Before we begin let me say I love, perhaps to an unhealthy extent, the following hobbies: Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40K, reading graphic novels, and fantasy football. I love the Phillies and Flyers too, but fantasy baseball/hockey isn’t my thing. Finally, this isn’t just a review — it’s also a public strategizing session.

If you don’t play fantasy football, you should; it is loads of fun. You don’t need to know much about football. I was a moderately serious Eagles fan when I started playing fantasy football. Now, a few years later, I’m a ravenous Eagles fan, but I’ve come to admire individual players around the NFL.

While things vary league to league, the general idea is as follows (If you know about fantasy football skip to the triple space break):

 1) There are 10 to 14 owners, or human players. You can generally customize your team name, logo, etc. 

2) You draft a team. The players can come from any NFL team to round out your roster. This is tricky. In some leagues you’ll be held to real life loyalties, meaning if you root for the Eagles, drafting Dallas quarterback Tony “the Homo” Romo will be greeted with chides. I play in two leagues — neither has any loyalty to real life. Though honestly, I’ll never root for a Dallas player (see the below paragraph labeled Tony Romo). You’re drafting mainly for offensive positions. The average team consists of 9 players: one quarterback, two wide receivers, two running backs, one tight end, one kicker, one defensive line (you draft the entire defense of a given team) and one “swing” position. The swing position is an either/or: in most leagues you may play either a third running back or a third wide receiver, in some it could be a third wide receiver or a second tight end.

It’s worth noting that every owner is assigned a number. We’ll say one through ten. In the first round one goes first and ten goes last. However, the picks snake around, meaning that in the second round ten picks first and one picks last.

3) You trash talk everyone: player, other owners, other owners’ mothers, etc.

4) You watch week to week as your team progresses scoring points. This can vary radically. Some leagues give 6 points for a touchdown, while others might give you 10. Some leagues give running backs 1 point per 10 rushing yards and others give 1 point per 20 yards. It changes, and if you’re new be sure to read the rules.

NOTE: You don’t have to win to trash talk.

5) You adjust your teams as you see fit. Some people do nothing. Others will swap players on bye weeks and nothing else. I radically change my line-up game to game in an attempt to score a few extra points and beat my current opponent by a larger margin. I could be predicted to win by 100 points and still try to make it 101. Some leagues cap the number of trades you can make in a season, some charge trade fees, and others have a live and let live approach. I prefer live and let live, sometimes trading six players in a week.

6) The fantasy season runs ONLY during the regular season. So, fantasy playoffs generally begin on week 14 and the fantasy Superbowl is on week 16.

Tony Romo is a flaming jive turkey:
While my leagues don’t care about real life ties, I do. Last year I drafted Tony Romo. I loath him. I let my desire to win fantasy conflict with my desire to see the Eagles fly to victory and I regretted it. Tony Romo is a whiney mediocre player; to solidify my point, he hurt his pinky finger last year and missed four games, if memory serves. Additionally, he was out-performed by his back-up Kurt Warner. This means my third draft pick, a supposed fantasy stud, was nothing more than a flaming jive turkey. (NOTE: jive turkey, flaming or otherwise, is a great piece of unexpected trash talk).

Also, Fantasy Football is at least 50% pure luck.

That covers the background. Well, the basics of it.

 

 

 

This post is really about drafting. I’m in two leagues (one is a keeper league) and I’m trying two variants on a new strategy: point spread comparisons.

There are two primary drafting methods: online and live. Online takes place live on a computer with everyone logging in to pick players. If you don’t log in the computer picks for you — terrible idea.

Live drafts mean everyone gets together at a given location and pick their players in person. This sounds like a lot of work, but really it’s COMPLETELY AWESOME. Various companies make draft day kits; for a reasonable price you get a big paper sheet to write people’s names and draft orders on, as well as stickers with players’ names. Plus, everyone gets to meet everyone else and start trash talking right away. I generally drink four to eight beers and boo loudly at every choice my friends make.

 

In previous years I would draft a player in the “standard order,” which means two running backs, then two wide receivers, then a quarterback, then a tight end, then a swing player, then a kicker, and finally a defense. Afterward I’d pick over the bones to get a six player bench. I did okay. I made the playoffs twice and the Superbowl once. This method consists of taking the best available player for the position you need to fill when you’ve decided to fill it. BORING!

My new strategy is as follows: to weigh the spread between my current pick and the next pick based on predicted earnings. I’m implementing this strategy in two completely different ways: by player and by position.

By player is simple, and I used it to draft Fantasy Team A (I had draft position three out of ten). Basically, I’m trying to draft the high predicted scorer from the remaining players regardless of position. For example, Drew Brees (QB for The Saints) is predicted to score approx. 300 points over the course of the season and Larry Fitzgerald (#1 WR for The Cardinals) is predicted to score approx. 215 points over the course of the season; the obvious choice is Drew Brees. When I used this method I constructed a team that should average 100+ points per game.

For Team B, However, by position the better choice is Larry Fitzgerald, because my next pick will devalue the WR position by much more than the quarterback position. Basically, the drop off between my current pick (1st pick of the 2nd round) and my next pick (10th pick of the 3rd round), a QB’s projected point value will go from 300 to 250 and a WR’s will drop from 215 to approximately 90. So, the evaluation shifts to a possible loss of 50 project points or a loss of 125 projected points — take the WR.  I’m draft order ten out of ten and the draft is on Saturday, and I’m using this method.

Next week, assuming both commissioners get my teams posted I’ll give you an update and let you compare my rosters. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to evaluate these teams head to head each week because each league uses a different scoring system. But that won’t stop me from lining them up and bitching constantly.  

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