Writing a post has become an annual tradition. I'll write it once sometime during the late spring or summer, and then we'll forget about it until next year. But this year I'm inspired in early May - which, surprisingly, is actually earlier than last year if you'd believe that - to write a post because I'm in a weird position.
I'm league champion.
I've avoided talking about it to pretty much anyone since I won because I know the way I did it rubbed some people the wrong way (foreshadowing!), and I recognize that fact. It's not the best path to travel, but it's the path I chose nonetheless. And because of that, there's two things I get to do as league champion: pick who I play in Week 1, and pick the name of the last place team in the league. In this case, that's Brock.
Choosing who you play in Week 1 is something I instituted in the league to reward the league champion, and it's a fun little wrinkle for me when setting up the schedule. Unfortunately I don't get to pick divisions. That distinction goes to the division winners from the year prior, so Dan and Danny will draft those, and then pick their division names (foreshadowing!).
But honestly, between you all and me, I never imagined myself in this position of getting to pick who I play in week 1. And, just because I'm me and have spent years breaking down stats, I don't think there's a more appropriate way to choose my opponent than using stats. So here's what I want to do.
1. Take Week 1 points scored for the last four seasons
2. Rank all players by those points scored
3. Pick either the best or the worst points scorer
And here's what the results yield, in reverse order:
10. Jeff
9. Jose
8. Katarya
7. Sean
6. Tim
5. Danny
4. Baron
3. Bryan
2. Dan
1. Joe
Surprised? Baron has slowly been moving back to his winning ways, but the fact that Joe has had the best scoring average over the last four seasons in opening games might surprise you. Well I'm not one to back down to a challenge. I see you Joe. Week 1 it is!
As for Jeff's team name, only one thing made sense: making the dumbest pun I could using LoL terminology. Therefore, next year Jeff your team name will be: Rekklessly Gank My Bottom Lane. Logo to come. I also reserve the right to change that before the season starts.
Hope you enjoy it!
Now onto the business end of this post.
Since this last season ended, I've been giving a lot of thought to what we can do, as a league and using ESPN's tools/rules, to reduce two big things that have been bothering people:
1. Tanking
2. Creating super teams by trading money away
Seeing the reaction a lot of people had in GroupMe chat after I made those trades with Tim and Joe was probably the most reaction I've seen from our league as a whole in quite some time. So it's a sensitive subject and something I think people would want to see addressed.
We've already discussed moving the trade deadline up, and that's been universally agreed upon. It's a definitive measure to try and combat possible tanking by forcing league players to make a decision earlier in the season whether they'll be buyers or sellers - and would conceivably make decisions like mortgaging the future for this year (or vice versa) harder to come by.
However, I look at that as just one thing that could be done to prevent crazy tanking or money trades. Because, if I'm being frank, it wouldn't totally deter me from trading money. All I would do is make the decision to say I'm either all in or out earlier in the season. If you want me to be totally upfront with you, the bulk of my thinking these last five or so months has been: How do I prevent myself from doing what I've been doing?
And so I've come to two suggestions that I would like to propose we look at and try. I want to preface this by saying that I've spoken to about half the league to try and vet out some wrinkles with these proposals and to get general feedback. I'm going to frame the rule changes into four parts - what the current rule is, what the proposes rule is, what the factual consequences will be, and what my hopeful and desired consequences will be. Without further adieu:
I'm league champion.
I've avoided talking about it to pretty much anyone since I won because I know the way I did it rubbed some people the wrong way (foreshadowing!), and I recognize that fact. It's not the best path to travel, but it's the path I chose nonetheless. And because of that, there's two things I get to do as league champion: pick who I play in Week 1, and pick the name of the last place team in the league. In this case, that's Brock.
Choosing who you play in Week 1 is something I instituted in the league to reward the league champion, and it's a fun little wrinkle for me when setting up the schedule. Unfortunately I don't get to pick divisions. That distinction goes to the division winners from the year prior, so Dan and Danny will draft those, and then pick their division names (foreshadowing!).
But honestly, between you all and me, I never imagined myself in this position of getting to pick who I play in week 1. And, just because I'm me and have spent years breaking down stats, I don't think there's a more appropriate way to choose my opponent than using stats. So here's what I want to do.
1. Take Week 1 points scored for the last four seasons
2. Rank all players by those points scored
3. Pick either the best or the worst points scorer
And here's what the results yield, in reverse order:
10. Jeff
9. Jose
8. Katarya
7. Sean
6. Tim
5. Danny
4. Baron
3. Bryan
2. Dan
1. Joe
Surprised? Baron has slowly been moving back to his winning ways, but the fact that Joe has had the best scoring average over the last four seasons in opening games might surprise you. Well I'm not one to back down to a challenge. I see you Joe. Week 1 it is!
As for Jeff's team name, only one thing made sense: making the dumbest pun I could using LoL terminology. Therefore, next year Jeff your team name will be: Rekklessly Gank My Bottom Lane. Logo to come. I also reserve the right to change that before the season starts.
Hope you enjoy it!
Now onto the business end of this post.
Since this last season ended, I've been giving a lot of thought to what we can do, as a league and using ESPN's tools/rules, to reduce two big things that have been bothering people:
1. Tanking
2. Creating super teams by trading money away
Seeing the reaction a lot of people had in GroupMe chat after I made those trades with Tim and Joe was probably the most reaction I've seen from our league as a whole in quite some time. So it's a sensitive subject and something I think people would want to see addressed.
We've already discussed moving the trade deadline up, and that's been universally agreed upon. It's a definitive measure to try and combat possible tanking by forcing league players to make a decision earlier in the season whether they'll be buyers or sellers - and would conceivably make decisions like mortgaging the future for this year (or vice versa) harder to come by.
However, I look at that as just one thing that could be done to prevent crazy tanking or money trades. Because, if I'm being frank, it wouldn't totally deter me from trading money. All I would do is make the decision to say I'm either all in or out earlier in the season. If you want me to be totally upfront with you, the bulk of my thinking these last five or so months has been: How do I prevent myself from doing what I've been doing?
And so I've come to two suggestions that I would like to propose we look at and try. I want to preface this by saying that I've spoken to about half the league to try and vet out some wrinkles with these proposals and to get general feedback. I'm going to frame the rule changes into four parts - what the current rule is, what the proposes rule is, what the factual consequences will be, and what my hopeful and desired consequences will be. Without further adieu:
1. Change Playoff Format
The current playoff format is:
- 4 teams make the playoffs
- Playoff matchups are two weeks long
- Playoffs begin Week 13 and end Week 16
I am proposing the following for discussion:
- 6 teams make the playoffs
- Top 2 seeds get a bye
- Playoff matchups are one week long
- Playoffs begin Week 14 and end Week 16
- Higher seeded teams are given a point advantage
Immediate Consequences:
- Regular Season matchups extend to Week 13 instead of Week 12
- Playoff matchups decrease from two weeks to one week
- A bye week is added for the top 2 teams to qualify for the playoffs
- Higher seeded teams go into their matchups with a point advantage
Desired Consequences:
- Increasing playoff entrants means more teams involved for a spot until the end of the season
- This would potentially lead to fewer trades for future money/assets as more teams would consider themselves contenders later into the season
- One week playoffs could additionally prevent owners from trading money if they view a one week playoff as too risky to mortgage the future on
- Having bye weeks would also mean that owners are competing for a top two spot, thereby adding a layer of incentive for owners late into the season beyond making the playoffs
- Giving higher seeds a set point advantage rewards teams that performed the best in the regular season
- A longer regular season allows for more opportunity for owners to play later into the regular NFL season before their season ending
2. Reduce Roster Sizes by 1
Current rosters are 16 players plus one additional IR spot for 17 total players
I am proposing the following for discussion:
- Shrink bench from 7 to 6 spots
- Keep IR slot
- Player rosters become 15 healthy players and one IR spot for 16 total roster spots
Immediate Consequences:
- Adds 10 players to the waiver pool compared to current format
- Reduces maximum players per team to 16 players (including IR spot)
- Requires owners to make more difficult decisions regarding roster moves during the season and playoffs
- Reduces the time spent drafting by 10 players
Desired Consequences:
- Requiring owners to make even more difficult decisions regarding roster moves during the season and playoffs
- Decreased player-for-money trade activity as there are fewer “throwaway players” to include in trades to make it work
- “Stashing” players becomes much more difficult to do over the course of the season
- Increased player-for-player trade activity in order to keep players on rosters or maximize players without dropping them to the waiver pool
- Increased level of players available on the waiver wire can lead to more frenetic and exciting waiver moves over the course of the season
- Having people feel less rushed on draft day itself by reducing the time it takes to draft
I believe that these rules, in conjunction with the moved up trade deadline, can influence player behavior to the point where it noticeably reduces player-for-money trades while also reducing tanking. To tie it all together, I went through a number of leagues to determine how many teams are actual playoff contenders until the end of the year, and that number, in simple terms, is X+2 (where X is the number of playoff spots in a league). If we were to open up the playoffs to 6 teams, the general rule of thumb is 8 teams would be in the race by the end of the year and would be less inclined to sell off their players.
Note that, in order to make 6-team playoffs work in ESPN's system, they all have to be one week playoffs. This does one thing in particular for us: it would mean playoffs would run from Weeks 14-16 instead of Weeks 13-16 like they do now. That would give us all another regular season game instead of the season ending early.
Another thing ESPN does is it lets us give the higher seed a point advantage. I know the single biggest concern people have is that a one week playoff could ruin them if they have a bad week. That's actually my second bullet point in my Desired Consequences above. That's where the higher seed advantage comes in. I went through every game our league has ever had and found the average difference in points per win was 12. That's actually very high due to some outlier games. When we remove outliers, that number reduces to about 7. Therefore, we could give the higher seeds in a game a 7 point advantage. This rewards the best regular season teams and creates a potential "buffer" for those concerned with one week playoffs.
But again, asking myself the question "does it stop me from tanking" - not exactly. If the trade deadline were, say, Week 9, and I was hovering around the 6th playoff spot, I might kick the bucket on this season knowing I don't have a chance to win the championship.
That's where the reduced rosters come into play. My original proposal was to reduce two roster spots. The thinking being it would make league players make harder decisions about their bench, but also that it would keep more highly valued guys on people's benches. Case in point - last year I traded Tim Marlon Mack right at the deadline. I had used Mack once all year and had been sitting on him for weeks. Without that extra roster spot, I don't have Mack and can't add him to my trade with Tim. Now I'd have to choose between a more valuable player on my bench, which would make it harder for me to justify making the trade in my head.
And on the reverse side of the spectrum, if we were trying to make a 2 for 2 trade work, it would be harder because a team getting the obviously better player wouldn't be able to add a throw-in player to the trade mix. The feedback behind this idea was less enthusiastic than the playoff revision, which is why I reduced it down to 1 roster spot.
Now, very importantly, I want to say that I'm currently proposing these rule changes for NEXT YEAR ONLY. We can use the season as a test to see what works and what doesn't, and then either go back, or adjust from there. I wanted to propose changes that don't require any extra work from you, the league player. Only changes that we can make in ESPN's system and then ride out the season from there.
I'll let my proposals breathe for a bit. Either to let you discuss or to just think on them. Feel free to ask me questions if you need clarification. In fact, I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE IT. I'm not fully confident I've laid out my points as clearly as I think I could have on here, so a phone call might help if you have any questions.
I've received enough positive feedback to where I believe it would be okay to post a poll on the GroupMe, and I would really appreciate it if you all voted on it when that happens.