Spencer is removing Team Defense and replacing it with an IDP FLEX spot. Pretty cut and dry.
Kennedy has shared receipts for the original keeper rules:
Rounds 3-9, early keeper
Rounds 10+, late keeper
Free agents (green plus-sign), late keeper
Players added through trades and waivers maintain their status. Every player’s profile has a History tab that will tell you when the player was drafted and what moves they’ve made since.
Players are only eligible to be kept if they played in an NFL game between the time you added them and the end of the season. Starting lineup doesn’t matter.
The Champ’s rule means we’ll be rostering at least 48 IDPs, compared to 36. There will be 12 fewer IDPs in the free agent pool. It also means one third of your starting lineup is IDPs. I’m proposing two tweaks to increase defensive scoring and expand the pool of viable players.
+0.5 points per QB hit --> +15 points for the quality DLs; +5 for quality LBs and DBs
+1 point per QB hit --> +25 points for those quality DLs; +15 for the best LBs and Jamal Adams; +10 for many LBs.
QB Hits don’t necessarily win a play, but they are exciting and worth rooting for. You can hit the QB while he throws a solid gold rainbow for a TD, though, which makes it hard to argue that you should get points for it. It’s a small enough tweak that it won’t always affect your matchup, but it’s significant enough to make DLs more competitive with LBs when it comes to filling that IDP FLEX (which needs to be shortened: DP, DF, DFLEX, DEX, DX; are we getting anywhere?)
How much should fantasy try to mirror reality and how much it should intentionally diverge in order to be better than reality? QB Hits get respect in reality, but they don’t necessarily change the final score of the game. In fantasy, we have an opportunity to reward these plays with points and make all-star teams that look like all-star teams. We can feel some confidence flexing Von Miller instead of targeting some guy we’ve never heard of who averages a few more tackles per game.
Also, I love to see a QB get knocked. Sam Darnold getting punched in the dick is my idea of timeless television. It would be more famous than the butt fumble except that you can’t say dick sack on family programming. Just think of every time Brady or Brees got rocked and just launched one to the sidelines. Normally, nobody gets fantasy points for that. In fact, that’s deemed a good decision by the QB, and the dude that forced the action gets nothing. I’m saying maybe let’s give him a little something.
+0.05 per yard (matches current KR/PR yardage)
More splash-play potential, for one. I would hope it gives DBs some more juice, but I can see it ultimately rising the LB tide as well.
I think a lot about how Budda Baker caught a pass intended for a Seahawk, likely saving a TD, then raced down the sideline, only to have almost-Olympic sprinter DK Metcalf chase him down 90 yards later. Budda got six points. But had Metcalf caught a ball intended to hit him in the hands, run 90 yards with it, and then been tackled, he would get 10 points for the effort. This change doesn’t balance the disparity between offense and defense in general, but it does balance the reward system for generally outstanding plays. I still remember Jamal Adams in 2019 strip-sacking the QB, picking up the ball, and taking it 25 yards to the house, a single play which got me a remarkable 15 points. If yards earned points, I’d have had 16. A similar play from twice as far out would have hit 17.5, which would equal to the most points possible on an INT return (109 yards).
Keep in mind these things don’t happen often. There are usually around 5,000 return yards combined across all fumbles and picks in a single season. That’s a total pie of like 250 points these players are pulling from.
What I think it does it make it more attractive to gamble on DBs in free agency, since they have the majority of defensive yards and TDs, while sprinkling little bonuses on the players we’re already heavily invested in.
It’s mostly for fun and maybe some symmetry. Currently, our QBs lose four points per pick-six so this would only be a two-point shift.
QBs threw 31 touchdowns to their opponents last year, and without researching it too much, I’d bet those QBs tanked their team’s chance of winning those games. The only players who threw more than one in 2020 were Darnold, Brady, Carr, and Stafford, so just like with defensive scoring, we’re rocking the boat but not trying to tip it over. By the way, Stafford threw three.
In all, 17 legitimate starters threw pick-sixes. 13 backups threw pick-sixes; Mullens did it twice. Andy Dalton threw one, but I wasn’t sure how to categorize him. I’m low-key interested now in the list of QBs who didn’t throw one. Mahomes, Allen, Brees, Tannehill, Herbert, Danny Dimes, Trubisky, Minshew, and for all the mess Washington had at QB, the Football Team didn’t throw one pick-six in 2020.
Derek Carr has thrown two pick-sixes every year for the past three years. Stafford averages two per year over his 11-year career. Jameis’s average is higher than that.
That’s it for scoring.
Each NFL team will play 17 games in 18 weeks. We’ll continue to ignore the final game of the season because so many starters will probably sit it out. This extra week enabled the NFL to stretch team bye weeks all the way down to Week 14. The latest it had been previously was Week 13, and even then it was usually just two teams. This year, there are four byes in Week 13 and four more in Week 14. In fantasy, we get an extra game, and we can either add it to the regular season or the postseason. The question is basically what to do with Week 14. Do we have a 14-week season with a 3-week playoff or a 13-week season and a 4-week playoff?
Add an extra melee week
I love me some melee. And I love the balance of playing each team the same number of times. We had done a good job avoiding bye weeks by placing the melees at the beginning and ends of our regular season. If we want to avoid bye weeks altogether, then we can have three melees in the first five weeks. We can go 1-2-3, we can go 1-3-5, we can pick out of a hat… we can make these choices before, during, or after the draft.
I say we kick off Week 1 with a melee, for sure. We could lean into the bye in Week 7 when six teams aren't playing, plus it's right in the middle of the season. We could do Weeks 1, 7, and 14. I'd like to avoid a melee on two-team bye weeks. If a bye week is hampering one team during a melee, I want it hampering as many teams as possible. Something about how if one of us is in bondage, none of us are free.
The math I’d like to know how to do is this: do you have a better chance of winning an individual matchup or a melee? And even if you know the odds, is there anything you can do?
Create divisions
someone else would have to argue this
Everyone makes the playoffs
The top four teams get bye weeks. The bottom eight play to advance to the second round, where the lowest seeds play the highest seeds. The structure is 12–8–4–2.
The first four out are the only ones with a chance to complete for the top pick in next year’s draft. They play a semifinal Week 15 and a final Week 16. The next four out of the playoffs will melee each other Week 16 to decide picks 5-8.
As usual, the third-place game decides picks 9 and 10. The championship decides picks 11 and 12.
Six teams make the playoffs; the championship game is two weeks long
Basically our playoff structure stays the same except that the championship is decided by totaling two weeks’ worth of points.
The polls will be the following:
Add points for QB Hits?
+0.5
+1
No
Add points for INT/FUM return yards?
+0.05 (same as KR/PR yards)
No
Make Pick-6 worth negative-6?
Yes
No (worth neg-4)
What to do with Week 14?
Add a third melee week
All teams make playoffs, top four get byes
Two-week championship
Other (make a case for something specific)
If we have a third melee week?
Three of Weeks 1-5 (no byes)
Weeks 1, 7, 14
Week 1 and two randos
Other (make a case for something specific)
I’ll leave the polls up for about a week and see what shakes out.
Which is really all that matters. The season starts Thursday, September 9. Labor Day is Monday, September 6.
I’m looking at August 21, 22, 28, and 29 which are weekends. Let me know now if any of those four dates is impossible. August 21 puts us inside one month until Draft Day.
I think it goes without saying that the 2021 season is here and we’re back. Somebody go make a trade.
