Very clearly shows in my sig that I'm in an 8-team league. First year of FF for me.
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Saints @ Panthers, TNF Titanic Tilt (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter SaintsInDome2006
- Start date
HellToupee
Footballguy
whats the deal with the Saints players declining the post game show?
cubbie5150
Footballguy
Cooks apparently doesn't exist when the Saints are on the road. Guess he's defended differently outside the Super Dome. 
Craig_MiamiFL
Footballguy
Good win for Saints. If they continue milking this run game (and keeping their defense off the field & fresh) they've got a chance to compete with the elite in the NFC.
I'm in an 8-teamer.
What's wrong with 8-team leagues? My 8-teamer is my favorite redraft this year. We start 20 players each. 2 QBs, 2 RBs, 3 WRs, 2 TEs, 2 Defenses, 2 QB/RB/WR/TE/Def flexes, 1 RB/WR/TE/Def flex, 6 RB/WR/TE flexes. Quarterbacks get a penalty for sacks taken. Tight ends score a point for every 3 yards, receivers get one for every four, RBs get one for every 4.5. You get a penalty for fumbling the ball and a second penalty if the fumble is lost, but if you recover your own fumble the penalty goes away. It's crazy, and I love it. Even vanilla 8-teamers can be a lot of fun, though- I did a generic 8-team keeper league for a number of years that was a blast. Best of all, when you get a "shark" into an 8-teamer, he typically doesn't even know what to do with himself. He'll just keep on hoarding RBs, which is important in 12-teamers because of the positional scarcity but which is just a waste of time in an 8-teamer. Gotta diversify and invest in difference-makers at non-premium positions, instead. Different leagues take different strategies.
I don't get the point of fantasy snobbery. There are enough leagues for everyone to find the ones that they think are fun. If anything, you'd think everyone would be in favor of *MORE* different types of leagues, instead of this relentless homogenization as fantasy marches towards an interminable string of 12-team PPR start 1/2/3/1/flex leagues that all blend into each other.
As someone who has played in every type of league imaginable, I can say pretty confidently that what makes a league "pro" or "guppy" is 100% the quality of the competition and 0% the size of the league.
ConnSKINS26
Footballguy
Well, it was a joke made only because of how quickly he did a 180, truthfully.
Regardless of the type of 8-teamer he's in, your league sounds very interesting. I've only attempted to diversify by adding leagues with more owners, not by fielding huge starting lineups with wacky scoring in a smaller league--that is a great path to go down because it renders pretty much any pre-packaged analysis/rankings/etc. useless and in fact makes it all detrimental, I bet. It comes down to brains and raw football knowledge which is not usually a statement that has to apply to your average redraft or dynasty owner.
Does this league see much trade action? Seems like it would be completely different. I've actually always been curious about huge leagues (but yours with huge lineup requirements would qualify as well) where it would make sense to trade an elite, "untouchable" stud for three WR3's or something, just to get them all in your lineup and increase your overall scoring. I'm betting a good trade in a league like yours looks nothing like a good trade in a more standard 12-14 teamer.
Thanks for the post, as it's opened my eyes a bit to a different way of looking at options to make a league unique, and also because you're right about fantasy snobbery in general and the homogenization of a hobby that at one time was as varied as one could imagine.
Yeah, I didn't mean to sound like I was singling you out. I kind of figured you were just making a joke, that joke just gave me a good opportunity to dust off my soap box. I like you, Conn. You're a good dude.
I was more just griping about the tendency for fantasy football owners to define a narrow range of "pro" formats and look down on everything else. Perhaps we've all just been playing too long and joining too many leagues and we've lost sight of the fact that fantasy football is something we do because it's fun, not because we want to impress our friends. If it's fun, then that's all that matters.
As for your questions- you're right on the money that it pretty much ruins any advantage that can be gained by reading strategy articles and recommendations, which was the point. When the majority of leagues start looking alike, the big fantasy sites (like this one) can start tailoring their advice a lot more, and even moderately-engaged owners can keep up with the best. Start tinkering with the settings to render the stock advice useless and you start to see teams sinking or swimming based on their own skill. For instance, in the initial draft, I hammered the defenses early and often since we can start 3-4 of them a week (and with the way defensive scoring is set up, most defenses will score on pace with or better than most flex-worthy RBs and WRs). Was that the optimal strategy? I'm not entirely sure. It's not like anyone's ever run the numbers and calculated the optimal strategy for a league like this. It sounded like a good idea to me, though.
Trading's pretty much a non-starter- in my experience, the amount of trading in a league is inversely proportional to the amount of flex positions in the league. No one really has any positional need, and positional need is usually the biggest driver of trading, (especially mutually beneficial trading). I wouldn't want it to be my only league for that reason, but as a change of pace, it's a ton of fun.
Another nice thing about it is injuries are pretty much irrelevant. With 20 players going every week, if one of them leaves early in the first quarter with a broken collarbone, it's not going to do much to your final score. Which is handy. And I probably spend more time running through start/sit decisions in that one league than I do in all of my other leagues combined, which can either be a good thing or a bad thing. People think 8-teamers means everyone has studs everywhere, which is true... but with 160 players starting every week, you're also constantly scraping the bottom of the barrel for whatever you can find. Gives you the best of both worlds. And again, with 20 players, a huge game from one stud becomes less of a game-winner.
The other good thing about an 8-teamer is it makes for some nice even numbers. I wanted quarterbacks to be valuable, so I set it up so you can start up to four a week, (you must start a minimum of two, but typically you're going to be rolling out all of the QBs you have). With 8 teams, it's easy enough to set it so no team can have more than four QBs on their roster, and this guarantees that every team can have a full set of four NFL starters every week, should they want them (some teams have opted to carry high-upside backups like Bortles over bad starters like Henne). Same with the defenses- 8 teams, four defenses per team, and nobody is ever squeezed out of the market at a position. You just can't make the numbers work like that in a 10, 12, or 14 team league, (though you can in a 16-teamer). Sometimes 8 teams is just the perfect size.
Or sometimes you can only find 7 good owners. I'd much rather be in an 8-teamer with 7 other good quality owners than a 12-teamer with 7 good quality owners and 4 clowns.
ROYALWITCHEESE
Footballguy
Panthers can't block and the receivers can't get open. When they are fortunate enough to be open, Cam is already pressured and 1) takes off, 2) they drop it, or 3) he overshoots them. I have greatly soured on this offense after watching this game against a beatable Saints secondary.
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
I was happy they didn't but I have no idea why they didn't keep running Cam after that first successful drive. He had a huge game 2 weeks ago running the ball but they haven't returned to it. Maybe it's a point of pride to throw the ball at this point.
Donnybrook
Footballguy
I get that he is called Riverboat Ron because his last name is Rivera but after last night I am calling him Laydown Ron.
