American fantasy football league

Its all good! I had even forgot that I was already a registered member of CBS Sportsline. Was kind of weird logging in and being taken directly to the Munich league???

So lay out the final price. 35 Euros?

€30.

€20 entry + €10 CBS fee (extra into the prize pool)

Make it an even €50 and up the prize pool to allow for top 5 finishers to win something???

I don't mind, but nobody said anything when I made the initial suggestion American fantasy football league

So I've told everyone that it's €20 + €10

We need some side pools this year then!

I am in for 50€.

So is it 50€ or 30€?

How about a 10€ extra charge for every accused or convicted felon on your team. That should get the money up pretty quickly.

mere is working hard on me to be her proxy, I have never done this, but might be semi interested for the draft to help her out... yikes! What kind of freakzoid thing am I getting involved in? (saying that as a non USínian)

@Carm - maybe Cookie can share some of her championship proxy techniques with you. As I recall, they involved (1) reading from a list and (2) drinking beer. Not sure if any of these ring true with you...

ja, I know, not a beerdrinker, might have to work on that one!

i'm sure we can find you a substitute...

so guys, how much is it the 30 or more?

We don't take $$$ .

Carm:

It's really quite easy to do. Like JJ said: read from list, drink some alcohol, pay at least a bit of attention to what's going on. I'd be happy to sit next to you and help you out. Shit, if Canuck did it last year by himself, you'll have NO problems. (*waves hi to Canuck!*)

(*big wave back to Cookie!*)

Cookie is correct. If I could do the draft last year and survive, than anybody could. I needed some help from JJ to not pick some recently retired, jailed and recently deceased players. However, I managed to still pick the dud of the draft...the soon to be injured Shaun Alexander.

Who is JJ's papa?

The similarities are striking! I'm sure behind that podium (in the 1st picture) he's got a Blackberry strapped on as well.

Anyone else going to the Munich Cowboys game today?

It is €20 + €10 currently. If we want to make it €50, then that's fine with me, but it needs to be done with a consensus of the entrants - and should be fixed in the next couple of days.

I would then suggest €50 total each and I will take out $129 (or whatever the equivalent € amount is on my credit card statement) for the CBS site from the final amount.

I was also on the site having a look at the scoring options.

The only thing I would change (and I spoke to a couple of others who agreed) would be to weight the scoring of a defensive team more heavily towards points conceeded. After all, that's what counts at the end of a game and shows the real value of a defence.

So I put together the following:

Of course, it can all still be edited until the season starts.

Comments? further suggestions?

EDIT: I also found out after I already posted the above that other categories could be added. I added -3 points for a missed point after attempt by the kicker.

I have already said that in today's game, holding a team to less than 20 points is considered a defensive game.
Fumble recoveries and interceptions should be 3 each, safety's 2 and I wouldn't shave off points until the opposing team scores at least 10-13 points.

The problem (as I see it) with having fumble recoveries and intercepts at 3 points is that I've increased the weighting on points scored against (starting at 20 points for 0 points conceeded rather than 10 points). So if we keep fumble recoveries and intercepts at 3 points, as well, then the overall scoring of a defence will be far too high.

In fact, I was even contemplating giving only 1.5 points for fumble recoveries and intercepts. Coz if a defence conceeds 35 points, then who really gives a shit how many intercepts they got?

As for not shaving off points until 10-13 points are scored - we can change the scale at which teams lose points for conceeding points - but I think there should be some kind of a bonus for a shut-out, or a score of less than 1 touchdown.

Need to think about it. May have to draft a D that only plays rotten offensive teams.

Obviously, we can keep fumbles and intercepts at 3 points, but then we'd have to go back to last years system where a clean sheet got you 10 points and went down from there.

As I said, just suggestions at this point...If you come up with a system, then by all means suggest it too

I've received a couple of PM's asking for the price not to be changed. So it will stay at the original €20 + €10. If it's not enough, then have some side bets!!

Sorry for those who wanted to make it more, but I don't want to have to potentially look for new players at this stage because of people dropping out because it's too expensive for them.

I've been using this scoring system in another league for a few years and have found it to provide a pretty decent balance.



Bonus points for holding a team in the single digits.
Deducted points when the other team racks up the points.
Bonus points when the other team can't put up a lot of passing or rushing yards.
1 point per sack
2 points per turnover

The points that a D can make should be relative to that of a decent RB (mid level, not LT). On a good day they get closer to 20 points and on a bad day they get closer to 0. The above looks OK except it seems to be more in parity to a TE where on a good day they might get 10 and would have to have an outstanding day to get close to 20. No matter how great a D is, there are kickers these days that can boot it 50 yards on a regular basis. Holding a team to 10 points or less is damn good, under 20 against a high powered offense is also good and I think the scoring system should consider these things. Last year we fixed pretty much all the scoring bugs except for the D where -10 and +30 were not uncommon and it didn't really reflect the nature of that particular game.

I like the idea of bonus points for small yardage conceeded. However, I think that we could stagger the points depending on yardage. So for example, conceding under between 50 yards gives more points than between 50 and 100 yards. or even make increments of 25 - the scoring system looks very flexible and I think we should take advantage of that.

Also, I'm a little uncomfortable with the range of 10-28 points all worth 0 points as a bonus. From what I've seen of American football is, 10 is usually a losing score, but 28 is not and I think the points given to D should reflect this. Plus, I think a clean sheet should be worth way more points than 3 intercepts...

Lastly, I've never liked how sacks have been scored. 3 points 2 years ago was just ridiculous and even 1 point almost seems too much sometimes. But I have an idea on this - why not score it for it's effectiveness? It is possible to give the defence a point total per yard lost on a sack. I would suggest between 0.1 and 0.2 points per yard lost (maybe 0.15?)

@Eurovol - As a point of reference, the scoring system I posted resulted in a 2006 yearly point total ranging from 49 (Redskins) to 198 (Ravens). The top 5 defenses were scoring about as many points as the #5-10 running backs, so maybe a little too high given your criteria...but not too far off.

@Hazza - The yards per sack idea is an interesting one, but I'm not sure what the proper point calibration would be. It should be easy enough to check historical stats for that. Even the .5 points per sack idea could be an improvement.

Yeah - but I now see that this won't work. There's no option for this type of scoring (even though I was sure I saw it last night). In that case, I would be for a modest 0.5 points per sack.

I had another idea. If it were possible, it might be good if we could figure out the draft draw prior to the actual draft day. That would speed things up in the first round or 2 and allow the owners sending proxies to plan a little more, as an early or late pick in the first round makes a big difference to who you'll get.

What do people think? And how can we organise it so that we all (or at least a few of the participants) see it's done fairly?

Actually, I think the web site can set a random draft order for us. The only problem is that all the teams have to be registered first. Barring that, I'm comfortable with any draw run by the commissioner -- throw in an impartial witness if you want, but not required. Worst case, do it at a TT Tuesday event.

I trust Hazza to do the draw, but the draw of playing cards took only few minutes last year? True, if it were done before we could guess who is gone, but the draft would loose a bit of it's kick?

Waterboys are already in last place!

I prefer the way we've done it previous years with the playing card method to determine pick order, as PES said, it didnt take that long to sort out.

We have another Jake in the league???

Yep - He was at The Arc just about every Sunday last season and told me if there was a spot free this year, he'd like to join. He's not on TT very much, but he's keen and you'll see him if you watch games at The Arc this year.

Also - sounds like the early draft draw isn't really that popular. So let's just do it on the day as in previous years.

Have fun boys (?and girls).
I'm going to take a pass this year, but watch out... i'll be back with avengence next year!
oh, and this isn't going to prohibit me from adding in Packer comments (let's hope they actually give me something good to comment on this year!)

So with Mere out ( ) are we at 14 (with Jake)?

I think we might have lost The Beaver too.

He hasn't logged into Toytown since 8 July.

Helterskelter sent me a PM, so I will ask him if he still wants to join

Know shit all about the game but that's gonna be my biggest advantage!

Just tell me whom I'm supposed to cheer for...

The players on your team...You don't need to give a shit about the actual teams and how they do!!

My goodness.

All strategy... nothing but strategy...

And balls (excuse me women ).

New defensive scoring suggestion:



Comments?

Quick reactions:

• I'd lower the scores for low defensive points allowed just a bit. Remember that you are also giving bonuses for low yardage allowed and those will tend to go hand-in-hand. Instead of 15,13,10,5, I'd go with 8,6,4,2. If the scores are too high here, then I think you'll have too many games won by a single defense instead of being won by a strong overall team.
• I'd avoid the quarter-point scores for rushing yards allowed. Create three tiers as you did for the passing so you can score it 3,2,1. Maybe <50, 50-75 and 75-100?

The rest looks good.

How about we start the defensive points at 10 points, like last year? I'd like to have that bit of a bonus for a clean sheet or less than 1 TD scored. I know we now have rushing and passing scores, but I think that's going to be offset by the reduction in points of fumbles, intercepts and sacks.

Also, one thing that may have escaped attention is that fumbles and intercepts by offensive players are -2 points (down from -3) - so it matches what the defensive teams earn from them...it reverts to what it was 2 years ago.

I like all of that.