Arian Foster (551) and Joe Flacco (386) can get you to 937 points together, while Tom Brady (577) and DeMarco Murray (349) would get you to 926.

Putting the league's settings into FootballOutsiders's KUBIAK tool puts five RBs, four WRs, and three QBs in the first round. In reality, I think we'll see fewer WRs than that and more QBs and RBs, which is fine.

Minor Scoring Change

Another much-discussed change in NFL stats last year was the reduced number of kickoff returns because kickoff distance has been moved up. Kickoff returns tend to give "free" yardage, which, if scored poorly in fantasy, can result in kick returners, especially ones on bad teams, becoming perennially super-powerful players. I once described Danny Amendola as "a magic button that gets me a point every time someone scores on the Rams." Josh Cribbs and Johnny Lee Higgins were also common offenders.

We did want to reward players who legitimately scored, though, even if we didn't reward return yards, so we rewarded return TDs to the player. In the new rules, though, a kickoff return is much more more difficult. I am provisionally returning a small credit for return yards at a rate of 100 yards per point.

Minor Scoring Change

D/STs have been beefed up more to keep pace with position players. D/STs still get part of the credit for special teams, kind of like how passers and receivers share credit for production through the air. I particularly tried to increase their absolute scoring, so that it's less likely for you to have a negative score from your defense, which can be demoralizing.

Changes if League is Reduced to 12 Players

I prefer 12 teams because of the shortage of starting quarterbacks, frequently exacerbated by joncha's trolling. If so, I would prefer to expand our benches by two so that we have 18 rounds and 12 managers (216 players picked) instead of 16 rounds and 14 managers (224 players picked).

Additionally, with 12 teams, a 4-team playoff is more appropriate than a six-team playoff with byes. The race to get into the playoffs is still intense, and we don't have so many teams going idle in week 14.

[Jaguar]

http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/f1/61194/settings

Settings can be found here. You can also check out the players to see how they scored under these settings in 2010 and 2011, or what they're projected for in 2012

[Al B. Sure!]

A lot of fantasy rankings and discussion on forums has Ryan Matthews REALLY high. Like as a top-5 back.

Is there something I'm missing?