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i like the real time feel of the rankings, im a big bloom beleiver, but i kind of wished other staff members maintained their rankings more frequently during the season........a good dynasty owner is making moves and ww pickups constantly, not just in preseason
Sorry to beat a dead horse...but Dodds' ranking ties to his projections which tie to his game predictor. It's not as simply as manipulating the order since everything Dodds' does ties into everything else. I like the fact that he takes a stand on the entire upcoming week in a numerical fashion. If the staff alters the QB rankings, then the WR/TE rankings would have to follow suit. From there the defensive rankings would have to be altered also.
I almost got mad enough to throw myself down a flight of stairs this week.
I hope that by now Dodds spends zero of his time each week on running the statistical trends system and all of his time accounting for player news. However, over the years I have read that Dodds took 20 some hours to load projections (load, not make) into the VBD Excel Application and then the infamous 8 hours to run the subscriber contest two years ago. This is inexcusable in 2006. If Dodds is manually running calculations, formatting pages, using Excel as a database, etc., etc. then please tap into the talent on the boards to automate these menial tasks and let Dodds do what he does best with his time - play poker.
I'm hearing you. What I'm looking for is for Dodds to do whatever he does, and then for about three other FBG staffers to come along and either use their own system to make up a series of rankings, or look at what Dodds has done and tweak it. I *want* them to alter all the rankings; getting different perspectives is the key.
and great suggestions...I would also add that outside of Bloom and sometimes Jeff, no one updated their dynasty rankings. Now, I will be the first to say that FBG has increased its volume dedicated to dynasty in the last year, but it still could improve as it is many of us that are on the site year round and in the offseason.
Overall great job, and I signed up for the 3 year deal since I saw myself subscribing each year anyways.I would like to see relevant message board topics linked to player pages better. I know it is done a little, but probably manually (?) - maybe something that scans for threads longer than X posts that are a result of a search for the exact player name automatically get linked to the player pages.Along the same lines, the player page search right now has no tolerance for error - you can type just a few characters and get all the names that start with that set of characters, but if you mistype a character it won't return "close" results. (like typing "Shef" instead of "Schef" for Tony Scheffler should return Scheffler as a possible result.) I think the player pages are very good overall for the offense. The IDP player pages need to be updated more frequently however, IMO.I wouldn't mind seeing a "dyansty outlook" section of the player pages also, instead of putting dynasty stuff in the main parts of the pages.I also don't know if the forums can handle this or not, but automatic checking for tag formatting - quote tags especially - if the above suggestion about quoting just the one post by default isn't implemented, then something to help fix the broken quotes would be nice. This is something individuals could be better at also - if your post is messed up, edit it and fix it, it isn't that hard.I had heard last year that a redesign of the site was going to happen in '07, and if so, that would be great, as the current design feels a little dated. But, please keep the design focused on the users and making information easy to find, and not just something that "looks" cool but is a pain to use. I did encounter a number of broken links this year, so maybe that is something that can be looked into, redesign or not.Overall though, great experience - just offering some suggestions to make it even better.
Good stuff here guys. Really appreciate the feedback.
I started this thread on my own. Not sure if Joe or David has seen it. I will make sure I point it out to them when the regular season ends.
I don't mean to hijack but, a hoops auction draft used VBD in 1993?
Not exactly but Griffith's book provided me with my first exposure to marginal values as opposed to absolute values and how they apply to auction values in a fantasy hoops auction. In an auction, VBD is of little use as it is based upon an expected drop-off in value at a given position between consecutive picks. In an auction, every owner has an opportunity to bid on every player thus accurate valuation of performance is paramount. My overall point is really this; If I'm going to pay money for FBG's auction product, I want to know the methodology behind their values rather than simply trusting them.Bri said:
Excellent, but can we make this part of player pages? And then be able to click to a past player's page to see how that player did the next season. Give Drinen a pay raise and give the time to build this out.
Damn
You can do this the first week of the season, or any other week. I do it for all of my leagues at the beginning of the year. Just make a new folder titled "Cheatsheets" do an "Add to favorites" (Add to "Cheatsheets" folder and change the name to "bjabrads donkeys". Now evey week you come back to it, the updated cheatsheets are there with your saved league variables.
Let me quote Dodds in his Perfect Draft article....... 
Someone should issue a report card based on the predictions by the better known members ( LHUCKS, Bloom etc), who've made top 25 lists per position and published them in the Pool. I'd also like to see someone do a full scale critique on Dodds' predictions..I believe the numbers will reveal that Dodds' predictions were absolutely horrible. So, if in fact his predictions about stats were way off their mark, why do we have Dodds' weekly predictions in the members-only area? Perhaps Dodds needs to put down the number crunching machine(s) and get back to basics, back to fundamentals of prognostication, by looking at a matchup and trying to figure out what he believes will happen by noticing trends, coaching matchups, etc, rather than using fuzzy math to support his claims.
Honestly, I found the information in the Shark Pool to be quite helpful, while a good percentage of the members-only data is nothing more than just pure FLUFF..Bob Henry is dead-on, Bloom is big time fantasy football guy, and they deserve credit for a job well done! I love the sleepers/busts and that matchup previews that are emailed to members!But someone has to cut thru the FLUFF at FBG's..I'm not sure we need a weekly player ranking system, I mean, if I have AJ, and he's ranked 8th this week because he's facing a 'good' secondary, wouldn't the golden rule of 'never bench your studs' trump this ranking? I'm not benching AJ for ANYTHING. I find the weekly rankings to be 100% useless..who cares where a guy like Larry Johnson is ranked, or Phil Rivers, or Jeremy Shockey, you're starting them REGARDLESS, so its worthless to rank them, IMO..Mister CIA said:
To expand:Mods should change titles to reflect player names too so searching is more comprehensive.If I do a search for "Gonzalez" I am not going to get the threads that have "Gonzo" in them. A mod should change Gonzo to Gonzales, DJax to Darrell Jackson, LT to Tomlinson, AJ to Andre Johnson, etc. The goal is to creat easy access to all information available.
If I might be permitted to continue beating this dead horse......Like it or not, I really believe that the most important thing in a fantasy football website/service to your average fantasy football participant, are both the draft and weekly rankings/projections. People who don't have the time to do their own research or who are too lazy to do it themselves simply want to pay for advice from "experts" on who to draft and who to start each week. The fact of the matter is that while an FBG's subscription provides you with a host of "expert" opinions re draft rankings/projections, you get basically one person's (i.e. Dodd's) weekly and redraft rankings throughout the year. While Bass & Brew's comment is true that it doesn't make sense to have other staffers altering DD's rankings (since they are related to DD's other projections), I have never quite understood why at least 2-3 other staffers can't provide their own weekly and/or redraft rankings throughout the year along side of Dodd's -- much like happens at the beginning of the year. With such a wealth of fantasy football knowledge on the FBG staff, I'd like to see more people contributing to what I strongly believe is probably the thing that most current (and certainly most prospective) subscribers come here for. In all in all, FBG is still the best fantasy football resource on the Net.
Bass N' Brew polled on this earlier, more than half of FBG users ran weekly waivers earlier than projections came out...On to the first point, though, if we're not to be critical of accuracy of projections, why pay for subscriber content? The preseason free material (including a fully working version of Draft Dominator) is good enough for most anyone to dominate a draft of any but the most shark-infested leagues. If weekly content is expected to be incorrect, and isn't worth complaining about, what are the subscriber benefits exactly?
How can someone complain about statistics not being correct when there is no way of knowing what a player will get? If FBG's predicts Harrison to gain 100 yards and 1 TD and he gets 30 yards and no TD's how can someone complain that FBG's should have seen that coming or should have known he would only get 30 yards? That is an impossibility.It would be possible but not greatly accurate to simply put into projections that Harrison may get more yards than Wayne this week or that Wayne should get more due to DB matchups. But, people for some reason want the improbable and that is for FBG to put numbers to their thoughts.
Calm down, I agree. The projections aren't that great. The question is what value does a subscription have if most of the best content is either released for free in the preseason or from the posters right here on the boards. Everyone seems to say that the in-season content isn't worth reading.
Because FBG lawyers advised them that they'd be risking spending the next 5-10 as Bubba's new toy.You can be my "room mate" and use my PO Box for a cut of your winnings.
I would like to see you guys use a better scoring system that includes 6 points for thrown TD's and does NOT include PPR as that is artificial.Also, a post analysis on VBD would be nice to see. Who should have been the best picks based on how they performed.
Yeah, I don't bother using the VBD auction values. In fact, I hope that owners in my auction leagues use the FBG $ values. They end overbidding on the high-end players, and run out of money quickly. It's not really that hard to right a better formula.
