Last Week’s Question: Apart from
relying on draft order incentives for the following season (a topic
we covered last week), what can commissioners do to keep owners
engaged after they have been eliminated from the fantasy playoffs?
Option 1: Institute a bizarre penalty for
the owner who finishes in last place.
There’s nothing strange about penalizing the last-place finisher,
who often has to buy a keg of beer or provide pizzas for his entire
league at the next season’s draft party. There are also leagues
in which last-place owners have to pose for humiliating photos (common),
wear T-shirts of shame (uncommon), or even get tattoos (freakish).
But there’s something to be said for having a penalty that
is unique to your league, so I was amused by this note from Tyler:
My league has developed a relatively novel way
of eliminating [apathy]. Whoever has the worst record in our league
has to take the ACT—yes, the college placement test. I doubt
this or anything like it would work for most people, but we are
a tightly knit group of friends, and the end result has been hilarious.
People with 2-8 records are clawing their way for one or two more
wins to place them above the next guy. It also makes the matchup
of two bottom-tier teams that much more exciting for everyone because
we all have our own wishes of who will have to take the test. I
realize this is far from an ideal solution but I thought you might
enjoy it.
I do enjoy it. However, I can’t help wondering why the poor
sucker who loses this bet would put any effort into the exam. Back
in my day, you had to take these tests at 8 a.m. on Saturdays, and
I can promise you that if I had to get up for that sort of nonsense
on a weekend, I would pencil in “C” for every answer
without even reading the questions.
Option 2: Waive transaction fees for owners
with losing records.
I’ve touched on this subject in the past, but it bears mentioning
in this context. If the Marshawn Lynch owner in a league with transaction
fees has a 2-8 record heading into Week 11, he’s not very
likely to go after Thomas Rawls on the waiver wire, since doing
so amounts to donating $5 to someone else’s winnings. Daryl
is the commissioner of such a league, and he explains:
Starting three weeks before the playoffs, I
waive transaction fees for any team with a record below .500. I
wish I knew how to program the website to handle this on its own,
but I have to go through and make the modifications by hand. Still,
I think it’s worth the effort so that owners don’t leave
injured guys in their lineups just to save a few bucks on a lost
season.
Option 3: Guarantee a small prize to one
of the teams that doesn’t make the playoffs.
I’ve done whole columns on “toilet bowl” concepts,
and curious readers may want to comb through the Q&A archives
for specifics on how such tournaments for non-playoff contenders
can be structured. For the sake of simplicity, however, I’ll
mention the model that our own Matthew Schiff uses in his fantasy
league:
Our league uses a toilet bowl for the bottom
half of the league that doesn’t make the playoffs. That means
that even if you have lost every game all season, you can make a
run in the “toilet bowl” and win half your money back.
We haven’t lost a single owner who was “out of it”
since it was enacted 15 years or so ago.
Option 4: Force your league to shake things
up during the season.
One way to ensure that no one feels “out of the race”
too early is to transform every owner’s team several weeks
into the season. Some commissioners try to achieve this by forcing
all owners to execute at least one trade by a certain deadline.
It’s more common, however, for leagues to encourage turnover
in personnel by giving the highest waiver wire priority to teams
in last place (which means the teams that need to rebuild are the
ones most empowered to do so effectively). But you don’t have
to stop there. Dan’s league takes the idea of roster shakeups
to the extreme:
We have a midseason draft, with each team required
to toss 10 of their 17 players [into a general draft pool]. Everyone
starts the second half of the season with a clean slate: 0-0 win-loss,
0 points. Winners of the 1st half get their winnings. Surprisingly,
winners for the 2nd half of the season are usually very different
from winners the 1st half of the season. At our midseason drafts,
the worst-performing teams draft early every round. Even teams in
total despair in Week 5 are excited about getting fresh talent and
a new start at midseason.
We also instituted a playoff pool. You keep any players on your
2nd-half roster who are in the playoffs, and the playoffs are divided
into 5 buckets: wild-card round, divisional playoffs, conference
championships, Super Bowl, and total points. You can guess what
happens in the 2nd half of the season: teams that are “out
of it” for the 2nd half begin looking ahead to the playoffs,
and trade their star non-playoff players for playoff players. Lots
of trading, lots of interest maintained by everyone.
Dan was the one who underscored “every” in that excerpt—presumably
because he thinks it’s important to avoid snake drafts in
this situation. This same idea came up in last week’s column.
It may seem inherently unfair to let the last-place owner pick first
in every round of a draft, but many leagues seek to strike the proper
balance between fairness and fun. If your league isn’t fun
because there isn’t much competition, you might want to consider
a non-serpentine draft (or perhaps embedding several consecutive
non-serpentine rounds within a serpentine draft).
I hope some commissioners out there will benefit from the suggestions
above. My thanks to everyone who wrote in on this topic.
This Week’s Question: What team in your
league’s playoffs features the most backups in starting roles?
The Q&A question for Week 12 comes from Kyle, who asks, “Do
you know if any [fantasy] teams made up entirely of backups (C.
West, etc.) are going to the playoffs?”
That’s a fun question, but I don’t know how clear an
answer I can get for it. I don’t even know how to define the
players who should qualify for consideration. Would Ryan Fitzpatrick
count as a backup in a starting role—since he was presumably
behind Geno Smith on the depth chart when Smith lost the job thanks
to his jaw being broken in the preseason? What about DeAngelo Williams?
Since Bell’s suspension made him a de facto starter at the
beginning of the season, is it fair to categorize him as a backup?
Isn’t he something between a backup and a starter, like the
New York Giant receivers who were filling in for Victor Cruz until
we finally figured out that Cruz wasn’t coming back?
But since it’s a fun question, let’s make the parameters
as broad as possible. If you can make a case that a player currently
in a starting role was a backup earlier in the season (if not at
the beginning of the season, as in the exceptional case of D. Williams),
then let’s say the player qualifies.
Stars like Darren McFadden fit the bill, as do relative unknowns
such as Buffalo’s Robert Woods. If you wanted to stretch the
category to its broadest, I guess you could even include a guy like
Vernon Davis, who presumably ended up behind Owen Daniels on the
Bronco depth chart when the 49ers traded him to Denver (which isn’t
quite the same as being beaten out for the job by Daniels). The
backup category gets pretty fuzzy pretty quickly, but it’s
still a fun question.
I therefore invite anyone who wants to participate in an informal
poll to email me with the
starting lineups (not the complete rosters, since the point
is to focus on backups who are contributing to fantasy success)
of whichever playoff-bound team in your league relies on the greatest
number of backup players in starting roles. Readers who prefer to
post comments directly to the column itself are welcome to do so.
Survivor Pool Picks - Week 12 (Courtesy
of Matthew Schiff)
#3: Carolina over Dallas (4-7, Cin, Phi,
AZ, ATL, KC, SEA, SD, NE, DEN, NYJ)
Since I seem to be a glutton for punishment with my third pick
this season, I figured that a Thanksgiving Day matchup of the
10-0 Panthers against Dallas should be the perfect pick for getting
back on the winning track. Tony Romo has barely had a chance to
shake off the rust after returning from a broken collarbone, and
Dez Bryant is limping through games after breaking his foot earlier
this season. So this game will be a breeze for Carolina, right?
I’m not sure about that, but I am sure this matchup will
challenge the Cowboy defense, which plays divisional games against
quarterbacks (Sam Bradford, Eli Manning, and Kirk Cousins) who
are all essentially the opposite of Cam Newton. I expect the Cowboys
to struggle against a scrambling quarterback who doesn’t
mind whether he beats you by running the ball himself or by throwing
it to average receivers—as long as he beats you. The Panthers
are not a flashy team, but they are built from a championship
mold. Give the Cowboys an extra field goal for the mystique of
playing on Turkey Day in Dallas, but it won’t be enough.
I look for the Panthers to soak up the accolades by the time dessert
is served.
#2: Cincinnati over St. Louis (8-3, GB, Balt,
NE, SEA, NYG, MIN, AZ, STL, ATL, PHL, Jax)
What once looked like a very promising season in St Louis has
turned into disappointment. Todd Gurley has been a terrific find
who should thrive for years to come, but who will be at the helm?
Nick Foles will most likely be back under center in the wake of
Case Keenum’s concussion (which is a bit of a tongue twister:
“Case Keenum’s concussion, Case Keenum’s concussion”).
But it doesn’t matter who starts as the St. Louis QB, as
that won’t change the Bengals’ offensive gameplan,
which should be the difference in this game. Last week Cincinnati
lost to a playoff contender; this week they should have no issue
vs. a squad that was only pretending to be in contention earlier
this season. The Bengals have stumbled too much lately. They regain
their balance this week.
#1: NY Giants over Washington (7-4 NE, Mia,
SEA, AZ, ATL, GB, STL, KC, NO, Cin, Car)
What? I’m taking the mediocre NY Football Giants against
their divisional rivals, the Washington Redskins, in a must-win
game to maintain control on the NFC East at crunch time? Yes.
Why? Because Tom Coughlin’s experience should be the difference-maker
in this game against an inconsistent Redskins team that knows
how to play brilliantly against bad defenses (New Orleans) and
how to play terribly against good defenses (Carolina). I don’t
want to say whether New York’s defense is good or bad (since
it’s something in between), but I think Washington’s
inconsistency is less important than 1) the fact that these two
teams know each other inside and out and 2) the amount of time
that the Giants (coming off a bye) have had to prepare. A less
experienced coach than Coughlin might have squandered this bye
week, but I suspect he has his team ready to execute and take
control of their division.
Mike Davis has been writing about fantasy football since 1999--and
playing video games even longer than that. His latest novel (concerning
a gamer who gets trapped inside Nethack after eating too many shrooms)
can be found here.
