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Possible 6-Way Tie . . . My Head Hurts Already (1 Viewer)

Anarchy99

Footballguy
Our league is looking down the barrel of a 6-way tie for our final playoff spot. All it is going to take is the right 3 outcomes this week. Yuck.

Apparently the default tiebreaker would be best record among the 6 teams in games played against each other.

What is the greatest number of teams you've seen tied in a league before?

 
...and that's why you gotta have total points as the first tiebreaker. 

Makes the chances of a tie infinitely smaller.

 
In my opinion, the winner of the tie break should be the better team.  Therefore total points should be the tie breaker because that is a better indicator of which team is the better team.  Wins/Losses is heavily weighted towards schedule luck while total points gives a representation of which team was the better team the entire season....not just for one game.

 
We have a 6 way tie right now (4 through 9 are 6-6).

Total points are the tie breaker, thankfully.

 
Our league has total points for the tie breaker if it's 3 or more teams and then head to head for 2.

 
Preaching to the choir on the total points being the best tiebreaker (I would say that independent of my specific situation).

In this league, I am one of the teams in this 6-way scenario and have outscored most of the other teams that are tied by 300+ points. But most likely I won't make the playoffs as I did really well against the rest of the league but not against the teams I am tied with. That includes wins against all the other playoff teams, which in this case doesn't matter at all as it does not fall in the head-to-head tiebreaker category. I've scored the same amount of points as the top ranked team in the league (which again doesn't help me at all).

My only hope is that 6-teams don't all tie, as I potentially would win if tied with some combination of teams but not others. Silly rule, but it is what it is.

 
I strongly suggest using “all play” records as a tie breaker in the future.....most sites can track this over the course of a season....it is the best indication of the truly best team/owner....

our league actually does a hybrid where the 3 division winners make it into the playoffs and then the 3 best “all play” records get the last 3 spots...in fact because of this all 4 teams from one division made it in because the last place guy in that division had the 3rd best all play record in the league, even though his regular season record was 6-8....

(we played 2 DH weeks (weeks 2 and 3) and our playoffs start this week because we have a 2 week super bowl)...and we don’t play week 17

Our playoff seeding (1-6) is also determined by the all play record....

so we still get the fun of the week to week head to head matchups, but we pretty much ensure that the 6 best teams throughout the whole year get in....quite honestly, it is damn near perfect

 
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Our league has total points for the tie breaker if it's 3 or more teams and then head to head for 2.


Our league is looking down the barrel of a 6-way tie for our final playoff spot. All it is going to take is the right 3 outcomes this week. Yuck.

Apparently the default tiebreaker would be best record among the 6 teams in games played against each other.

What is the greatest number of teams you've seen tied in a league before?
Worst tie breaker in the history of tiebreakers because of bye weeks. Imagine you are the team that has Gurley and Hunt and Hill off and THAT is the week that determines your tiebreaker. Took me over 20 years to convince our league how stupid it is. Now if there were no NFL by weeks, that's a different story, your best players are not out.

I strongly suggest using “all play” records as a tie breaker in the future.....most sites can track this over the course of a season....it is the best indication of the truly best team/owner....

our league actually does a hybrid where the 3 division winners make it into the playoffs and then the 3 best “all play” records get the last 3 spots...in fact because of this all 4 teams from one division made it in because the last place guy in that division had the 3rd best all play record in the league, even though his regular season record was 6-8....

(we played 2 DH weeks (weeks 2 and 3) and our playoffs start this week because we have a 2 week super bowl)...and we don’t play week 17

Our playoff seeding (1-6) is also determined by the all play record....

so we still get the fun of the week to week head to head matchups, but we pretty much ensure that the 6 best teams throughout the whole year get in....quite honestly, it is damn near perfect
That's what I convinced our league to change to. I assume that is head to head vs every team every week. Called breakdown on CBS.

Points is fine as well. It is our 2nd tiebreaker and sometimes comes into ply on 3 way ties.

 
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In any case, 14 team league.  6 playoff spots.  3 teams are locked in, 2 teams are locked out.  The other 9 teams are anywhere from 9-8 to 7-10 going into the final doubleheader weekend, fighting for the last 3 spots.

 
Total points is all that should matter in fantasy football. H2H is just stupid. 
If you are seeking the totally most fair system, then a total points league is it.  However, a total points league is not nearly as much fun as a head-to-head league, in my opinion.  Fantasy is a hobby for me and the people I play with, not an all-serious endeavor.  H2H is just more fun: getting to focus on one of your friends' teams for one or two weeks per season, the ebb-and-flow of the match-up, and the Monday night games where several match-ups are super close and we're all texting each other.  I wouldn't give that up for anything.

Plus the H2H playoff race has a lot more drama because usually about 75% of the league still has a shot in the final 1-2 weeks.

 
If you are seeking the totally most fair system, then a total points league is it.  However, a total points league is not nearly as much fun as a head-to-head league, in my opinion.  Fantasy is a hobby for me and the people I play with, not an all-serious endeavor.  H2H is just more fun: getting to focus on one of your friends' teams for one or two weeks per season, the ebb-and-flow of the match-up, and the Monday night games where several match-ups are super close and we're all texting each other.  I wouldn't give that up for anything.

Plus the H2H playoff race has a lot more drama because usually about 75% of the league still has a shot in the final 1-2 weeks.
Good post. In leagues with friends, I like H2H more because it usually makes for a more fun end of season. Total points is definitely more fair, but then a total point league is also more fair than a matching based league, yet more leagues are matchup based. 

In bigger money leagues with strangers, I definitely prefer total points as the tiebreaker.

 
if your playing in a h2h league, then h2h should be the tiebreaker.... but rarely in cases where 4 or more teams are tied does H2H tiebreaker even come in to play. if there are 4 or more usually the h2h tiebreaker doesnt produce a clear winner... one of the 4 teams would have had to have beaten each of the other 3 teams and would also have to have zero losses to any of the other teams.... so usually in that type of big group of tied teams... h2h fails so you go to the next tiebreaker which is almost always total points... 

 
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Dislike H2H as tiebreaker when teams have just played once, because it could have been a week where one team was hit with many more byes than the other.  If they've played twice and a team swept, more justifiable to use it.

 
Total points is all that should matter in fantasy football. H2H is just stupid. 
Just play roto baseball then.  The beauty of football is the schedule allows for head to head matchups with essentially immediate gratification of winning/losing a game.  The biggest issue many have with roto baseball is that it gets boring because there is no immediate win/loss aspect.  You wait 6 months to see what happens which is similar to taking football and going total points instead of H2H. 

 
if your playing in a h2h league, then h2h should be the tiebreaker.... but rarely in cases where 4 or more teams are tied does H2H tiebreaker even come in to play. if there are 4 or more usually the h2h tiebreaker doesnt produce a clear winner... one of the 4 teams would have had to have beaten each of the other 3 teams and would also have to have zero losses to any of the other teams.... so usually in that type of big group of tied teams... h2h fails so you go to the next tiebreaker which is almost always total points... 
In our case with a potential 6 team tie, it’s unlikely there would be an additional tiebreaker. It will be based on highest winning % in games against other tied teams. It doesn’t matter how many games you played against the other teams. So a 3-1 record would be better than 5-2 or 6-3. Playing an equal number of games doesn’t matter. 

In the unlikely event there are two teams that are still tied after that process, I am not sure how it would go beyond that. I don’t know if it would move on to the next tiebreaker (total points) or if the process would start at the top again (head to head record) since the field would have been trimmed to only two teams. 

 
Just play roto baseball then.  The beauty of football is the schedule allows for head to head matchups with essentially immediate gratification of winning/losing a game.  The biggest issue many have with roto baseball is that it gets boring because there is no immediate win/loss aspect.  You wait 6 months to see what happens which is similar to taking football and going total points instead of H2H. 
All play is a better option than straight head to head. You would have 11 games a week in a 12 team league and still would get immediate gratification. 

As an example, in one of my leagues, I was the second highest score in Week 1. And of course lost. In another game that week, an owner did not submit a line up and had to take a 0 (couldn’t default to the previous week’s line up as there was no game). 

His opponent had a terrible scoring week and only scored 31 points. The lowest total in league history for a team that submitted a line up. But that team won 31-0. 

My team outscored that team by 100 points yet started the year 0-1. Using all play, I would have gone 10-1 that week and the team that scored 31 points would have gone 1-10.  That would have been a lot better representation of what happened that week.

 
I like the H2H. It’s a bit silly, but it’s fun. I like a Victory Point system that awards for points scored as well as Ws.
My 14-teamer gives 1 VP for a H2H win, but then awards 2 VPs to the top-4 teams each week, 0 VPs to the bottom-4 teams each week and 1 VP to the middle six teams.  So 7 points are awarded for wins each week, but 14 are awarded for all-play.  We also use all-play record and points as the first two tie-breakers. 

The H2H point keeps everyone interested on a weekly basis, but having 2/3rds of the VPs awarded on the basis of real performance means the standings pretty much always reflect team quality by Week 13.  Recommend it to everyone who's reluctant to ditch H2H, but also wants to reward the best teams.

ETA:  seamlessly handled by MyFantasyLeague.

 
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I like the H2H. It’s a bit silly, but it’s fun. I like a Victory Point system that awards for points scored as well as Ws.
My 14-teamer gives 1 VP for a H2H win, but then awards 2 VPs to the top-4 teams each week, 0 VPs to the bottom-4 teams each week and 1 VP to the middle six teams.  So 7 points are awarded for wins each week, but 14 are awarded for all-play.  We also use all-play record and points as the first two tie-breakers. 

The H2H point keeps everyone interested on a weekly basis, but having 2/3rds of the VPs awarded on the basis of real performance means the standings pretty much always reflect team quality by Week 13.  Recommend it to everyone who's reluctant to ditch H2H, but also wants to reward the best teams.

 
All play is a better option than straight head to head. You would have 11 games a week in a 12 team league and still would get immediate gratification. 

As an example, in one of my leagues, I was the second highest score in Week 1. And of course lost. In another game that week, an owner did not submit a line up and had to take a 0 (couldn’t default to the previous week’s line up as there was no game). 

His opponent had a terrible scoring week and only scored 31 points. The lowest total in league history for a team that submitted a line up. But that team won 31-0. 

My team outscored that team by 100 points yet started the year 0-1. Using all play, I would have gone 10-1 that week and the team that scored 31 points would have gone 1-10.  That would have been a lot better representation of what happened that week.
I get that all play is a better representation of how good a team is however I like the variance that a H2H schedule leads to.  Sure you might lose with the second best points for the week but in real games sometimes you play a great game and your opponent just played better.  Schedule luck is part of the fun for me.  It usually evens out over the course of the season and when it doesn't tough luck (or great luck if you are on the right side of it). It's part of the game.

Playing 11 games a week doesn't make it better for me.   That is basically the same as playing a roto style but on a weekly basis instead of a yearly basis.  It's overload for watching the games.  You are against almost every player in every game.  That kind of sucks. 

ETA:  There is no right answer.  It's just a personal preference and understand every situation caters to someone. 

 
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Gally said:
I get that all play is a better representation of how good a team is however I like the variance that a H2H schedule leads to.  Sure you might lose with the second best points for the week but in real games sometimes you play a great game and your opponent just played better.  Schedule luck is part of the fun for me.  It usually evens out over the course of the season and when it doesn't tough luck (or great luck if you are on the right side of it). It's part of the game.

Playing 11 games a week doesn't make it better for me.   That is basically the same as playing a roto style but on a weekly basis instead of a yearly basis.  It's overload for watching the games.  You are against almost every player in every game.  That kind of sucks. 

ETA:  There is no right answer.  It's just a personal preference and understand every situation caters to someone. 
honestly I believe our league has found it with the (3) division winners making it in...so this is based on your H2H results where you played everybody in your division twice and everybody else once....so you still get that weekly "buzz" of your H2H match up.... and it is important.........

but.....

then the last (3) spots go to the next (3) teams with the best all play record.....so this rewards teams that were really good against the field but may have run into a few of the bad week match up examples above.....

so you are playing that one key match up each week.....but you are also playing those 10 other games kinda behind the scenes...

it really is a damn near perfect balance and our owners LOVE it.....

 
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Ended up as "only" a 5-way tie. Not sure I am a fan of the tie breaking system, as I beat the team that got awarded the last playoff spot twice (and outscored by 350+ points on the season). But since the tie breaker was best record of the 5 teams in only games facing each other, that didn't matter. Will push for total points for next season (IIRC, I finished 2nd in overall scoring and did not earn one of the 6 playoff spots).

 
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Ended up as "only" a 5-way tie. Not sure I am a fan of the tie breaking system, as I beat the team that got awarded the last playoff spot twice (and outscored by 350+ points on the season). But since the tie breaker was best record of the 5 teams in only games facing each other, that didn't matter. Will push for total points for next season (IIRC, I finished 2nd in overall scoring and did not earn one of the 6 playoff spots).
Yikes - That is rough. Hopefully you'll get that changed. I'm in a few leagues with outdated rules that people hate changing or voting for.

Team DST -20 years ago if you allowed under 150 passing you got 5 points  (This has happened like 3-4 times if that this year) Needs to be raised. Drives me nuts.

 
we have a 5 way tie.  4 of the 5 play each other.  all playing for 3 spots.  total points decider.  
I ended up getting our number 4 spot via record then points scored.  4 way tie for the last playoff spot decided by point total... We do decimal points. 

i ended up 4th in points scored, 4th in record  and while it's not relevant 2nd in points against.  

 
Even in the NFL tiebreakers can be weird. I was playing around with ESPN's playoff generator, and according to that, if NE, HOU, and LAC all win out (and KC loses another game), all three would be tied at 13-3 but HOU would get the top seed and NE would get the 2 seed (even though NE beat HOU this year). But if KC also ends up 13-3, then NE would be #1 and HOU would be #2. Kind of odd how some of this stuff works.

 
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Anarchy99 said:
Ended up as "only" a 5-way tie. Not sure I am a fan of the tie breaking system, as I beat the team that got awarded the last playoff spot twice (and outscored by 350+ points on the season). But since the tie breaker was best record of the 5 teams in only games facing each other, that didn't matter. Will push for total points for next season (IIRC, I finished 2nd in overall scoring and did not earn one of the 6 playoff spots).
Apart from fairness, I would push for a change because it's just easier and less complicated. Anyone can look at the standings and immediately determine who wins the tiebreaker. Plus it leads to exciting outcomes like if the defense picks off a meaningless Hail Mary at the end of MNF and that pushes one team ahead of another for the final playoff spot.

 
Anarchy99 said:
Ended up as "only" a 5-way tie. Not sure I am a fan of the tie breaking system, as I beat the team that got awarded the last playoff spot twice (and outscored by 350+ points on the season). But since the tie breaker was best record of the 5 teams in only games facing each other, that didn't matter. Will push for total points for next season (IIRC, I finished 2nd in overall scoring and did not earn one of the 6 playoff spots).
That's a very odd system of determining the tiebreaker.  I am fine with using H2H as first tie breaker, but only in the instance that one team has defeated EVERY other team they are tied with. 

After that, total points is the fairest way to break a tie with three or more teams involved.

 
Anarchy99 said:
Ended up as "only" a 5-way tie. Not sure I am a fan of the tie breaking system, as I beat the team that got awarded the last playoff spot twice (and outscored by 350+ points on the season). But since the tie breaker was best record of the 5 teams in only games facing each other, that didn't matter. Will push for total points for next season (IIRC, I finished 2nd in overall scoring and did not earn one of the 6 playoff spots).
did all 5 teams play each other twice?

Also I guess everyone is in one division?  If there's multiple divisions I don't see how this should happen - should tie-break divisions first like the NFL in that case.

-QG

 
did all 5 teams play each other twice?

Also I guess everyone is in one division?  If there's multiple divisions I don't see how this should happen - should tie-break divisions first like the NFL in that case.

-QG
No. Who played whom and the number of times doesn't matter. Two divisions. Play some teams once, some teams twice. The tie breaker has NOTHING TO DO with playing an even amount of teams or facing the same opponents . . . only the highest winning percentage matters among the tied teams against each other matters.So a team that went 2-1 against the 4 other tied teams ends up better than a team that went 5-3. The teams didn't face each other the same number of times, nor did they have the same total of games.

It's NFL.com's default tie breaker systems for multiple tied teams. Admittedly it's not a good system, but that's how they set it up. They give each league commissioner or manager the option to set up their own tie breakers, but our commish just used the default setting.

 
No. Who played whom and the number of times doesn't matter. Two divisions. Play some teams once, some teams twice. The tie breaker has NOTHING TO DO with playing an even amount of teams or facing the same opponents . . . only the highest winning percentage matters among the tied teams against each other matters.So a team that went 2-1 against the 4 other tied teams ends up better than a team that went 5-3. The teams didn't face each other the same number of times, nor did they have the same total of games.

It's NFL.com's default tie breaker systems for multiple tied teams. Admittedly it's not a good system, but that's how they set it up. They give each league commissioner or manager the option to set up their own tie breakers, but our commish just used the default setting.
What?  You would think nfl.com would at least follow the real NFL's tiebreaking rules!

-QG

 
Our league is looking down the barrel of a 6-way tie for our final playoff spot. All it is going to take is the right 3 outcomes this week. Yuck.

Apparently the default tiebreaker would be best record among the 6 teams in games played against each other.

What is the greatest number of teams you've seen tied in a league before?
I remember a four way tie

Commish made his own decision to create a bracket, whoever won was matched up with a playoff team to see which score was the most. 

Commish didn't participate. (local league) he was just a mutual friend that was a good guy so we wanted someone impartial. We had a clause where he could use his judgment and the guy did like three times in ten years. Very hands off and fair. I always liked this concept. Not really possible in online leagues but ...like many things, local leagues can be better than online leagues if ya get the right 12

 
I’ve been in leagues where H2H is the tiebreak for multiteam, but only if a team is undefeated against all others. A nice alternative and avoids the 3-1 is better than 3-2 argument. 

I’m surprised that people who feel so strongly about points scored even mess with W-L record in their leagues. 

 
Just play roto baseball then.  The beauty of football is the schedule allows for head to head matchups with essentially immediate gratification of winning/losing a game.  The biggest issue many have with roto baseball is that it gets boring because there is no immediate win/loss aspect.  You wait 6 months to see what happens which is similar to taking football and going total points instead of H2H. 
Obviously none of that is right but there's always one that likes hth.

 
I remember a four way tie

Commish made his own decision to create a bracket, whoever won was matched up with a playoff team to see which score was the most. 

Commish didn't participate. (local league) he was just a mutual friend that was a good guy so we wanted someone impartial. We had a clause where he could use his judgment and the guy did like three times in ten years. Very hands off and fair. I always liked this concept. Not really possible in online leagues but ...like many things, local leagues can be better than online leagues if ya get the right 12
That method is blatantly unfair to the team that is firmly in his playoff slot as he has to face four different teams instead of one.

 
Sigh. This just gets more annoying as time goes on. Prior to this season, we used a different hosting site. For multi-team ties, that site used total points as the tie breaker. (There had been a 3 way team tie several years ago but that was before my time in the league.) So the league members, based on precedent, all thought the tie breaker was total points scored.

However, I am learning that not a lot is documented for league rules and processes. The commish has come out and said there never really were tie breaker rules set up, so he just uses the default settings of the hosting site for anything other than the league scoring system. No, he will not be getting a Christmas card from me this year.

 
That method is blatantly unfair to the team that is firmly in his playoff slot as he has to face four different teams instead of one.
I guess that's true. Makes sense. 

We had no fourway tiebreaker so commish did his best. Sometimes commish's are put in tough spots and I'm just looking for fairness or an effort to be fair. Idk..we rolled with it back then

 

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