Lets Switch Things Up
No long winded intro here. I didn’t make the yoffs but I love this league so rather than sit back and watch the postseason matchups, I will outline some rule changes that I think would be cool to see for the league.
I don’t expect universal agreement. I’m also not writing this thinking all of these will or should happen, I believe the league is great as is. But sometimes a little change here and there is fun and I want to maybe open the eyes of members to some fun possibilities.
Disclaimer: this blog longer than I anticipated. I’ve been typing on and off for about a week, didn’t realize the length. This shows how much I love this league.
How do we decide?
We’re a democracy over here at NFFL. It is of my belief the commissioner should put forth a poll for speculative changes he deems worthwhile. He may rule with an iron fist but I wholeheartedly trust his judgement for things such as this.
Each possible change gets its own poll so there is no confusion. For example, “Should we switch to half PPR?” Is correct. Whereas “Should we switch to half ppr and add a flex?” Is incorrect. The one exception to this is when it comes to roster construction. Example: “Should we remove the kicker position in order to add a second flex spot?”
(Wake up fellas, thats some foreshadowing)
Hopefully these polls can stay up for months at a time so managers have ample time to research and cast an educated vote. Majority rules, 7 confirmed “Yes” votes are needed for a change to go into effect.
Remove the kicker and add a second flex
I know. Kicker kicker. But it’s time. Feel like we were already here this preseason when the commissioner decided to go rogue and change the scoring without telling us.
Anyway.. the position is a total blind guess. And no, that’s not totally true for every position in fantasy football. Positional players have legitimate research that goes into drafting/starting them every week. Debating whether to start Tank Bigsby against a poor rush defense versus Jaylen Warren against a defense that allows tons of points through the air to RBs makes for actual, engaging research and decisions.
Most of the time the guy you bench ends up scoring more but that’s neither here nor there. But what if I told you we can try to fix this too?! We will get to that further down.
With Kickers you have no idea whether Greg Zuerlein will put up 25 or 4. There’s no rhyme or reason. Sure, you can look at Vegas spreads and say “this game has a high total. I’ll stream this kicker.” When ultimately at the end of the day there were 4 offensive touchdowns scored with 0 attempts for the kicker and he got stuck with 4 PATs. It’s either drafting a Justin Tucker-esque type of guy or you go with the kicker playing in a dome (who btw has as good of a chance as any other kicker to totally flop).
Kickers are boring.
Who cares about kickers! You know what’s fun? Another flex. An actual, real, player that can be included in trade talks. Or bought with faab. Or someone you were actually excited to draft in round 11 and ended up changing the entire trajectory of your season. Nobody gets excited to draft a kicker. Hitting on positional player picks is fun. Kickers, overall, are boring.
Lets have fun.
Feel like I don’t really have to highlight this but I’ll do it anyway.
The benefits of another flex:
Continued/increased waiver wire activity. Seeing managers with >80% of their faab budget in week 12 stinks. Filling another spot forces everyone’s hand to maybe spend a litttleeeee bit more.
Those double digit draft rounds become even more important when you have to hit on another positional player. It also changes draft strategy (slightly).
People are actually willing to trade for them.
Alleviates the pain of starting the wrong player while you watch the guy you benched put up 18
+more
In my opinion a second flex has to be at the expense of the kicker position. Adding it without removing kickers would cause too much roster bloat.
PPR to .5 PPR
I’ll address this right off the bat. Of course this will lead to less overall points scored. Which isn’t “fun” when you take that at its most basic face value. So I don’t blame anyone for being against this change. But read what I got cooked up below and maybe it’ll change your mind.
Let me set the stage.
Week 4 of 2023
Alvin Kamara ran for 51 yards and had 33 receiving yards. He did not score a touchdown. Most of you remember this game but if I were to wipe your memory and ask you to guess based off of those stats how many points he scored, what would be reasonable? 11? Maybe 12 fantasy points?
Right. Well. He scored 21.4 points in PPR that week because he had 13 receptions on 14 targets for 33 yards. A whopping 2.5 yards per reception. In .5ppr that number shrinks to 14.9 points which is much more sane. Of course this example is an extreme outlier. Literal historical levels of poor efficiency. But performances such as this (not to the same degree) happen yearly.
But hear me out. We live in a civilized society. There is no need for a play, where a WR or RB loses yards on a catch, to be such a significant net positive for fantasy because of a full ppr. It’s silly to watch. We are rewarding bad football.
In order for a catch to NOT be a net positive in fantasy, the player would have to be tackled for an 11 yard loss. C’mon. It’s fine to still reward catches (we should, it’s worth SOMETHING and standard is too boring) but I think taking it down a notch would be a good idea. Also.. run the damn ball! Pass catching backs are so valuable in ppr, let’s level the playing field a bit for the old fashioned bruisers (for however rare they may be these days) that don’t see 4-5 targets a game.
In the grand scheme of things, this really isn’t too dramatic of a change. At the end of a season if you were to compare where a player finishes, rankings wise, in a PPR league compared to a .5 league, it’s not a crazy difference.
Side note: eventually I would like to see something like points per first down. But… baby steps
Allow FAAB trading
Allowing managers to add faab to sweeten the deal on a trade package would be cool. Would be some extra work for commish because idt there’s a direct option for it on Yahoo. Pretty sure he would have to go in and manually add/deduct from the trading parties.
A couple stipulations:
Obviously can’t carry any over to the next season.
There should maybe be some sort of “cap?” Idt anyone should be walking around with $300 in faab. But I think $125-$150ish is reasonable?
Draft Day Trades
Allow managers to trade picks on draft day. ONLY on draft day. In week 5 you can’t offer your third round pick next year for a player in the current year. Messy.
Ideally the trade is something that’s worked out when the two managers aren’t on the clock. But if it’s a situation where a manager is on the clock then approached with a trade offer, we set a timer for 1 minute for the managers to work something out. This way we’re not waiting 10 minutes while 2 drunk idiots try and pick swap in the 10th round.
Also allow up to maybe just 1 counter offer. If two managers can’t come to terms, we quickly move on.
It would be on the managers to keep their roster size in mind. If at the end of the draft you’re 1 player over the roster limit your last pick won’t be added to your team. 2 players over, the last 2 picks won’t be added. Etc etc.
Also, if someone’s trading for a pick, you gotta figure they have a player in mind already. So as far as time spent goes - it’s probably negligible.
Median Scoring
DEEEP BREATHS. Everybody calm down. Just hear me out.
I’ll get ahead of this and I will admit this is fairly drastic and there’s no fucking shot it gets enough interest. But I have to bring it up because I find it super intriguing.
Essentially, this is “bad luck” protection. Median scoring means you’re playing 2 matchups in one week. 1) Against your opponent and 2) the rest of the league for points scored.
Let’s say I’m playing Commish. I had a solid week, putting up 170, which is good for the 3rd highest score of the week. But it just so happens Commish scored 200. My record would reflect 1-1 that week rather than 0-1 because I was in the top half of scoring.
There’s more intricacies to it but I’ll leave it at that because I think I know the answer for this one.
This would also require a league upgrade on Yahoo. Not sure what the cost is but split 12 ways it can’t be bad.
I’m hopeful to hear thoughts on this in the groupchat. I also welcome everyone to write a blog on any changes they have in mind.
Signed,
The Big Bean
The 3x Champ
