Midwest Coast Offense

This week I'll be going a little outside of my element and I'll actually offer my opinion on a few fantasy related football events of the week.  It just so happens that all the interesting news relates to the Cowboys, so sorry if you hate America's Team.

 

Tony Romo

Earlier this week the Cowboys announced that Romo wouldn't be playing this week because of a broken pinky finger.  Since then, everyone has been comparing Romo with Brett Favre which seems to have fired up Tony enough to follow in Favre's footsteps and throw a crushing season ending interception play on Sunday.  Everything is still up in the air, but if you have any other decent options, I'd bench Romo unless we hear some really good news about him.  Having a broken finger can't help his accuracy and while he has been having great games recently, the Cowboys as a whole seem to be slowing down.  I know the Rams suck against the pass, but they suck against the run too and I expect Dallas to run a lot even if Romo does play.  If they announce that Romo will start, I'd list him as a weak QB1.

 

Roy Williams

Roy Williams was traded from the Lions to the Cowboys this week.  I love Roy Williams.  I think he is much more talented than anyone on Detroit will ever get credit for which is why I don't think this move really hurts his value.  Sure he went from being the #1 threat to the 3rd or 4th options but he moved to a team with possibly the best offense in the league.  Roy Williams might end up having normal WR2 numbers.  He might end up being better than that if the 'boys offense can manage to be as amazing as they are on paper.  He might even end up putting up better numbers than T.O. which would make sense to me because he seems as talented and he's quite a bit younger. Despite all my optimism though, it's hard to get excited about him this week.  With Romo injured and him on a new team, he's a WR4 at best.  The only reason I could see to play him is if you absolutely need a huge weekend and you're hoping that the Cowboys try to feed him the ball to make a statement.

 

Pacman

He doesn't seem very bright

 

The rest of the NFL

The Colts offense picked it up last week and I expect that to continue this week against Green Bay. Addai is out so I expect big numbers for Wayne and MarHar.  Calvin Johson being the only real receiver in Detroit does not make him a better option in my opinion.  He still has a liability at QB and now the defenses know they only need to worry about one guy.  I'm expecting a couple of things to start trending back to normal which means I'm expecting LT to do well, the Bengals offense to do better and Steven Jackson to score a touchdown.

 

That's it for me.  I'll try to post on Monday or Tuesday to go over the Week 7 action.

 

Disclaimer:  This information is almost all certainly wrong.  You should probably assume that the exact opposite of everything in this post is true.

So the first three weeks of the season are in the books.  All those things people were debating before the season started are seeming much more clear and it's time to start figuring out how to take advantage of that.  There are other blogs on this site discussing which specific players are on the up and up and which are taking a fantasy nosedive, so I'll avoid getting into that level of detail.  There are some general strategies that are always worth following during this point in the season and I'll talk about a few of them.

 

As I've mentioned before, my main goal in fantasy football is to put together a team of players that I enjoy following and it's normally more fun following players that are doing well.  The key to success in many different fields (including ffl) is to realize when people are over-reacting to information.  By keeping a calm head, you can normally gain an advantage over your competition.  There's no better time to do this than during the first quarter of the season.  All the silly ideas everyone had 3 weeks ago are out the window and it's clear now which players will do well for the rest of the season.  Brandon Marshall will clearly break every receiving record and Addai is a complete dud.  You know it's true because we've already seen 3 whole weeks of games.

 

This is the perfect time to buy low and sell high.  It does look like Marshall will have a better season than anyone expected and Adrian Peterson has looked a lot better than LT, but let's not get crazy.  The average fantasy football fan will take all the information we've gathered over the past 3 weeks and treat it as the word of god.  They'll chart out stats and draw a nice linear regression and think they know the future.

 

So how do you take advantage?  I suggest picking one or two players that you think are being over-valued and one or two players that are being seriously undervalued.  Ronnie Brown is a great example of someone that people are probably too excited about right now and Braylon Edwards is a good example of the opposite.  Now you just have to try to get the under-valued guys on your team and the over-valued guys off your team.  Identify which other owners are the reactionary type and try to prey on them.

 

One year I traded Stephen Davis (when he was on the Panthers) for Reggie Wayne based off two weeks of stats.  At the time I was trading away someone with something like 5 touchdowns in a couple games for someone with virtually no stats, but Reggie Wayne was a better player on a better offense.  He was last year and he probably will be next year.  Most trades wont go this well, but that should be the goal of every trade.  Find someone that is blinded by stats and give them what they want.

 

To tie this into the general theme of this blog, this strategy can be a great way to hit a home run with players that you like.  You know more about your favorite players than anyone else so if there's a player that other people are ignoring but you know better, now's the time to strike.  Isaac Bruce was dropped in many leagues after the first game and I snatched him up.  He probably wont be great, but so far it has worked out.  I know he's not declining as fast as everyone thinks because I watched every game he played last year.  I was in the perfect position to ignore the hype and go with what I knew and now I've got a player that I really like on my teams and I didn't even have to give anything up for him.

 

In a few weeks things will start averaging out.  LT will probably get his touchdowns.  Rivers will stop getting his.  The colts will start winning and the bills will start losing and everyone will realize that those preseason predictions weren't as far off as we think they are right now.  If you want to make some brilliant moves, now is the time.

With the football season just a week away, I've been putting some serious thought into what the best way to enjoy the games will be.  Traditional football fans have a few options.  They can go to the game if they're lucky enough to live in a city with an NFL team (I'm not so lucky), they can head down to a sports bar, or they can watch from the comfort of their own homes.  The options become much more complex as soon as fantasy football enters the equation.  Are the brief updates on tv enough to satisfy you?  Do you constantly have the stats up on your phone just to keep track of your players?  Maybe you sit in front of your computer with a tv on in the background.

 

Fantasy football can be an incredible way to make watching NFL games more fun, but it's easy to forget why you care in the first place.  Staring at a computer screen for 9 hours every Sunday isn't fun.  Having a successful fantasy team is meaningless if you don't actually enjoy the games in which your players determine your team's fate.  This is something I'm well aware of, but it's not easy to just sit down and watch football games without any clue how the majority of your players are doing.

 

I'll go over a few rules I'm setting for myself this upcoming year, and then I'd love to hear what you do to balance fantasy in reality in the comments:

 

1. Rams games are not a time for fantasy football - Living in Utah, I'm really missing exposure to the Rams.  I'll probably only get to go to one game in person this year and I miss out on hearing about them through the local media.  Because of this, I want to enjoy each Rams game as much as I can.  I'm watching each Rams game on my big tv rather than the one in my room.  I'm not going to allow myself to monitor any other games that are going on when the Rams are on the field.  I'll probably have a laptop sitting there so that I can catch up during commercials, but I'm going to watch every snap the Rams take this year without a computer distracting me.
2. More food, more beer - I don't know why, but watching football is more fun when you're also actively hurting your personal health.  I generally don't eat too much or drink anything when watching football because it makes it harder to get things done after the games are over.  That ends this year.  Sunday is for football.  I'll try to go skiing before the games start (come Decemeber) so I don't feel like a complete sloth, but I'm devoting at least 3 hours each sunday to making myself feel like crap for the rest of the day.
3. The big tv is not to be abused - When watching football on my living room tv, I can't possibly get anything else done.  When watching it on the tv in my room, I can sit at my desk and work on this site as I enjoy the games.  I'll devote myself to enjoying the Rams game each Sunday (and each Monday night game), but this site isn't going anywhere if I don't put any time into it on Sundays.  I think devoting 3 hours to watching the main game and then passively watching the other two as I get stuff done is a good balance.
4. Try to find a sports bar - I live in a ski resort town.  There are not a lot of people that care about traditional sports here which means there are very few decent sports bars.  I tried a couple out last year and they were a major let down.  This year I know the area a little better and I'm hoping to find a better place to watch the games.
5. Make my humiliation public - Last fall I didn't know anyone here that likes the NFL.  Since then, I've been joined at work by a Seahawks fan and a Patriots fan.  Hey, those are my two most hated teams in all of sports!  I will talk up the Rams to the point that everyone else in the office wants to punch me in the face.  Then I'll insist on watching the games with my new-found, misguided friends.  Then I will backpedal like crazy when the Rams get completely destroyed by both teams (twice by the seahawks).

 

So those are my plans.  I'll still spend the majority of my football watching time in front of a computer, but I plan on enjoying every second of the games I care about.  Does anyone else have to balance these two lives?  Probably not, because I'm a much bigger nerd than most people, but I'd appreciate it if you could at least act like you understand my delima.

In case you haven't seen this already, Bracken has challenged all us bloggers to a little fantasy mini-game.  We're supposed to pick a team of players based on their ADP.  Read his post for all the details.

 

I chose to draft in the middle tier.  Here are my picks:

 

1 - S Jack

2 - Andre Johnson

3 - Torry "Big Game" Holt

4 - Marvin Harrison

5 - Derek Anderson

6 - Tony Gonzales

7 - Chester Taylor

 

My goal is not to get 2nd place in this challenge.  It's to win.  It's safe to assume that someone participating will get really lucky which means I have to get lucky or else i wont be able to keep up.  With that in mind, every pick I made is one that I consider very high upside except Torry Holt.  Chester Taylor is the big surprise here but I decided that picking a running back in the 7th would allow me to load up on receivers.  It's possible that the rest of the players will be incredible and I wont need much production from Taylor.  It's also possible that Peterson gets hurt and Taylor ends up being the steal of the draft.  Either way, with a little luck (ok, a lot) I think this team can outscore just about any other combination.

 

I'm going to win whatever meaningless prize Bracken awards.

One thing that often gets overlooked when discussing fantasy football is how different scoring methods can impact the dynamics of the game.  Yes, everyone knows that Brian Westbrook is better in PPR leagues, but it affects much more than how you rank players.  As you may have guessed, I’m going to discuss how the scoring rules and positions can change the amount of fun everyone has with the games.  Here are some major issues that league settings affect:

 

Complexity

In general I enjoy having very complicated rules because it adds an element of strategy that isn’t there with a vanilla rule set.  That’s why we allow things like home field advantage on cbBlitz and it’s why our keeper league rules aren’t what most people are used to.  Giving users more options allows them to impact the results of games more (for better or for worse).  At the same time, some complexity seems utterly pointless.  Every site lets you set different points for rushing and receiving yards but doing so would only confuse the members of your league.

 

Position Value

There is a very delicate balance that most fantasy owners have found that makes every position appropriately important.  Playing around with the points can easily mess this up though.  I was in a league where all defensive points were basically double what they should be and the teams with good defenses normally ended up getting half of their points from that position alone.  It seemed very silly when an amazing day from my running backs was meaningless because my opponent got 18 points from the 6 sacks his defense got.  Fantasy football is not meant to mimic real football.  Unless you’re in an IDP league, offensive skill position players should account for the vast majority of the points scored.

 

Randomness

Lucas over at Healthy Alternative believes that players that are good get yards and players that are lucky get touchdowns.  I’m not sure I’m quite as passionate about this concept as he is but he’s definitely right that on any given week, it seems pretty random who gets the TDs.  Over the course of the season things even out, but this game is played a week at a time and each week needs to be fun.  A player with 100 rushing yards and no TDs should always be worth more than someone with 1 rushing yard and 1 TD.  There are only a handful of players in this league that reliably score touchdowns and it’s stupid to make all the other good players meaningless by making their yards worthless.  This brings us to…

 

Limiting the important players

I just mentioned one way to limit the field of decent players.  Another example of this can be found by awarding a point for each reception (PPR).  I am a huge fan of PPR leagues because there are a ton of players that catch a few balls each game but can’t be counted on to score.  I think that by making more players viable fantasy options you give the serious players more room to use strategy and you give the casual players more decent pick-ups if they’re not fast enough to grab the really great waiver additions.  As the commissioner, you need to do everything you can to increase the pool of players that don’t totally suck.

 

 

So what is “Standard”?

 

I took a look at leagues on other sites just to see what the default scoring rules are.  Presumably, the defaults represent what the creators of those sites think the average fantasy football fan is most used to.  Here are the results:

 

Yahoo!

As far as I’m concerned, Yahoo, is the gold standard of the established fantasy football sites.  They have the best user interface, the best infrastructure and (I think) the most users.  While I think cbBlitz will improve on virtually every strength Yahoo has (particularly the cost) I’m basing a lot of development off of the habits I developed as a perennial Yahoo user.

Passing TDs: 4 pts

Passing yards: 25 yards per point

Ints: -1 pt

Rushing/Receiving yards: 10 yds per point

Rushing/Receiving Tds: 6 points

 

NFL.com

NFL.com is by far my least favorite fantasy football site out there and it’s competing with myspace for the title of the crappiest website ever.  I could write a book about all the ways NFL.com’s fantasy section blows, but let’s just suffice to say that I don’t like it and I barely even had the patience to find out what their default scoring format is.  Also, I was unable to figure out how to change the scoring rules.  I’m assuming it’s just hidden somewhere, but part of me thinks they might actually not let you customize that.

Passing TDs: 6 pts

Passing yards: 25 yards per point

Ints: -2 pt

Rushing/Receiving yards: 10 yds per point

Rushing/Receiving Tds: 6 points

 

 

ESPN

I’ve only used this site once before and it seemed solid enough.  There’s nothing done particularly well but I don’t remember more than a few specific things that were really done poorly.  Obviously they have had serious issues with their infrastructure in the past so I don’t really trust the software, but I consider this a decent fantasy football site (note: this does not reflect my opinion of the rest of ESPN.com or ESPN in general)

Passing TDs: 4 pts

Passing yards: 25 yards per point

Ints: -2 pt

Rushing/Receiving yards: 10 yds per point

Rushing/Receiving Tds: 6 points

 

 

FleaFlicker

This is the hot new site in fantasy football.  I joined a league to see what all the fuss is about and so far I’ve been unimpressed, but it’s solid and free.  I think it’s main appeal is that it doesn’t have any glaring weaknesses like the other major sites.  This one, like cbBlitz, was created by a fan so maybe their scoring will be different.

Passing TDs: 4 pts

Passing yards: 20 yards per point

Ints: -2 pt

Rushing/Receiving yards: 10 yds per point

Rushing/Receiving Tds: 6 points

Plus tons of interesting bonuses

 

Results

All of these scoring systems are about the same.  I was pleasantly surprised that these leagues all balance passing and rushing/receiving well and they also aren’t too touchdown heavy.  So this begs the question….

 

Why do so many people play with rules that are less fun?

 

I’ve been in too many leagues where you need 50-75 passing yards for a point.  I know there are a number of leagues still using insanely touchdown heavy rules like that.  Can someone explain why?  How is the game possibly fun when you’re better off playing a touchdown vulture hoping he gets lucky rather than starting a quality running back that is sure to get 80 yards but wont be in on the goal line plays?

 

I think that 6 points per td and 1 point for every 10 rush/rec yds or 25 passing yards is about right.  I could see making passing TDs lesss valuable.  Also, for people that avoid PPR leagues, please give it a try.  It’s way more fun, especially if you’re serious about fantasy football.

 

One last thing.  People get too concerned with how much a touchdown is worth for a quarterback.  Yes, they are sure to score more than any of the other players so it seems like they should be worth less.  The thing is, all the QBs will score more TDs and I’ve found that it evens out.  It doesn’t matter if Brady outscores LT this year.  It matters if he outscores all the other qbs.  If every player is getting a lot for each touchdown, it doesn’t necessarily unbalance the positions.

 

Thank you, come again.