Fantasy Football Info For Serious Players
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Every year I make a 200-mile trek to spend NFL Draft weekend with one of my best friends. As a Detroit Lions fan, and a professed draftnik, the NFL Draft is his Super Bowl. With perpetually little hope of regular season NFL success, he turned to fantasy football to make the season a little bit more tolerable. His offseason is spent scouting college prospects, looking for talent that would help the Lions in their perpetual rebuilding. After the draft, while still basking in the perceived euphoria of the latest Lions draft class, my friend would respond wistfully "I wish there was a way we could track how good we would be at evaluating talent." I had to agree. Very few things are more frustrating than listening to people criticize from the hindsight position. Comments such as "the Lions would be much better off if they had drafted Clinton Portis" are especially annoying, as no one prior to the draft had considered Portis a priority for that team. General Thoughts So after a few years of wishing for a contest that would track our ability to evaluate talent, I stopped wishing and created what I call the Draft Acumen Contest. The general framework of this Contest consists of the following: The contest plays out with five draft classes over five years. This benchmark goes with the prevailing school of thought that you can't really properly evaluate a draft class until five years later. You may wish to shorten this time frame to three years, to shorten the length of the game. While this time frame looks imposing, it gets easier to manage once you realize there is little or no week-to-week maintenance. Establish benchmarks for what makes a good player a good player. You have to establish criteria for determining who is and isn't a good player. You can make the argument that percentage of snaps on the field might be the best measure of this, but since those numbers aren't readily available, we use starts as a benchmark for awarding points. Does this hurt a guy you draft who turns out to be a special teams demon? Maybe. Arguably, if you draft a guy in a second round who turns into the next Steve Tasker, your "team" would be hurt somewhat that the player didn't make more of an every round contribution. A sliding points scale that awards later round picks for game appearances can account for those players who are later round picks that fulfill this role. Alternately, you can use statistical benchmarks for player performance. Or you can integrate both points for game starts and appearances, and statistical benchmarks, as we've elected to do. Awards. To an extent, most NFL rewards are a popularity contest. Ask yourself, when creating your version of this contest, whether or not you want to award points for drafting a future NFL MVP, Rookie of the Year, or Pro Bowl player. We found that the answer was yes, but you may disagree. Roster Composition. When creating the rules of this contest, you may have a difficult time walking the line between a contest that awards people for identifying talent and awards people for picking the best active roster. The easiest way to win this contest would be to spend your first round pick every year on a quarterback who is most likely going to step in and start, for example. So when creating the rules, you have to walk the line between a pure talent evaluation, and creating a rule set that factors in an existing roster as part of the talent evaluation process. It may be necessary, as I've done, to limit the number of players at a certain position that competitors can draft, at least in the first few rounds. Set a Deadline. Another potential conflict arises when we consider when entries for this contest are due. Competitors may want to wait until during, or after training camp, and pick players based on how likely they are to start for a given club. Since this contest is a measurement of draft based talent evaluation, not training camp based talent evaluation, I would encourage you to require competitors to submit entries annually before the start of camps. I'll even suggest July 22nd as an entry due date, with no changes allowed after that date until the next offseason. Busted. Once in awhile, competitors will pick a player who completely busts out of the league, or fails to perform up to expectations. Competitors in the game should be penalized for picking busts. The degree of severity is up to you. Team Indexing. For the purposes of this contest, we indexed the position at which contestants would draft to the Cleveland Browns. All contestants would draft from wherever the Browns would draft from in any given year, and pick from the same pool of available players the Cleveland Browns would at that point in the draft. For example, picking third in the NFL Draft in 2005, you could select either whom the Browns had selected, or any player available afterward. You aren't limited to selecting another first round pick with your first round pick. In theory, you could reach with the third pick in the first round, for a player that the Texans took in round four, but the scoring system we employ tends to discourage reaching. We chose the Browns because they had a top three pick in 2005. I would recommend you start from a similar position, to give contestants the largest possible pool of players the first year. In subsequent years, for simplicity sake, I would recommend you stick with having contestants start at the natural pick of each team in the first and in subsequent drafts. To make the contest more interesting, we allowed teams to take two players in the first three rounds the first year, drafting at slots 1 and 20, while indexing our contest to the Browns in subsequent years. This was an idea to allow contestants to "ease into" the contest by providing a large talent pool from which to choose. Other thoughts. Players should not be traded from one roster to another. This is a contest of talent evaluation, not roster manipulation through trades.. Also, nothing prevents contestants from picking the same players. There is also a school of thought that allows contestants to trade picks, based on a draft value chart, and move up and down through the draft to acquire players that otherwise would not be available to them. Rules With that introduction, I'll provide the rules for the Draft Acumen Contest as we envision them and then provide some example scores from season one: Drafting Acumen Contest How It Works This test plays out over five seasons, beginning with the 2005 NFL Draft. The object of this test is to determine how well you can gauge the success of players entering the NFL Specifically; contestants will draft college players available in the draft after the draft. For 2005, participants will take an available college player with the 1st and 20th picks in rounds one through three. Then, they will select an available college player with the first pick of rounds four through seven. Available is defined as a player who has not been drafted by an NFL team at that point in the draft. For subsequent drafts (2006-2009) participants will select players in the draft with the pick owned by the Cleveland Browns. Players may not be added or "busted" during the season.
Picks are made prior to July 22nd, and busts are declared between the conclusion
of the season, and the next year's draft. Roster Restrictions In addition to players selected in the draft, teams may, between the conclusion of the NFL draft and start of the NFL preseason, sign up to four undrafted free agents. Undrafted free agents are considered to be 1) players who have exhausted their college eligibility and were not drafted by an NFL team or 2) players who, in the previous season played in the CFL, AFL, or NFL Europe, but were NOT allocated by an NFL team. Selecting Players Nothing prevents participants from selecting the same college player. If multiple participants wish to select the same player with a pick, they may. Releasing Players Participants, at their discretion, may classify a player as a "bust" and release that player from their "roster". However, a penalty is incurred for declaring a player a bust. This penalty is indexed to the round in which that player was drafted. Players must be declared a bust prior to the draft the next year. Roster Limitations The intent of this exercise is to both gauge your acumen for college players through all rounds of the draft, and to ensure the participants take a realistic, roster-building approach to drafting. This implies that participants will draft somewhat toward, over the life of the game, building a somewhat realistic roster of players. For example, a participant may not draft a franchise quarterback
on an annual basis, without declaring one drafted previously a bust. This mimics
reality, in that, in the NFL, high picks are generally used on starters, while
later round picks are used to add depth.
Scoring Scoring can be defined in the following chart
Under ideal circumstances, a player's awarded points may be adjusted up or
down depending on their performance. A player may start every game in a season
(earning 16 points) but may not perform at the level equal to their draft status.
At the discretion of the participants, that player's points may be adjusted
downward. The last two "Does Not" penalties apply only if the contestant refuses to declare the player a bust. Once a bust penalty is declared, the player no longer accumulates points. It does not apply in year one of the player's career. These two penalties do not pyramid. Where there are differences in scoring, and both penalties apply, the higher of the two penalties apply to the player. Bonus Scoring The following 3 point each, except where indicated, Performance Bonuses will be awarded to players who exceed the following statistical thresholds.
Winning The person with the most points at the conclusion of the 5th year would be the winner of this contest. Accumulating the most points would indicate that your draft acumen was superior to the other contestants over that period. Sample Year One Results Here are some sample results from year one of the contest.
Other Notable Point Totals We had one contestant in the contest choose RB Maurice Clarett. Because Clarett failed to make the Broncos, and due to his subsequent legal troubles, this contestant elected to bust Clarett, taking a -20 point penalty. Late round and free agent finds can be a bonanza for your roster. Finding Tampa Bay G Dan Beunning, for example, netted one contestant 32 points (16 games started at 2 points each). An even better find was undrafted Arizona free agent TE Adam Bergen. Bergen netted one contestant 41 points (9 starts at 3 points each plus 7 game appearances at 2 points each). Contest Maintenance We don't attempt to score the Draft Acumen Contest on a weekly basis, because contestants cannot manipulate their roster on a weekly basis. Typically, scores are updated annually after the conclusion of the NFL season. Because the contest is annual in nature, it can theoretically be open ended or rolling, if you prefer. You could erase the draft board and start over again the next year if you so chose. We chose the approach of roster building in order to add a more General Manager like feel to the contest. We felt it was important to accumulate, or fail to accumulate a roster over time, but you may view this rule set as more of an annual exercise that restarts every year. We also don't do this contest for money; it's really more of an intellectual exercise. You may choose differently. However you choose to approach it, I hope that this quantifiable approach helps you, and your friends find a way to put their draftnik ability where their mouth is, and have a little fun along the way. |
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