More League Tweaks

Yes, there are still more things you can do with your league.

Prioritized Waivers: The owner at the bottom of the standings gets first pick in week one of free agency. The owner at the top gets last pick. If an owner picks up a free agent, that owner moves to last pick in the waiver order.

Free For All Free Agency: As soon as the waiver wire opens owners can claim free agents. First come first served, no crying.

Free Agent Bidding: Give owners points to bid on free agents. Owners bid blind for free agents each week. Highest bid gets the player. When an owner runs out of points they can no longer bid on free agents.

Keeper Lottery: Allow owners to trade keeper rights for bonus picks in the draft. If you allow keeper spots, an owner can choose not to use them, and receives bonus picks before the regular fantasy draft. If multiple owners choose to trade in keeper rights, give out the early picks by random draft order.

Dual Playoffs: Keep the bottom teams involved by running playoffs for them as well. The teams that miss the real playoffs can play for first pick in the draft. It really keeps owners interested all year long, and doesn't reward someone who 'tanks' with an automatic first pick.

Salary Cap: Play a dynasty league with a salary cap and player contracts. Owners receive $250 for contracts. Give owners very few one year contracts, a few more two year contracts, a few more three year contracts, and unlimited four year contracts. Player salaries are equal to 10% of their last year's fantasy points. Example; Owner X signs Mike Vick to a 4 year contract at $29. Owner X now pays $29 per year for four years, no matter what Vick's actual performance. After four years Vick becomes a free agent. If Owner X cuts Vick, Vick's new contract would be based on his last year's fantasy points. Owners pay on the contract until it expires, unless the player is out of the NFL or on another fantasy roster.

Auction Cap: If you use an auction draft, change the amount of money owners get to spend.

Survivor League: Draft teams like normal. Starting lineup is the best possible lineup each week. Lowest score each week gets eliminated. Winner takes all.

Multiple Games Per Week: Give each team an extra win or loss versus the average score for the week. This eliminates random bad luck from eliminating a high scoring team from the playoff hunt. The #3 scoring team in my league missed the playoffs last year. We don't use this, but he might like it if we did.

No Penalty Turnovers: Do not penalize for turnovers. This increases offensive scoring, but helps QB's the most.

6 Point Touchdowns: Make all touchdowns worth six points. Most leagues decrease the value of passing touchdowns. Be aware, this would mean that Peyton Manning would have scored 296 points off touchdowns alone last year.

Distance Scoring: Give out bonuses for length of score. If a TD came from more than 20 yards give it an extra point or two. Give it more if it came from more than 40 yards out. You can do a similar thing with Field Goal scoring. Anything to make kickers worthwhile, says I.

Transaction Fees: Charge owners a fee to make player moves. Free agency counts, trades count. Maybe even charge per player involved. Put the fees into the league bank and divvy the bonus up as you see fit.

I'm sure there are more tweaks out there, but I can't think of any right now. Plus, my poor fingers are tired.

League Tweaks

How can you make your league more interesting? How can you make it more like NFL football? How can you ensure that owners stay involved all season? Tweak your league's rules. Come up with different ways to do things and people will pay closer attention to what's going on. I have put some league tweaks in previous posts. Let's go over them, as well as a few others.

League Size: 10, 12 or 14 teams. Any less is too few. Any more is too many. You really can go up to 14 teams, it's not that bad. It forces owners to decide what they want their team to be good at.

Decimal Scoring: Give out .1 points per yard rushing or receiving, or .05 points per yard passing. This differs from the standard 1 point per 10 or 20 yard threshold. It will virtually eliminate the possibility of ties.

Tie Breaker Players: Designate one player from each team to break ties if they occur. Most of the time leagues mandate that the player be a non-starter, but do whatever works for you. As with decimal scoring, this reduces the likelyhood of a tie. If a tie occurs with decimal scoring or after the tiebreaker players are taken into account, let it stand as a tie.

Head Coach Scoring: Draft a head coach for your team. Give points for a win, take points for a loss. Or use the coaches to break ties.

Individual Defensive Players: Shortened to IDP. Draft players instead of whole defensive teams. This forces owners to know more players. It is a good way to put some excitement into the defensive side of things. Positions are Defensive Line, Linebacker and Defensive Back. Give the players points for tackles, sacks, interceptions and fumble recoveries. 1 point per tackle, 2 per half sack and 4 points per turnover is good. Give out 6 points for a defensive touchdown. If you want you can give out 1 point per pass defensed.

Special Teams Scoring: Give individual players from offense or defense 6 points per special teams touchdown. You may consider giving out points for return yards. If you do this give out 1 point per 20 or 25 yards.

Yardage Bonuses: Create a bonus for good performances on offense. Going over 100 yards rushing or receiving gets a 3 or 5 point bonus. Same bonus is earned for 300 yards passing. Or, you could increase the amount of points you get per yard. You might go from 1 point per 10 yards to 2 points per 10 yards. If you use decimal point scoring, think about decimal bonuses too.

Point Per Catch: The World Championship of Fantasy Football gives 1 point per catch to all players. I would suggest giving 1 point per catch to tight ends to help make them more valuable. Either works, but mine is better.

Flex Player: Most people are familiar with a tweak called the 'Flex Player' , someone who is a WR, RB or TE. This is kind of silly because most leagues that allow flex players just add it in to a regular starting lineup. It looks like this; 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1K, 1 Def, 1 Flex. How many NFL teams start 3 RB's? None? Right. Why not just let that flex player be any position? I really want to start two kickers.

Flex Lineups: Allow different starting lineup combinations. This means you're trying to make a lineup like an NFL team might start. Always start one QB and one K. On offense start: 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE or 2 RB, 3 WR, 0 TE or 1 RB, 2 WR, 2 TE or 1 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE. If you have IDP in your league, let them change as well (no less than one at any position).

Trade Deadline: Make a trade deadline. Put it around fantasy mid-season.

Trade Draft Picks: Let owners trade draft picks. This works best in keeper or dynasty leagues. Owners may trade picks for picks leading up to the draft. During the season, allow player for future pick trades. This enables owners to make a playoff push by giving up next year's picks. If an owner drops out of the league before he has to give up picks, reset the trade. Put the player back on the first owners roster and remove the extra pick. Alternately, you might give the owner who traded the player away a compensatory pick at the end of a round instead.

Dynasty Leagues

If you want to create your own franchise like the NFL does, there is no better league than this. Dynasty leagues let owners keep their entire rosters from one year to the next. In the summer there is a rookie (or possibly rookie/ free agent) draft. Teams release their extra players into free agency before the season starts.

Pros: Keeping your whole roster is great if you're a good player. You can just build up your roster and win year after year. You can really feel good about your skills if you can stay on top for a couple of years. It is fun to try and build a franchise like your favorite NFL team would if they weren't completely inept (49ers).

Cons: You really need dedicated owners. I mean really. That is the biggest drawback. If someone loses badly two years in a row, why would they want to come back? It's hard to find people who can lose and will try to turn it around. They could be more likely to seek instant gratification in a redraft league. If an owner leaves, how will you replace them and make the new team at least competitive?

League Size: 12, 14 teams. Ten is too few, I think. You may feel differently.

Draft Type: Regular. Make it fair for the teams at the bottom of the league by using reverse order of finish.

This league should use a regular draft because it most closely resembles real football. Of course, if you're playing NCAA fantasy football, an auction for top players may be more accurate.

Tweaks: Salary cap, IDP, flex lineups, trade draft picks, dual playoffs.

Keeper Leagues

In a keeper league the owners get to keep a predetermined number of players from year to year. Some leagues keep two players, some keep one at each position. It doesn't really matter what you decide, but if you are keeping a whole starting lineup, I'd suggest that you just switch to a Dynasty League.

Pros: It's nice to be able to keep a couple of players on your roster. If you've drafted well or made savvy moves in free agency, you are rewarded. It can create a sense of continuity in your league as owners can associate certain players with certain teams (ex. "Marvin Harrison? He's on Ice Cold"). By adding keepers, owners may be more willing to play year after year.

Cons: Players who don't have top teams may feel like they aren't able to catch up to the elite teams. If you have to replace owners, how do you take into account the existing teams keepers?

League Size: 10, 12, 14 teams.

Draft Type: Serpentine, or possibly Regular. I would suggest that you might reverse the order of finish from last year to determine draft position. That means that the league will have some semblance of parity, as worse teams have first crack at the best players left.

Do not use auction drafting in conjunction with keepers.

I would stay away from a regular draft style, unless you really want to force parity. You could use it though, it's not unfair. The best teams are usually have the best keepers and are the best at drafting anyway.

Tweaks: IDP, point per catch, flex lineups, trade draft picks, keeper lottery, dual playoffs.

Redraft Leagues

In a redraft league owners build their roster from scratch each year. It doesn't matter what the scoring system is, or what the starting lineups look like. Roster size doesn't matter.

Pros: Owners get to start fresh each year. There is a challenge to putting together a playoff team from scratch each year.

Cons: There is no lasting reward for drafting or trading your way into a dominant roster. Unprepared owners are almost rewarded by not having to stick with their mistakes. In the long run, that's bad for them because there is no motivation to get better at player evaluation.

League Size: 10, 12, 14 teams.

Draft Type: Serpentine or auction. Serpentine draft order switches each round 1-> n, n->1. This is the only league setup that I would suggest auction style drafting might be used.

In an auction draft each owner gets a certain dollar amount to spend. Owners take turns nominating players for bid. Highest bid gets the player. When an owner is out of money they cannot bid and must wait for free agency to pick up a player. Why is this the only league type that an auction should be used? In other league types, you get to keep players from one year to the next. If an owner has a great team with few needs, they can spend all their cash on one or two players. This will unbalance the league, as the worse teams will be less able to catch up.

Do not use a regular (1->n, 1->n) draft in this kind of league. It is grossly unfair to the teams at the end of the draft order.

Always randomize draft order. The bad teams from last year are already being rewarded by getting a whole new roster. They don't need guaranteed early picks as well.

Tweaks: Auction cap, IDP, point per catch, flex lineups.

Basic Fantasy League Setups

I'd like to talk about basic setups for fantasy leagues for a minute. I'll give out pros and cons to each. I will split this into several posts.

To be fair, there are only three league types in existance. There are Redraft Leagues, Keeper Leagues and Dynasty Leagues. You may think that there are more, but you'd be wrong. Anything other than this is just a tweak on the basic league rule structure. I'd play in one of each if I could.

There are only three ways to conduct a draft. These ways are "regular", serpentine and auction. These will be covered in each league type.

There are other tweaks that can be made to league rules as well, they will get their own post.

The most common league setup seems to be this:
Style: Redraft
Teams: 10. Two divisions of five teams.
Playoffs: Top two teams from each division.
Draft: Serpentine
Starting Lineup: 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 Def Team
Scoring: 10 yards run/ catch = 1
20 yards pass = 1
TD run/ catch/ def = 6
TD pass = 4
Turnover = -1
Sack = 2
Int = 2
Fumble Rec = 2
FG = 3
XP = 1
2pt = 2

This is common, but scoring can be set any way the league likes. Any rule can be changed for that matter. I would stay pretty basic, maybe tweak it here and there, but make the league recognizable. Don't do crazy things like starting two quarterbacks. Make your league seem like real football. Try to have scoring that promotes offensive player values similar to the NFL (QB/ RB higher than WR/ TE, K is lowest. Very easy.

Playing For Fun

After all this talk about how to draft successfully, lets talk about having fun. There is no doubt in my mind that Value Based Drafting is the way to put together a dominant fantasy team. That doesn't mean that you'll have a very fun team to watch on Sunday.

There is nothing wrong with getting your favorite players for your fantasy team. The key is to not let your like for those players override your evaluation process.

I did it once, and drafted Edgerrin James right after his knee injury. I had him on my team in both his second season and his third (injury) season. He was awesome. I thought if anyone could come back quickly, he could. I ranked him the #2 RB when he came back. He underperformed by a long shot, and I wasted a first round pick.

There is an owner in my keeper league that has Hines Ward and Jerome Bettis. We can keep four players. He traded his second round pick in our draft for Ben Roethlisberger. Roethlisberger wouldn't get picked by anyone else before the 8th round or so. He is letting his love of the Steelers override common sense. Not only by overvaluing their players, but also by taking too many of them.

If it's your pick, and a player you really like is near the top of your cheatsheet, go ahead and take him. If you love Shaun Alexander, but he is ranked behind Deuce McAllister and Clinton Portis, go ahead and take him.

Don't over pay (by trade or pick) for players you like. I'm sure there are plenty of players that you like that are good fantasy performers. Instead, just target the next one on your list.

Don't take a bunch of players from your favorite team. One is good, two is still okay. Go any higher than that and you're asking for trouble. Just don't put all of your eggs in one basket and you'll be fine.

At the end of the day we want to win. We also want to have fun doing it. Just remember to temper your admiration for players or teams with a dash of common sense.