Article: Standard FF Requires Little Skill (1 Viewer)

[just_want_2_win]

Fantasy football played by standard rules is a rotten game, requiring little skill...Value is concentrated in a few players. Value is especially concentrated in the very best player.

If you were to run a perfectly efficient snake draft, with the best player picked first, the second best player picked second and so on, the resulting teams would project to these point totals:

1: 381.4
2: 337.2
3: 325.8
4: 310.2
5: 296.6
6: 291.6
7: 285.5
8: 284.1
9: 281.2
10: 276.3
11: 277.4
12: 277.8

The most valuable player in any given year accounts for most of that advantage, and value levels out too quickly for a snake-style draft to make up for that advantage.

And that's fantasy football in a nutshell. If you pick in the top half of the first round, you have a massive advantage. Barring that, your best hope is something approaching dumb luck.
...
A head-to-head format, a season that often lasts only 14 weeks, and playoff formats that either admit half the league or compress the season to two games, all only further trivialize what little part skill has in winning at fantasy football.

http://www.advancednflstats.com/2013/08/why-standard-fantasy-football-rots-and.html

 

[Kool-Aid Larry]

manning leads a lot of leagues in scoring right now --- how many of those was he picked first overall?

 

[BigSteelThrill]

Fantasy football played by standard rules is a rotten game, requiring little skill...Value is concentrated in a few players. Value is especially concentrated in the very best player.

If you were to run a perfectly efficient snake draft, with the best player picked first, the second best player picked second and so on, the resulting teams would project to these point totals:

1: 381.4
2: 337.2
3: 325.8
4: 310.2
5: 296.6
6: 291.6
7: 285.5
8: 284.1
9: 281.2
10: 276.3
11: 277.4
12: 277.8

The most valuable player in any given year accounts for most of that advantage, and value levels out too quickly for a snake-style draft to make up for that advantage.

And that's fantasy football in a nutshell. If you pick in the top half of the first round, you have a massive advantage. Barring that, your best hope is something approaching dumb luck.
...
A head-to-head format, a season that often lasts only 14 weeks, and playoff formats that either admit half the league or compress the season to two games, all only further trivialize what little part skill has in winning at fantasy football.

http://www.advancednflstats.com/2013/08/why-standard-fantasy-football-rots-and.html

BANZAI METHOD!

 

[weebs]

Yea let's give people points for making a catch even if they don't get any yards!!! DERP!

 

[hines]

of course this is true, it's always been true and why anyone who is doing drafts need to pull out every single stop to do an auction. no one I've ever met has done an auction and gone back to doing a draft. it will make a huge difference in your league, people may not want to do it and complain about it being too complicated but once they've done it once they will love it

 

[Craig_MiamiFL]

Yea let's give people points for making a catch even if they don't get any yards!!! DERP!

In time, I think PPR will become FDPPR (First Down PPR) -- or some variation of it.

 

[BigSteelThrill]

of course this is true, it's always been true and why anyone who is doing drafts need to pull out every single stop to do an auction. no one I've ever met has done an auction and gone back to doing a draft. it will make a huge difference in your league, people may not want to do it and complain about it being too complicated but once they've done it once they will love it

Banzai Method.

 

[BigSteelThrill]

Yea let's give people points for making a catch even if they don't get any yards!!! DERP!

In time, I think PPR will become FDPPR (First Down PPR) -- or some variation of it.

Why any ppr at all?

Non PPR...

13 RBs over 10ppg.

23 RBs over 8ppg.

45 RBs over 5pp.

17 WRs over 10 ppg.

29 WRs over 8ppg.

62 WRs over 5ppg.

Just change your starting requirements to allow 0 RBs.

Add in Banzai Method drafting... and your league is rocking it.

 

[Arwald]

So the basic argument is that FF requires little skill because the first overall pick will always win, if everyone drafts perfectly along season statistics? I knew that beforehand. The skill is to manage the team during the season, draft with inperfect information (e.g. take Jamaal over Spiller or "reach" for Peyton), set the lineup according to matchups etc.

I would be interesting to see where consensus first picks score over the last years.

 

[SeniorVBDStudent]

A. Reverse serpentine

B. Short rosters

C. Waiver priority

D. Non PPR

E. Points not playoffs.

 

[Mario Kart]

I bet the OP wrote the article. It leads to a 3rd rate webpage. The topic has been covered plenty before as well. We all know drafts do not work perfectly however I would put money on it that the distribution of winners drafting in each spot is more near to each other than not.

 

[Topes]

If you were to run a perfectly efficient snake draft, with the best player picked first, the second best player picked second and so on, the resulting teams would project to these point totals:

There's a hidden trick, though. Players don't always perform exactly as projected. Shhhh...

 

[MattFancy]

If you were to run a perfectly efficient snake draft, with the best player picked first, the second best player picked second and so on, the resulting teams would project to these point totals:

There's a hidden trick, though. Players don't always perform exactly as projected. Shhhh...

Exactly. How many guys took Spiller, Rice, Richardson, Brady, Kaep, Newton, and VJax early in their drafts? The 2 biggest "sleepers" going into the draft were David Wilson and Lamar Miller. They still seem to be sleeping.

 

[Sinn Fein]

Also: water is wet

 

[just_want_2_win]

I bet the OP wrote the article. It leads to a 3rd rate webpage. The topic has been covered plenty before as well. We all know drafts do not work perfectly however I would put money on it that the distribution of winners drafting in each spot is more near to each other than not.

Nope, didn't write the article. Kinda wish I was the dude who founded that blog, though -- he's an ex-Navy F/A-18 pilot, engineer, has a master degree, etc. You can see his About page if you don't want to take my word for it. There are some other writers there as well and they all have some impressive math type backgrounds. So don't let the rough look of the site fool you -- it's not "third rate." But I'm not here to defend or promote that site anyway, so I digress.

No, I just came across it while looking for advanced FF stats beyond scoring, targets, etc (which I found here: http://wp.advancednflstats.com/teampage.php if anyone's interested). I posted this particular link here for discussion only, and I admit the initial post isn't introduced that well but I was on a phone so I was getting tired of entering text and copying/pasting.

The article has points I think are right and points I think are wrong. I agree (and I'm sure most of you here do, too) with its contention that standard snake drafts have a lot of faults. However, in the majority of the leagues I've been in the last few years, most owners refuse to do auction drafts because of the time involved. Could that be a mask for their not feeling confident with their auction skills? Sure, but the result is that the snake draft lives on, at least in my experience. It seems like it's hard to get people to move to something better.

How many of you here have tried to get auction drafts installed with no success? If you have gotten owners to try it, what did you do to persuade them?