NFFC Rules Changes Proposed For 2018; Let's Discuss

[Cdh]

I know the NFFC doesn’t count on my small contribution for survival...but imo

I love the early faab period.

As for the cut line..I think that’s part of having a team...grinding...making the right/wrong moves every week. Sounds too much like draft champions to me. I’m sure I’ll still play if you change it but I hope you don’t.

[Coltsfan]

Greg,

1. I love the idea of a pre-season free agency period. I don't see any downside to that and it's fair to everyone.

2. Please no team kicker. There are plenty of great options at kicker and you can take a safe kicker in rounds 13-15. Others wait and they take a big gamble that they will find a starter later in the draft. It's a decision on their part to wait and it's part of the strategy/gamble in dc drafts. I took Gost and Tucker in countless drafts this year and it cost me a shot at an upside player but I didn't want to end up without a kicker. If you wait then you are rolling the dice and it's part of you making decisions on your roster.

3. I personally like 30 rounds. The extra 5 rounds take about 3 days to draft. Over the course of the year if I am doing 2 slow drafts at a time then I could be doing about 10 more drafts a year. I was all in favor of 35 rounds before but now that I'm doing them I just found those last few rounds boring and I just go auto on picks. Yet it seems many people tend to time out with their own picks during these rounds. Which just says they don't care enough about the pick to even login. Those same players aren't timing out in the second round.

4. 4 hour verses 8 hour. I'm fine with 4 if we have a "pick 2" option. That is so needed and would be the biggest drafting upgrade you could offer dc drafts. If you don't have a pick 2 then it probably needs to be 8 hours imho.

5. Cutline is not a format I like - just because of 10 teams. Although the dc might be a bit more interesting. I just hate the idea of more managed teams, even with waivers less often. I probably won't play either way but it seems like a good idea.


Wayne

[Route C]

I'm conflicted on early FAAB. I like the idea for early season stand alone leagues but in an overall contest I like the field to be as level as possible. I already hate the early drafts in the prime and classic. Loved it in the beginning when the contest was "pure" and we drafted every city at the exact same time.

It's a 2nd chance for early drafters who prob already got great value "K.Hunt" that wasn't there for later drafts. It also sets a market price for common players available which is a slight advantage in FAAB spending. However this prob won't include many available free agents since these later drafts were just completed.

I'm open to opinions as I'm prob missing something here ( like most of my drafts)

[CALI CARTEL]

1. Definitely think a preseason FAAB period should be available for regular drafts, however not sure there should be both a Wednesday and Friday period -- I think just a Friday would be better, or else you are going to have feeding frenzies for different players in both periods -- would probably be better to leave all decisions to the single Friday waiver run where undrafted players who are and aren't playing in the Thursday "Cheat Game" will be in the same run.

2. I have been a big proponent of the Team Kicker for years in the DC; obviously the Team Kicker is not needed in regular draft formats where FAAB is available, but with a limited number of roster spots and a limited number of actually employed kickers, losing a guy with a stable job, on a good team, to injury can be killer -- and there's been a lot of these in recent years. Those against can argue the "losing job" thing is a skill that research will provide an advantage to better players at, but no research is going to give you insight on surviving a team with Dan Bailey (missed 4 games with a concussion), Caleb Sturgis (missed final 15 games, after being 100% healthy Week 1), Dustin Hopkins (missed 8 games right in middle of season with hip injury) or Greg Zuerlein (missed final week of playoffs, after being top scoring kicker in NFFC), and there are more.

3. I thought I would be all for 35 rounds, but with a Team Kicker I would definitely be behind a drop to 30 rounds. I went back and in my two 35-round DC's there were a total of 5 decent players take in the final 5 rounds and two of those were Josh Gordon taken in the 31st round (he likely would've gone in the 30th if that's where the draft was ending). Two Alex Collins picks and one DeShone Kizer (decent may be a stretch here) in the 31st-35th rounds -- could probably do with a three-day shorter draft in exchange for losing those picks.

4. I like the 4-hour with shutdown overnight; however the Auto Draft thing needs a revamping. Not trying to say they are perfect, but MFL has a far superior Auto Draft tool where you can set different lists and specify which rounds those lists are applied to. Currently, if you want to set a list for more than one pick at NFFC, you cannot do it correctly if you want to get two different positions. For example, if I am up in one pick, then pick again in 5 picks around the turn, and I am looking to get a RB and a WR with these two picks, it is IMPOSSIBLE to set a draft list with the current NFFC system so that I guarantee I get one of each. If you could set a list for each round, you could put all RB in the first list and all WR in the second list, and you are set -- but with a single list setup, this is not possible. I think this, beyond all other things, is the biggest cause for delays in DC drafts -- if people had the option to set multiple lists, across multiple rounds, then the drafts would move at a much faster pace and more drafts would be completed.

5. I would much prefer the Cutline with the "Best Ball" format for the first part of the season. As for the playoff round, I think that multi-week early round was initially done to account for the Bye Week schedule of the NFL, so that certain players weren't off during a "one and done" week. With the 3-week opening cut round, if a player has a bye during Weeks 10, 11 or 12, they are only off for 1/3 of that round; but if you reduce the size of that opening round, then players with byes during that period become less valuable. It's hard to say what I would prefer until I see the NFL Schedule for the season, but a 3-week opening round is still probably the most "fair" alternative with the late scheduled bye players.

[Coltsfan]

2. I have been a big proponent of the Team Kicker for years in the DC; obviously the Team Kicker is not needed in regular draft formats where FAAB is available, but with a limited number of roster spots and a limited number of actually employed kickers, losing a guy with a stable job, on a good team, to injury can be killer -- and there's been a lot of these in recent years. Those against can argue the "losing job" thing is a skill that research will provide an advantage to better players at, but no research is going to give you insight on surviving a team with Dan Bailey (missed 4 games with a concussion), Caleb Sturgis (missed final 15 games, after being 100% healthy Week 1), Dustin Hopkins (missed 8 games right in middle of season with hip injury) or Greg Zuerlein (missed final week of playoffs, after being top scoring kicker in NFFC), and there are more.


Injuries are part of FF at every position so this is not different than QB, RB, or WR. But you can take a 3rd kicker to help hedge against injuries. It's part of the strategy. If the NFFC did move to team kickers then there would be almost no reason to take one until the last couple of rounds. I spend hours researching kickers and barring injury I think it pays off. I know their contracts, what they count against cap, plus I follow the off season signings for each team. I loved Butker coming in to the draft this year and took him a lot early. I thought he might beat out Gano after the draft (and I was wrong) but because I thought he was a great talent I ended up having him on several teams and he was key this year. I just hate removing something from FF like the kicker position. We might as well go team RB, team WR, etc if we do that.


Wayne

[Sabretooth]

I have surprisingly learned to like Cutline leagues a lot, and plan on doing more this coming year. I do like the idea of using DC scoring for those leagues and setting your lineup during the playoff weeks. And keeping it at 3 FAAB sounds like a good idea.

[KenGill]

Greg, I have no comment either way on 4 of your 5 areas. I'm not one of your big whale customers, but I have been playing fantasy for a long time - mid 90's.

So on item 2, team kicker -- I have to say a few words. I would urge you not to make this change. Kicker is an important part of the NFL and selecting the right one should be an important part of fantasy football also. Kicking has gotten more important sine the NFL moved back the extra point. Some guys can now be counted on to miss 5 or 6 PAT's every season. On the other hand some guys might not be the most accurate, but they have a big leg, they can be counted on for lots of long FG's, and good kickoffs and their teams aren't going to cut them, so that makes them a safe fantasy pick. Going the 'team kicker' route waters down your product. It rewards mediocrity. It penalizes the guys who do the digging around to see which teams have training camp kicking battles and who might be on his way out the door. Keep things the way they have been since the dawn of fantasy football. Keep the individual kicker.

[Greg Ambrosius]

The idea of Team Kicker is just being proposed for DRAFT CHAMPIONS leagues, where no FAAB is used to pick up replacement kickers. You can scout backup tight ends, wide receivers, even third string QBs. But it's tough to see the new replacement Kicker. So the idea is to have DC owners drafting 32 kickers and know that everyone will have 2-3 kickers through the long off-season and season, rather than have owners draft 4 different kickers.

That's it. We're not trying to change the game of fantasy football. Just asking if it makes sense for a format that has NO FAAB during the season for a position that can lose 5-6 kickers before the season. That's it.

Thanks for all the feedback and keep it coming on Team Kicker. I don't have a preference either way, but if it helps a no FAAB league I'm willing to listen. If it hurts it, then let's figure out why and if there is any recourse or if it's just part of this crazy game we all play. Technologically we can finally do it, so let's keep discussing. Thanks.

[Coltsfan]

Greg,

I don't want to restate what I did before but there isn't FAAB for any position in draftmasters and the injury rate at kicker is less than other positions. You do have the option of getting 3 kickers and if you choose wisely then the odds of ending up with a team having no kickers is very, very slim. It's all part of doing a good job with team construction. I see FF players draft very good teams and then ignore kicker - often taking guys that may be or should be cut. Honestly, I think they deserve what they get if they build a team at the expense of kicker. My rule is that if I like my core team then I go kicker early to try and get an advantage there as well. If I don't like my core then I wait, trying to get more upside and hope I catch 3 late that will start. I don't know if this is right or not but it works for me.

But in 2017 if you look at the kickoff DC in Vegas, out of the first 14 kickers taken, 3 missed some games due to injury. None of them were benched or cut due to being ineffective. In the next 14 taken, 1 was injured (Sbas) and 3 were cut due to being bad kickers. But those that were cut were very risky going in. Koo was a rookie that came out of nowhere and Folk was a low end NFL kicker. I"m just saying that if you took 2 of the top 24 kickers and did research on who the poor kickers are then you had a 4/24 of missing on your first kicker or 16%. When you add in a second kicker then your chance on missing on both due to injury is only 2% of the time. If you add a 3rd kicker in to your team then it goes down to under .2%. So yes it's possible to get shut out at kicker due to injury but it's far more likely to get shut out due to waiting too long and making risky picks. I this makes sense.

And by the way, I had several teams this year with the Olsen/Eifert combination at TE. I even backed them up with Fiedorowicz. So by that I think we should consider team TE's.........


Wayne

[Greg Ambrosius]

Hopefully this is all part of an intelligent discussion to further the growth of all of our contests. Your analysis in the first two paragraphs is exactly what we're looking for. Others can provide similar analysis FOR the new idea. I'm just looking for feedback, data and opinions.

Injuries are part of the game, but we're not asking about Team TE or Team QB or anything else. We're talking about a position where the fill-ins for injured or bad kickers are street kickers who are never drafted. Again, I'm not saying that Team Kicker is a good or a bad idea, just looking for good feedback from both sides before we make the call for 2018. And your analysis helps.

Now time for a DC announcement. It's coming next.