Last Week’s Question - What is the best fantasy tiebreaker?

I received a lot of great feedback on fantasy tiebreakers (via comments & email) this week. The wide range of opinions is consistent with different leagues having different priorities & therefore taking different approaches. Since I singled out bench scores for criticism when posing the question, I’ll start with comments on that subject. According to Eric:

We use bench players - teams choose any 3 bench players and rank them 1 to 3. In the event of a tie, each team's 1st-ranked player is compared, then second, etc. In 27 years, we've never had to go to the second player, much less the 3rd.

We also give the higher-seeded team a 3-point home team advantage in the quarter- and semi-final rounds [but not in the] championship.

Many leagues award a home-field advantage of a few points to the higher-seeded team. I like the fact that Eric’s league suspends this practice for the championship game for a couple of reasons. First, it mimics the NFL, in which teams can secure home-field advantage for themselves through the conference championship, but have no control over where the Super Bowl is played. But second (and more importantly in my opinion), it prevents teams from tying in the championship based on home-field advantage being awarded to one contender. If two teams tie in a title game and one of them was awarded a few extra points just for being the higher seed, then it would be tough for me to justify resorting to bench scores to break the tie (since the team without the home-field advantage scored more ACTUAL fantasy points). Since this method has worked for 27 years, it’s difficult to find fault with it, but Jason’s comment explains how it’s conceivable that owners concerned about tiebreakers could easily end up with 3 backup QBs in leagues like Eric’s:

I've been in a league for 15 years, managing it for the last 8. In our playoffs we settle ties with home field advantage: the highest-seeded team wins ties. With fractional scoring, it's come up a few times. Everything else we looked at either seemed arbitrary (like strength of schedule) or encouraged strange behavior (like stacking the bench).

This is a typical & quite elegant approach, as Mark echoes:

We break playoff ties by seed. If a team had a better record in the regular season it should be rewarded. So when two teams tie in a playoff game, the better seed moves on. Clean and simple.

Since FFB clearly has a distinct element of luck due to the random weekly match-ups against other fantasy teams, I feel the best option for a play-off tie-breaker would be to create an opponent's version of NFL.com's Power Ranking (we'll call it "Strength of Schedule" - the compiled weekly Win/Loss/Tie record based upon each team's relative placement). As with the Power Ranking, the Strength of Schedule is a much better measure than Points For and Points Against as it accurately represents weekly placement in scoring relative to all of the other teams. As with the Power Ranking, this proposed Strength of Schedule metric is the most accurate measure as it shows relative placement for all possible outcomes if the schedule were juggled over and over. If you doubt my logic, juggle the season's schedule and you will come out with a wide variety of possible W-L-T outcomes in the official head-to-head match-ups.

Although most people with fantasy experience will probably accept Derek’s logic, I’m not sure how many will embrace his conclusion. Unsurprisingly, I heard about some alternatives (simpler than Derek’s, but not quite as simple as seeding) from readers like David:

We require our playoff teams to put their players in order (in the comments section of the line-up) 1 thru 8 and use the points of each player to break any ties.

I love techniques such as this that settle ties without resorting to bench players, but Kevin’s league doesn’t think it’s necessary to rank all 8 starters:

[In our league, e]ach team selects two “captains” for their team before their games commence, ranked as captains #1 and #2.

The combined point total of both captains is used to break the tie. In the event the totals remain tied, only the #1 captain is used.

Our 12-team league averages about one tie per season, though it’s never happened in the playoffs.

Greg’s IDP league does something similar (with top performers on offense as defense as captains, though they need not be declared in advance):

Our league is in its 22nd year. Ties count in the regular season, but for the playoffs (we start 7 on offense and 7 on defense) we take the top scoring offensive and defensive player on teams tied and and add their scores, the higher 2 scores wins the game. I think it is the best tiebreaker.

Many leagues reduce the number of ties by resorting to decimal scoring, but that can leave a bad taste in the mouth of owners who are accustomed to whole number scores (not just in football, but in most other sports as well). Instead of using decimals, leagues like A.N.’s simply rely on “total yardage produced by starting lineups” to break ties. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.

The longest response I received came from a reader named Mike, who shared a tale of poetic justice that is bound to resonate in some leagues:

The timing of your question is spot on for our league (now in its 30th year). There’s been a little turnover over the years, but our core has always been steady. Commissioner duties have not stayed with 1 guy throughout this time, but have revolved among a few in the core with a handoff occurring from time to time depending on how long a guy wants to hang on to the responsibility (on that note, and to comment on your question from last week - our commish has never taken a cut; and while I’ve taken my turn at the wheel and know it can certainly be akin to herding cats sometimes, I find the concept of compensation for that responsibility to be crass – like if it’s my turn to be sober cab, but I require everyone to pay me for my services like I’m an Uber or something. If it's not a labor of love, then don't do it. Just my two cents).

Anyway, 6 years ago I was in the middle of my commish tenure and had a question posed to me about playoff tiebreakers. I wrote a league article addressing the issue so we had a foundation and rule in place moving forward. [Mike included a screenshot of the article based on using yardage for tiebreakers. His screenshot won’t survive the FFToday editorial process, but he covers the relevant details below.]

Fast forward to this weekend: Dao, the guy in the article who brought the issue to me that season, and I - the guy who instituted the rule, are in the semi-finals. He's got the proverbial 'best team on paper' and I have Winston and McCaffrey along with a grab-bag of injury-based substitutes because my roster's in shambles. Going into Monday night's game, I'm down 7 pts and have Jared Cook yet to play. We play .5 ppr, and Cook finishes with 4/54......for 7 pts. We tie. I get a bunch of texts asking what happens now - and I repost my article from 6 years ago to our league home page. Winston alone almost had enough yardage to win, add in CMC and the rest of my lineup and it's not even close. The beauty of that repost is: Cobra Kai Dojo is....wait for it....Dao. He was the first to reply to my article agreeing with the rule, which is why I included that reply in the repost (we didn't carry over his suggestion that ALL yardage for each player be accounted for, but even if we had, I still would've won).

Now if we had gone to bench, he had: Wentz, A.J. Brown, Tony Pollard (who as Zeke's backup went nuts in garbage time), and a couple other starters = 64 pts; and I had K. Murray, C. Conley, and a couple guys on IR along with McCaffery's backup = 35 pts. If bench points was our tiebreaker, I would have lost handily because of my injuries....unless I had first stacked my bench with QB's for the guys on IR or something like that which is a stupid consideration and would only reward the truly paranoid and most OCD of owners. Either way, in that scenario the result is determined by players who aren't in either starting lineup, and is subject to arbitrary manipulation like I pointed out in my original article. Instead, by going to yardage-based tiebreakers your starting lineup dictates the result of the game, not whatever you might have sitting around filling out your roster.

As far as I'm concerned - justice is served. As far as Dao goes, I'm still hearing about how his best team on paper got corned on basically by two players....and I have to say, it warms my heart to have this play out the way it did. And as far as compensation to a commish goes, no amount of money in our fantasy realm could take the place of this justification. Regardless of how the championship game plays out this week, I'm going to live off this victory for years to come.

Thanks for what you guys at FFToday do - I've been referencing your stuff for years and don't bother with anyone else's input because it's completely unnecessary to go beyond what you do. Keep it up.

My thanks to everyone who wrote in--and especially to Mike for his kind words about FFToday and for sharing his illustrative story in such detail.

This Week’s Question: How did you do with your quarterly quiz projections?

The sad truth about fantasy articles written for Week 17 is that they mostly go unread. But I hope that David and Bruce (the two readers who participated in my “quick quarterly quizzes” throughout 2019) will see the scoring system detailed in this section of the column and let me know how they did.

In a perfect world, accurate predictions made earlier in the season should be more valuable than accurate predictions made later.

We can gesture towards that perfect world by awarding more points for getting things right in Week 5 than in Week 13.

Furthermore, in a perfect world, correct predictions made before the season began would be even more valuable than those made after the first quarter of the season was completed.

Unfortunately, since we didn’t start this process until Week 5, we can’t gesture towards that perfect world without a time machine.

However, when I tried to figure out how to score my own performance on these quizzes, I realized that if I had started the process in August, it would be really easy to generate a score on a scale of 0-100 by awarding 4 points for each correct preseason prediction, 3 points for each correct prediction after Week 4, 2 points for each correct prediction after Week 8, and 1 point for each correct prediction after Week 12. We’ll get this right in 2020, folks. But for 2019, I’ll show you how to calculate your score on a scale of 0-60 (since we started late).

According to the scoring system for the FFToday Staff League (FFTSL), the top 5 quarterbacks after the first 16 weeks of the 2019 season (which is the part of the season that matters in most fantasy leagues) are:

1) Lamar Jackson
2) Deshaun Watson
3) Dak Prescott
4) Russell Wilson
5) Jameis Winston

I picked Mahomes to finish in the top 5 after Week 4 (wrong-0 points), Watson after Week 8 (right-2 points), and Jackson after Week 12 (right-1 point) for a total of 3 points out of a possible 6 for Question 1.

I picked Prescott to fall out of the top 5 after Week 4 (wrong-0 points), Rodgers after Week 8 (right-2 points), and Kyler Murray after Week 12 (right-1 point) for a total of 3 points out of a possible 6 for Question 2.

In the FFTSL, the top 5 RBs after 16 weeks of NFL action are:

1) Christian McCaffrey
2) Aaron Jones
3) Dalvin Cook
4) Austin Ekeler
5) Ezekiel Elliott

I picked McCaffrey to finish in the top 5 after Week 4 (right-3 points), Jones after Week 8 (right-2 points), and Cook after Week 12 (right-1 point) for a total of 6 out of 6 possible points for Question 3.

I picked Ekeler to fall out of the top 5 after Week 4 (wrong-0 points), Leonard Fournette after Week 8 (right-2 points), and none of the other options to slip after Week 12 (right-1 point) for a total of 3 points out of a possible 6 for Question 4.

In the FFTSL, the top 5 WRs after 16 weeks of NFL action are:

1) Michael Thomas
2) Chris Godwin
3) DeAndre Hopkins
4) Julio Jones
5) Julian Edelman

I picked Jones to finish in the top 5 after Week 4 (right-3 points), Thomas after Week 8 (right-2 points), and Hopkins after Week 12 (right-1 point) for a total of 6 out of 6 possible points for Question 5.

I picked Cooper Kupp to fall out of the top 5 after Week 4 (right-3 points), D.J. Chark after Week 8 (right-2 points), and Mike Evans after Week 12 (right-1 point) for a total of 6 out of 6 possible points for Question 6. (Woohoo for a perfect score at the WR position!)
In the FFTSL, the top 5 TEs after 16 weeks of NFL action are:

1) Travis Kelce
2) Zach Ertz
3) Mark Andrews
4) George Kittle
5) Darren Waller

I picked Kelce to finish in the top 5 after Week 4 (right-3 points), Waller after Week 8 (right-2 points), and Ertz after Week 12 (right-1 point) for a total of 6 out of 6 possible points for Question 7.

I picked Austin Hooper to fall out of the top 5 after Week 4 (right-3 points), Andrews after Week 8 (wrong-0 points), and no one else to slip after Week 12 (right-1 point) for a total of 4 out of 6 possible points for Question 8.

In the FFTSL, the top 5 defenses after 16 weeks of NFL action are:

1) Patriots
2) Steelers
3) 49ers
4) Chiefs
5) Vikings

I picked the Bears to stay in the top 5 after Week 4 (wrong-0 points), the Patriots after Week 8 (right-2 points), and the 49ers after Week 12 (right-1 point) for a total of 3 out of 6 possible points for Question 9.

I picked the Steelers to fall out of the top 5 after Week 4 (wrong-0 points), the Giants after Week8 (right-2 points), and the Jets after Week 12 (right-1 point) for a total of 3 out of 6 possible points for Question 10.

My total score of 43 out of 60 possible points isn’t very impressive. I suspect both David and Bruce finished ahead of me. But I think the exercise has been useful--if only in showing me that I had a much clearer sense of what to expect from receivers (100% correct) than either QBs or defenses (only 50% correct). I’m especially stunned by how well the Steeler defense performed after the Pittsburgh offense suffered the monumental setback of Ben Roethlisberger’s injury. I was quite certain that the Steeler defenders would be on the field too long to maintain the success they enjoyed at the beginning of the season, but the fact is they only got better. I would almost certainly have lost sight of that detail if not for the relatively quick and painless mental exercise of these quizzes. Thanks to everyone who participated (whether you reported your picks to me or not), and I look forward to grading myself on a scale of 0-100 with a round of preseason picks next season.

Survivor Pool Picks

As we come to the end of the 2019 season, I want to thank Matthew Schiff for making as many picks as his schedule permitted. The unpredictable travel requirements of my day job made it much harder than usual for me to coordinate Schiff’s submission of picks to me prior to my own submission of this column to FFToday, but he was a great sport about working within those parameters to the extent that he could. Even so, that left readers depending on my picks more often than anyone would have liked (though I definitely nailed that Indy win over Carolina in Week 16).

Survivor picks for Week 17 are always especially difficult because it’s never clear which playoff-bound stars will play (or for how long), but here are my best guesses to close out the regular season:

#3 Redskins over Cowboys (13-3; PHI, BAL, SF, lar, NE, WAS, GB, NO, SEA, ind, MIN, BUF, KC, hou, NO, DEN)

My options in Week 17 are extremely limited. I wish I could pick the Saints over the Panthers, the Packers over the Lions, and the Chiefs over the Chargers. But I only have one slot (my top slot) available for those 3 teams, and I decided to go with the Chiefs (see below). If you still have the Panthers or Packers available, I recommend you use them. Even though the Cowboys are 7-point home favorites vs. the Redskins, I’m taking the Skins this week partly because I hate my other options and partly because I believe Dallas has quit on Jason Garrett. This isn’t a good pick, but at least it’s spiteful.

#2 Titans over Texans (8-8; HOU, BAL, NE, ind, kc, lac, SF, MIN, BUF, no, car, CHI, phi, GB, lar, sea)

There’s nothing the Texans can do to secure a bye for the playoffs. They will host a playoff game during wildcard weekend no matter how they perform against the Titans, so it’s hard to see why Bill O’Brien will make good on him promise of playing his starters on Sunday. Las Vegas has given the edge to the Titans because it seems unlikely that O’Brien is as serious about “playing to win” a virtually meaningless game as he suggested to the press earlier this week. But of course, one never knows about these things until the actual game is actually played.

#1 Chiefs over Chargers (13-3: NE, SEA, DAL, LAC, PHI, dal, BUF, SF, BAL, OAK, CLE, car, MIN, sf, IND)

Much as I hate to rely on divisional contests in survivor pools, it’s hard to resist a team as good as the Chiefs playing at home against a squad as feckless as the Chargers--especially when there’s something at stake for Kansas City (since they still have a shot at the #2 seed in the unlikely event of a New England loss to Miami) and nothing on the line for Los Angeles (except for diehard fans betting the over/under on the number of grimaces we can expect to see from Philip Rivers before the expiration of yet another disappointing season).

Happy holidays everyone.