Fantasy Football ‘22: 5 Quick Fixes to Improve Your League
Patterson - The 2021 Hot Free Agent Few Could Grab
(Published June 21, 2022)
Summer is here and it’s a season that brings lots of fun things to our lives - long days, barbecues, picnics, the beach, the pool, enjoying the outdoors…and of course, Fantasy Football draft season! Drafts for redraft leagues will be here before you know it, and this is the time of year when lots of fantasy leagues consider rule and format changes. With that in mind, I’d like to suggest 5 minor tweaks that I think can really improve the fantasy football experience.
I’ve written extensively about ways to improve the rules and format of fantasy football. It’s kind of a crusade for me. When looking at fantasy football rules, the basic principle that guides the Pigskin Papers is simple: The playing field of fantasy football should be as fair, sensible, and merit-based as possible. For those who are interested, here’s a link to my most recent article on the topic of fixing fantasy football rules: https://www.thepigskinpapers.com/posts-1/lets-fix-fantasy-football. I know some of the suggestions I’ve championed aren’t for everyone. Getting rid of head-to-head play is a prime example. But bear with me - the things I’m suggesting in this piece aren’t revolutionary and shouldn’t offend your sensibilities. Your league might already feature some of the changes I’m recommending. What I’ve got for you today are a few small changes that could yield big dividends in terms of improving the overall fantasy football experience. These improvements are designed for season-long redraft leagues, but some apply to other formats as well.
Dobbins 2021: Another Preseason Injury that Sunk Teams in August
1. Hold Your Draft as Late as You Can
This first one isn’t even a rule change. It’s really just common sense and I won’t go too deep on this one since I wrote a piece on it last summer: https://www.thepigskinpapers.com/posts-1/the-lesson-of-cam-akers. The premise is simple - when you draft your fantasy team, you’re making a series of risk/reward evaluations, and the more good information you’ve got, the better positioned you are to make those judgments. As the preseason rolls on, we get more and more information about depth charts, roles, health considerations, and other important player outlook factors to consider. Drafting late helps to maximize the available information. Another benefit is that the later you draft, the less likely it is that fantasy managers will burn draft capital on players who suffer a major injury or other calamity before the season starts. I’ve played in a 14 team redraft league since the mid-90s and we always hold our draft the night after Labor Day - in other words, less than 48 hours before the season kicks off. Yes, players can get hurt, cut, suspended or demoted at any time, regardless of when you draft, and teams constantly tinker with depth charts and player roles. But the later you draft, the more you minimize uncertainty for everyone in your league, and the more you level the playing field in terms of preseason injuries.
Place Your Bids for the Next ARSB
2. Push Back Waiver Wire Day
The same philosophy I just discussed applies here. I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how processing waivers Tuesday at midnight (which is the standard fantasy football convention) makes even a little sense. I’ve never understood why it’s set up this way. On Tuesday night, no NFL teams have practiced for the week, except for teams playing on Thursday who do a limited Tuesday session. On Tuesday, information about player availability for the upcoming week is very limited. Waivers should process no earlier than Wednesday midnight, but Thursday (a few hours before the Thursday night game) is even better. Why not give owners as much information as possible before claims go in? I’ll say it again - Tuesday waivers is just plain dumb. This is an easy fix that makes things better for everyone.
3. Use FAAB Claims for Waivers
While we’re talking about waivers, let’s hit on another easy improvement for your league. The waiver wire can be a huge determinant of fantasy football success and failure - just look at how Justin Jefferson (2021) and Cordarelle Patterson (2022) impacted fantasy leagues the last 2 years, and that’s just 2 of many examples of majorly impactful players that weren’t taken in most fantasy drafts, and ended up on the waiver wire. The impact of free agents can be enormous. It can decide who wins a league. Given that reality, the process for free agent pickups should be as fair and equitable as possible. Any league that still allows open waivers on a first come, first served basis (before league-wide waivers are processed for everyone) should be shut down by the fantasy cops. And if you’re still using priority waivers, get rid of those too. I’ve never understood the rationale for priority waivers - what exactly is being rewarded, and why should any team have an advantage over others? Because a team had a bad week, or is having a bad year? Come on. The ideal process, which many leagues use, is a free agent acquisition budget (FAAB), where teams start the year with a set amount to spend on free agents for the season ($100 or $200 is typical) and blind bids are used to process free agent claims. Most sites that host leagues can accommodate this. If you do nothing else, make the acquisition of free agents a fair process that requires some season-long strategy and planning.
4. Limit PPR Scoring
I don’t get the love affair with full point PPR, which I think has been one of the unfortunate developments of the last decade or two. I’m not against the concept of PPR, but in today’s pass-happy NFL, I think full PPR awards too many points, which in turn skews skill position player scoring and impacts the fantasy values of some players by too large of a degree. Few leagues award points for rushing attempts, which begs the question of why so many points are awarded for catches.
In today’s NFL, lots of teams use short passes and screens as a substitute for running. What’s more valuable to an NFL team - a 10 yard run, or a screen pass that gets snuffed out for no gain or even a loss? Well, in Full PPR they count exactly the same (1 point). That makes little sense to me, and over the course of a season all those extra points for short and often meaningless catches add up, and account for too much of a scoring impact than they should. I’m fine with anything up to half a point.
The Golden Age of the Fantasy QB Has Arrived
5. Superflex It!
For those who aren’t familiar with the term, Superflex leagues are those that allow each team to start 1 QB in one of the flex spots - meaning you can start 2 QBs every week. There is now so much high-end QB talent to go around that Superflex makes sense in all but the largest of leagues. QBs should have a ton of value in fantasy, as they do in real life. But in 1 QB leagues, QBs lose a significant amount of their value because everyone can wait, and still get a great fantasy QB, even in a 12 team league. I’ll explore this topic more in the future, and will give some data that helps to explain why all leagues that aren’t already Superflex should be considering a switch to the format. Just trust me for now - it makes all the sense in the world to bring more QBs into the fantasy football equation, and to make the position matter in fantasy like it does in real NFL games. Superflex does just that.
This Guy was QB2 on Many Rosters Last Year - that Hurts!
OK, I’ll get off of my soapbox now. I hope your league will at least consider some of these changes. They’re all minor, but the impact on your league and on each fantasy player’s enjoyment and satisfaction with the game can be major. If you’ve got reactions to any of these, or have other minor tweaks to suggest, leave them in the comment box. And stay tuned to this space as I’ll have more preseason fantasy content coming soon, and regularly as the summer moves along.
DH
