Fantasy Rule/Scoring Changes Discussion

[-Spectre-]

Below are some of the suggestions that come to my mind.

If everything remains as it was this year I would suggest to add Points Per Reception (1 PPR) and Points Per Carry (1 PPC ... maybe do 1/2 PPC).

I would also propose (if possible in Yahoo leagues) is to eliminate the TE slot and just add another WR (maybe 2?) slot but ONLY if all WR slots could be WR/TE (meaning that you could play TE's as WR's).

I like having the top 6 playoff system and I think the consolation round should be included again, that would at least give the bottom "X" players into the fun.

Increase the # max moves

I would like the negative points for FG's to be changed so that if you missed close it would be more negative points. As an example: Field Goals Missed 0-19 Yards -2 points, Field Goals Missed 20-29 Yards -1, Field Goals Missed 30-39 Yards 0 ... or something along those lines.

Not a big fan of the way waivers work right now, so I would suggest taking that off.


-----

I would also suggest that since we ussualy have the same turnout and we play every year we should do a Keeper League. Wether we change our league to a keeper or we run 2 leagues IDC but I think it would be cool if we could do it.




If I think of anything else I'll put it here .... maybe a new thread should be started and stickied names FFL suggestions and we keep track there and then we vote for the best ideas.

[Zeradul]

I split Spec's suggestions into it's own thread.  I can't figure out how to edit Spec's post (I'm apparently a moderator) anyways, so instead of editing his post to add numbers to his ideas.... I'll add those numbers here, so that we can discuss them individually and keep it all straight.

Also, if you have an idea of your own, add a number to it plz.

====================

1.) Points Per Reception (1 PPR) and Points Per Carry (1 PPC ... maybe do 1/2 PPC).

2.) I would also propose (if possible in Yahoo leagues) is to eliminate the TE slot and just add another WR (maybe 2?) slot but ONLY if all WR slots could be WR/TE (meaning that you could play TE's as WR's).

3.) I like having the top 6 playoff system and I think the consolation round should be included again, that would at least give the bottom "X" players into the fun.

4.) Increase the # max moves

5.) Increase Negative points for FG's so that if you missed close it would be more negative points. As an example: Field Goals Missed 0-19 Yards -2 points, Field Goals Missed 20-29 Yards -1, Field Goals Missed 30-39 Yards 0 ... or something along those lines.

6.) Remove Sunday to Tuesday Waivers.

[Zeradul]

Ok, here are my thoughts on your proposals:

1.) PPR and PPC I think make WR's and RB's unnecessarily valuable, and valuable in an arbitrary way, like number of carries.  For example, last week Harrison (of cleveland) had 39 carries and something like 110 yards and a TD.  A good day, which in our system gets him 17 points, but if you give him even HALF PPC, then that's another 20 points?  WTF?  As opposed to a guy like Chris Johnson, who often only gets 12-15 carries, but still racks up 120 yards and a TD, do you really want to make it so that a guy like Harrison is scoring 15 points more than a Chris Johnson who have almost identical stats?

That said, I think Yahoo will eventually add in "First Downs" as a stat.  I would LOVE to see PPFD (or Point Per First Down) because if a team constantly goes to a STUD on their team to get the first down, then that guy is clearly very valuable, and that is something that Fantasy Football should reflect.

2.) I do not want to get rid of the TE or make the TE position a TE/WR slot (yes you can do that in Yahoo)  I think there is significant skill in making your TE slot productive.  The last few years I have waited on TE and haven't been able to get a decent TE, and I have paid the price for it trying to find a guy who can catch the ball late in the year.  I think making your TE slot a productive one is a valuable skill in FF and I want to see it stay.  On average there are 4 TE's per year that produce as much as the top 30 WR's.  The rest of the TE's are scrubs from a stats perspective, and so making the most of the least valuable spot on your roster is a very real fantasy skill.

3.) You can't have a "consolation" round if you have a 6 team championship.  That is one of the advantages of a 4 team playoff, which I prefer.  6 team playoffs see teams at 0.500 getting into the playoffs, and I think that makes the "regular season" of fantasy less important, and so I like only the top 4 teams going.  That vote ended in a tie last year, so I won't propose it again, but if someone else wants to, I would vote for 4 team again.  I agree though, I think a consolation round means more fun for more people.

4.) I think there is a wide consensus for eliminating the moves cap now that we have waiver period.  One observation I had this year was that "waiver rank" is very valuable now.  In week3 or 4 I slid into the top waiver rank, and found that week after week I was not willing to "spend" it on that week's best pickups, because I felt they weren't worth it.  That forced me to pick up whatever was "leftover" after the waiver period, guys noone else wanted, and that often meant that I would go weeks without a single waiver move, because there weren't guys to be had.  It also lead me to try a new strategy this year, and that was to use a trick Mnem taught me, which was to make "speculative" picks with any roster spot I didn't need.  I picked up Jamal Charles and Harrison long before they became the starters just because I thought that Lewis and Larry Johnson would not stay healthy all year.  I was right in both cases (and wrong in about a dozen more) but Charles turned out to be a real super stud the last 5-6 weeks of the season.  So I think the waiver period in tandem with no moves cap leads to a whole new guessing game in fantasy and I think it is great addition to the game.

5.) That is fine with me, but this is a very minor change.  0-19 yard FG attempts are very rare, because the shortest FG attempt ever (an attempt from the 1 yard line) is technically an 18 yard FG attempt. (end zone = 10 yards, kickers line up 7 yards behind the line of scrimmage, so 10+7+1 = 18.  So not only are they very rare, but they are almost never missed.  I'm also not as in favor of this because I don't think missing FG's is something anyone can predict (with so few attempts per game) and kickers are such a small aspect of fantasy that I don't think it is worth a rule change.

6.) I am NOT in favor of removing the weekend waiver period.  I believe all Fantasy systems use it now as default (Yahoo, ESPN, NFL - I know these for sure do), and I think careful use of your waiver rank adds another skilled aspect of fantasy.  When to spend your rank, who to spend it on, etc, etc.  DD actually wrote a very well written explaination of this value in the comments of the Fantasy page that everyone hopefully read.  After I "spent" my #1 waiver rank this year on Forsett, I found my now worthless rank to be a real liability, and so I had to pick up as many handcuffs as possible to my stud players, because I was no longer assured of getting the backup I might need if one of my studs goes down.  I burned through 15 "moves" or so in just the last three weeks trying to protect my roster from injury given that I had the worst waiver rank.

[-Spectre-]

Ok, here are my thoughts on your proposals:

1.) PPR and PPC I think make WR's and RB's unnecessarily valuable, and valuable in an arbitrary way, like number of carries.  For example, last week Harrison (of cleveland) had 39 carries and something like 110 yards and a TD.  A good day, which in our system gets him 17 points, but if you give him even HALF PPC, then that's another 20 points?  WTF?  As opposed to a guy like Chris Johnson, who often only gets 12-15 carries, but still racks up 120 yards and a TD, do you really want to make it so that a guy like Harrison is scoring 15 points more than a Chris Johnson who have almost identical stats?

That said, I think Yahoo will eventually add in "First Downs" as a stat.  I would LOVE to see PPFD (or Point Per First Down) because if a team constantly goes to a STUD on their team to get the first down, then that guy is clearly very valuable, and that is something that Fantasy Football should reflect.

2.) I do not want to get rid of the TE or make the TE position a TE/WR slot (yes you can do that in Yahoo)  I think there is significant skill in making your TE slot productive.  The last few years I have waited on TE and haven't been able to get a decent TE, and I have paid the price for it trying to find a guy who can catch the ball late in the year.  I think making your TE slot a productive one is a valuable skill in FF and I want to see it stay.  On average there are 4 TE's per year that produce as much as the top 30 WR's.  The rest of the TE's are scrubs from a stats perspective, and so making the most of the least valuable spot on your roster is a very real fantasy skill.

3.) You can't have a "consolation" round if you have a 6 team championship.  That is one of the advantages of a 4 team playoff, which I prefer.  6 team playoffs see teams at 0.500 getting into the playoffs, and I think that makes the "regular season" of fantasy less important, and so I like only the top 4 teams going.  That vote ended in a tie last year, so I won't propose it again, but if someone else wants to, I would vote for 4 team again.  I agree though, I think a consolation round means more fun for more people.

4.) I think there is a wide consensus for eliminating the moves cap now that we have waiver period.  One observation I had this year was that "waiver rank" is very valuable now.  In week3 or 4 I slid into the top waiver rank, and found that week after week I was not willing to "spend" it on that week's best pickups, because I felt they weren't worth it.  That forced me to pick up whatever was "leftover" after the waiver period, guys noone else wanted, and that often meant that I would go weeks without a single waiver move, because there weren't guys to be had.  It also lead me to try a new strategy this year, and that was to use a trick Mnem taught me, which was to make "speculative" picks with any roster spot I didn't need.  I picked up Jamal Charles and Harrison long before they became the starters just because I thought that Lewis and Larry Johnson would not stay healthy all year.  I was right in both cases (and wrong in about a dozen more) but Charles turned out to be a real super stud the last 5-6 weeks of the season.  So I think the waiver period in tandem with no moves cap leads to a whole new guessing game in fantasy and I think it is great addition to the game.

5.) That is fine with me, but this is a very minor change.  0-19 yard FG attempts are very rare, because the shortest FG attempt ever (an attempt from the 1 yard line) is technically an 18 yard FG attempt. (end zone = 10 yards, kickers line up 7 yards behind the line of scrimmage, so 10+7+1 = 18.  So not only are they very rare, but they are almost never missed.  I'm also not as in favor of this because I don't think missing FG's is something anyone can predict (with so few attempts per game) and kickers are such a small aspect of fantasy that I don't think it is worth a rule change.

6.) I am NOT in favor of removing the weekend waiver period.  I believe all Fantasy systems use it now as default (Yahoo, ESPN, NFL - I know these for sure do), and I think careful use of your waiver rank adds another skilled aspect of fantasy.  When to spend your rank, who to spend it on, etc, etc.  DD actually wrote a very well written explaination of this value in the comments of the Fantasy page that everyone hopefully read.  After I "spent" my #1 waiver rank this year on Forsett, I found my now worthless rank to be a real liability, and so I had to pick up as many handcuffs as possible to my stud players, because I was no longer assured of getting the backup I might need if one of my studs goes down.  I burned through 15 "moves" or so in just the last three weeks trying to protect my roster from injury given that I had the worst waiver rank.

1. Most teams are a two headed running game nowadays so I think PPC would be good. It would also increase scoring which I think people here like. It would add another dimention as to how you draft players. I only agree to PPC if PPR is also added.

2. I disagree. The NFL has become more and more pass oriented and TE's have really become a cornerstone of that. I think there are enough good TE's (FF wise) specially if implemented with the PPR.

3. I thought you could do consolation with a 6 player playoff. If that is not the case then I would keep it the same (6 player playoff).

4. Nothing to add.

5. I think it should be good to add. More so with so many missed FG's this season. I think I have never seen so many missed FG's in a single season before.

6. Nothing to add. I prefer not having the waiver.

[Zeradul]

2. I disagree. The NFL has become more and more pass oriented and TE's have really become a cornerstone of that. I think there are enough good TE's (FF wise) specially if implemented with the PPR.

So you're saying you want to be able to start more than one TE?

That is easy to do, just make one of the WR slots a WR/TE slot, and keep everything else the same.  OR maybe we should make the RB/WR flex slot into a RB/WR/TE slot.  All of that is easy.

However, I really doubt anyone is going to do this.

This year the #1 TE was Dallas Clark, who put up 158 Points, and he would have ranked as the 10th best reciever.

But the #6 TE was Kellen Winslow, and he would have only ranked as the 27th best WR.  So typically noone is going to start a second TE over a #3 WR, because WR's are so much more valuable.

And if we change the only TE slot to a WR/TE slot, then only 6 TE's are going to be used in any given week, and the other 6 managers are just going to roll with their #4 WR.

---------

So I believe we should keep the TE position and not allow people to start a WR in their place.  TE is the least valuable roster spot (even kickers outperform TE's by 25 points per year on average) and so getting and keeping a stud TE is a real skill and I don't think we should eliminate it.

[-Spectre-]

2. I disagree. The NFL has become more and more pass oriented and TE's have really become a cornerstone of that. I think there are enough good TE's (FF wise) specially if implemented with the PPR.

So you're saying you want to be able to start more than one TE?

That is easy to do, just make one of the WR slots a WR/TE slot, and keep everything else the same.  OR maybe we should make the RB/WR flex slot into a RB/WR/TE slot.  All of that is easy.

However, I really doubt anyone is going to do this.

This year the #1 TE was Dallas Clark, who put up 158 Points, and he would have ranked as the 10th best reciever.

But the #6 TE was Kellen Winslow, and he would have only ranked as the 27th best WR.  So typically noone is going to start a second TE over a #3 WR, because WR's are so much more valuable.

And if we change the only TE slot to a WR/TE slot, then only 6 TE's are going to be used in any given week, and the other 6 managers are just going to roll with their #4 WR.

---------

So I believe we should keep the TE position and not allow people to start a WR in their place.  TE is the least valuable roster spot (even kickers outperform TE's by 25 points per year on average) and so getting and keeping a stud TE is a real skill and I don't think we should eliminate it.

No, only WR/TE.

I would easilly start a TE in favor of a WR3 ... specially on a deeper league. Would you have started Hackeem Nicks/Torry Holt/Donnie Avery (assuming they would be your WR3)? I certainly would not I would have taken the TE ... Another good point would be that you get the flexibility of not starting a TE and starting a 4th WR ... it makes it more flexible. I think there are enough good TE's to be able to mix and match with WR's for a borderline WR2 start or WR3/WR4 start and if not you can always put in a WR.

[rue]

1) Not in favor.  It skews the point totals such that contribution is less representative of point total.

2) I like the idea of all WR slots being WR/TE slots.  It eliminates the redundancy of the TE slot.

3) I'm with Zera. 4 Teams.  No league should have a setup whereby Playoff Teams >= (1/2) Total Teams.  4 or (1/3) of Total is a nicer number.  We can start the playoffs later with this.  

4) The moves cap is redundant with the waiver period.  It should have been eliminated this year.  It likely would have had our commish not lost interest week 3.  

5) I see what you're going for here, Spec, but I believe this highlights that negative points for missed FGs should have never been added in the first place.  It penalizes good kickers who are trusted with difficult field goals.  If Janikowski missed that 61 yarder and Janikowski's owners were penalized for his miss, that gives no credence to the fact that no other kicker in football can be trusted to kick a 61 yard field goal outdoors in cold air.  It's not fair to make a great kicker more risky because he is great.  

6) The waiver period is the best addition to our fantasy football league to date.  It's perfect.  

[-Spectre-]

5) I see what you're going for here, Spec, but I believe this highlights that negative points for missed FGs should have never been added in the first place.  It penalizes good kickers who are trusted with difficult field goals.  If Janikowski missed that 61 yarder and Janikowski's owners were penalized for his miss, that gives no credence to the fact that no other kicker in football can be trusted to kick a 61 yard field goal outdoors in cold air.  It's not fair to make a great kicker more risky because he is great.   

I would say any missed FG from 50+ should have no penalty only penalize for the easy one's saying the easiest with a bigger penalty. Example something along the lines of:

Field Goals Missed 20-29 Yards -2, Field Goals Missed 30-39 Yards-1 .... FG Missed 40_ 0 ... or something along those lines.

[Zeradul]

Mnem - #6!  Yes, agreed!  How many yards per point were you thinking?  You should propose a poll with various options.  I think this will pass.

-----------
#5 Spec, our current league settings are -1 point for any FG missed less than 40 yards.  So you're proposing almost no change here.  Almost no kicks are missed closer than 30 yards.  I just looked at kickers from this year ranked 10-15 (the last guys on any roster) and they missed a combined 5 FG's from closer than 30 yards.  4 of those were Kris Brown, 1 was Jeff Reed, and the other three were perfect from that distance.

So you are proposing a change that would make less than 1 point difference per team, per year.  This is not worth discussing...   People are already going to cut a crappy kicker that misses short FG's, missing out on the 3 points is punishment enough. 
------------

#2 - DD and Spec.  While I disagree with eliminating a TE specific slot, one of you should propose it as a poll, and I would certainly vote for it to try it out.

#3 - DD, Q and I are with you, propose it in a poll!  I proposed it last year so I'd rather not do it again.

#4 - Agreed!  This appears to be unanimous.