18 game schedule, week 14 byes, and the effect on FFB playoffs (1 Viewer)

[Skipdog77]

Hadn't even thought about this. Assuming my dynasty league goes to 14 game regular season, as a JT owner I hope I'm not in a must-win scenario in Week 14 to get in the playoffs. This may change my 1.06 pick if Waddle and/or D. Smith are available at my pick. 

Gonna gave to take care of business early. 

 

[renesauz]

Yes, this doesn't need to be complicated like I'm reading in this thread and even in one of my leagues I don't commish.  All people need to do is expand everything by one game.  If you were playing a 13 game schedule, now play a 14 game schedule.  If your playoffs were 14-16, now they are 15-17.  I don't see the issue here.

Obstinate? The entire discussion is WHO the 14th game is against, and a great many of us are deeply opposed to that game being against a random opponent

 

[Gally]

 Instead of limiting the action to your 9 starters vs their 9 starters, it's now your 9 starters vs the other 117 starters going that week.   I think that will fuel the week 1 fire that much more.   Just about every in-game update will be relevant to our fantasy outcomes.

To me this actually takes away from the fun and makes it like roto.  In those cases you don't really have opponents to root against because there are too many things to root against.  It just becomes daunting.  

Now as a one week situation it isn't that bad but I would much prefer just having my single opponent to root against and root for my players.  I think this would be numbing and not as much fun or excitement.

 

[Gally]

Hadn't even thought about this. Assuming my dynasty league goes to 14 game regular season, as a JT owner I hope I'm not in a must-win scenario in Week 14 to get in the playoffs. This may change my 1.06 pick if Waddle and/or D. Smith are available at my pick. 

Gonna gave to take care of business early. 

For a dynasty league this is irrelevant because teams don't have the same bye week every year.  It would be dumb to take a guy over someone else because of their single season bye week.  

 

[Aunt Jemima]

Capt Obvious: That's gonna put a premium on those who have bye weeks in the payoffs and those who don't. Don't the playoffs start in like Week 11 of the FFPC anyways? They've always had that Bye week issue and owners tend to put a premium on guys they can get past their Bye weeks before the playoffs begin as I recall. 

no, they start in week 13, and this year it impacts both weeks of league playoffs, in the past it was only a couple teams, this year it is 8 teams so it as to factor in to your draft rankings over there

 

[Deamon]

Hadn't even thought about this. Assuming my dynasty league goes to 14 game regular season, as a JT owner I hope I'm not in a must-win scenario in Week 14 to get in the playoffs. This may change my 1.06 pick if Waddle and/or D. Smith are available at my pick. 

Gonna gave to take care of business early. 

I really don't understand this.  I'm opposed to the "the final game of the year is more important than the first".  If you have a week 14 bye player, then that means you had that advantage earlier in the year.  A fantasy win in week 1 is worth exactly the same as a win in week 14, it should have no effect on drafting.

 

[Dr. Octopus]

Hadn't even thought about this. Assuming my dynasty league goes to 14 game regular season, as a JT owner I hope I'm not in a must-win scenario in Week 14 to get in the playoffs. This may change my 1.06 pick if Waddle and/or D. Smith are available at my pick. 

Gonna gave to take care of business early. 

I know it seems more damning if you need the win in Week 14 and you lose Taylor to a bye but every player in the league will have a bye week.

 

[nittanylion]

Obstinate? The entire discussion is WHO the 14th game is against, and a great many of us are deeply opposed to that game being against a random opponent

Take a look at your Standings after the Week 13 Results are finalized, and treat Week 14 as a reward for what Teams have accomplished during the 1st 13 Weeks.

If you're in 1st going into Week 14, in Week 14, you get to play the last place Team. 2nd going into Week 14, your Week 14 matchup is the second-to-last place Team, etc.

This scheme would also pit all the bubble Teams vs each other in Week 14, kind of like a play-in Tournament, right before the Playoffs start. If that's not fair and competitive, I don't know what is...bet you'll see people's true colors when they vote on an idea like this. Not many people are as cold-blooded killers as they imagine themselves to be.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but it works for me.

 

[Skipdog77]

I know it seems more damning if you need the win in Week 14 and you lose Taylor to a bye but every player in the league will have a bye week.

I get it, just seems like byes are usually over by that point in the season. I plan on being 13-0 by the time Week 14 rolls around this year, though 

 

[Deamon]

I get it, just seems like byes are usually over by that point in the season. I plan on being 13-0 by the time Week 14 rolls around this year, though 

There were Byes in week 13 last year though and no one said a thing.

 

[-OZ-]

There were Byes in week 13 last year though and no one said a thing.

Yep. Playoffs started in week 13 in one of my leagues last year, I had both Godwin and Curtis Samuel out. Still won with a couple players going off. Another league I had Evans and Godwin and lost in the final week, dropping a seed. (Both dynasty) I didn't like it but it wasn't that big a deal.

 

[-OZ-]

Take a look at your Standings after the Week 13 Results are finalized, and treat Week 14 as a reward for what Teams have accomplished during the 1st 13 Weeks.

If you're in 1st going into Week 14, in Week 14, you get to play the last place Team. 2nd going into Week 14, your Week 14 matchup is the second-to-last place Team, etc.

This scheme would also pit all the bubble Teams vs each other in Week 14, kind of like a play-in Tournament, right before the Playoffs start. If that's not fair and competitive, I don't know what is...bet you'll see people's true colors when they vote on an idea like this. Not many people are as cold-blooded killers as they imagine themselves to be.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but it works for me.

Sounds similar in concept to the NBA play in.

 

[-OZ-]

I really don't understand this.  I'm opposed to the "the final game of the year is more important than the first".  If you have a week 14 bye player, then that means you had that advantage earlier in the year.  A fantasy win in week 1 is worth exactly the same as a win in week 14, it should have no effect on drafting.

If anything, you're more likely to benefit from other teams selling off older veterans as they lose early in the season and you're winning.  But really there's no difference except maybe emotional.

 

[tombonneau]

I think it is this simple for the most common 12-team league formats.   There was most likely some kind of schedule imbalance for H2H matchups.   For a lot of leagues without divisional formats it just came down to a random schedule draw where you happen to play two of the teams in your league twice.  I guess you hope that it balances out so there isn't one team playing two of the heavyweights twice and another team playing the two guys who forget to set their lineup.  There's really no point sweating it out when nothing is guaranteed at the start of the season when the schedule is generated.   These leagues are just adding a third team that you play twice.   No sweat at all.  If anything the third (2x) team makes it more likely that everyone gets a somewhat evenly balanced schedule, assuming that there are owners in this league who are historically more likely to be found at the top and bottom of the standings

I think it becomes more of a talker in a 14-team league, where you're losing a perfect round-robin.   Or a 10-team, 2-divisional (round robin & round robin x2).   In a 14-team league, you still play everybody once, but now there's ONE team that you play twice.   There's something about this that does raise some question about how that one team should be determined.   Yeah, you could just go random schedule draw and call it a day.   But some commissioners who probably spend too much time thinking about this stuff might see it as an opportunity to add a wrinkle to the league that could make it a bit more fun for everyone.   I think a lot of the options have already been put forward.

1. global high score / competition week - like the take that it gives Toilet teams incentive to keep managing their teams late in the season

2. set rivalry week - another game against the owner you have the biggest blood feud with, what's not to like?

3. take a page out of NFL parody, strength of schedule model.   Best teams from last year play the best.   Worst play the worst.

4.  Last week of season, Playoff Parody Flex Week - same idea as #3, but based on current standings to maximize week 14 seeding and play-in drama.

5. Top/Bottom Flex Week -  Top half gets wins.   Bottom half take the L.   Start the season with the result that you deserve.

6. Another one that's out there.   Add an additional round to your live fantasy draft.   Let owners draft the other owner they want to play twice.  Also available in auction format.   Think about how sweet it would be for the perpetual bottom feeder to get called out by a team that passes on a top kicker or defense just to play the worst team twice, only to have the tables turned on them with a two-game sweep.

We are a two division 14 teamer currently lamenting the loss of the fearful symettry of the 13 week round robin. After discussions among the League Elders, we are opting for something of a combo of #2 and #3 above.

We are dynasty and several years back we decided to re-set divisions every year to keep it balanced (we initially had promotion/relegation but that got too out of whack, but I digress). So how we re-seed is the league winner and the runner up are basically in a reverse gym class dodge ball scenario: you get to pick teams you want in your division, only obviously you pick worst first.

So to handle that extra game opponent, we are just kind of doing like how the NFL does things every year in conference with all the 1 seeds across divisions playing other 1s, 2s play 2s, etc.

So the two champs (1s) play an extra game then the first teams chosen (7s) play each other, then the 6s play, etc. This keeps the extra game out of division and does as much as possible too ensure similar level of opponents.

For redraft I think it doesn't matter, you just play another team twice, but for dynasty we didn't want a bonus gimme if a top team drew a doormat.

 

[sushinsky4tsar]

I think that's a great format you have to keep things churning and competitive in the two divisions.

As a PSA, a yahoo rep replied to my query about a flex week 1 schedule where the top half get wins, bottom half get Ls.   They said that I would not be able to edit the week 1 schedule after the fact to accommodate this.  I know that probably sounds obvious, but I actually thought I had a good chance in a private league where the Commish seems to have God powers over everything else.   As an alternative, we do a live snake draft and I actually think it might be interesting just to let people draft the opponent they get to play twice.   You trash talk your friends about what an awful draft they're having.   This way we'll actually be able to do something about it.  

 

[nittanylion]

@sushinsky4tsar without trying to sound like a ####, yahoo isn't all that great of a League Mgmt Platform. MFL blows it away, and if you use the FBG discount, and pay for your League before June 10th, it knocks the price down to $60...split 10-16 ways, that's pocket change for an exponentially better product. I'm doing exactly what you're doing (Week 1 All Play, 7W/7L, followed by Weeks 2-14 H2H (which is one of the few fair solutions to the conundrum). No issues.