The Bird’s Nest: The Times They Are a-Changin’

“Come gather ‘round people 

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown”

The words uttered by Bob Dylan nearly 60 years ago ring true in many facets, one of which includes fantasy football. I know, what an incredible tie in. Someone should give me a medal for that one. 

Today, we will be going over some of the changes I would recommend every fantasy football manager should be going to their commissioners and slamming his or her desk to change. Take each adjustment accordingly, and speaking to each commissioner here make sure you consult with your league before making changes. Nobody likes a dictator.

Before we get into the changes, I do want to make a personal announcement. This week, I was accepted into the FantasyPros fantasy football expert consensus. This is a dream come true for me, and I wouldn’t have been able to get there without the support of my friends, my family, and everyone at Talking Points Sports. I have been given a platform to do what I love here at Talking Points Sports, and it means the world to me to now be able to call myself a legitimate, fantasy football expert. 

Now, here are the changes that I would recommend to make your fantasy football leagues that much more enjoyable. 

Standard Scoring is a Thing of the Past

The amount of fantasy football dinosaurs that are still out there is alarming to me. The first thing, and I mean very first thing, that every person who plays in standard scoring reading this column should be doing is going to their commissioners and begging to move to PPR (point per reception). 

What is better, half-PPR or full-PPR? I get asked this question all the time, and I am here to finally answer the question. It depends. I know, it is a very lame answer. But it does depend on skill level, commitment, and how great is the desire for some sort of parity. I like to tell people who ask to make a steady jump, so in your first year moving from non-PPR (standard) scoring to PPR, I would play half-PPR to get your feet wet. If you are one for jumping head first into it, full-PPR would be the move for you. 

Moving to PPR introduces a whole level of new choices for managers to make during drafts. In non-PPR leagues, wide receivers are not as important as the running backs are. That is fact due to the running backs usually ending up with more points on a week-to-week basis than the receivers. Now, in PPR, the receivers become way more important due to that half point or full point that they get for catching a singular ball. To demonstrate this, let’s look at a sample of how the scoring would be different in each league. Say Cooper Kupp catches 6 passes, for 100 yards, and has a touchdown. Here is how it would equate in each scoring format. 

Non-PPR: 16 points (10 points for the yards, 6 points for the touchdown)

Half-PPR: 19 points (3 points for the receptions, 10 points for the yards, 6 points for the touchdown)

Full-PPR: 22 points (6 points for the receptions, 10 points for the yards, 6 points for the touchdown) 

I always will encourage those first time fantasy football players to jump right into half-PPR, but for those of you still stuck in standard scoring this is the time to modernize like the rest of the fantasy football world. Non-PPR is dead, PPR is the new wave. Hop on with the rest of us. 

Introduce FAAB

What exactly is FAAB? Free Agent Acquisition Budget, or FAAB, is a new method of how waivers should be done. Originally, league members would submit their waiver claims and in the middle of the night waivers would run. Managers would then wake up in the morning, see who they have won off of waivers, and hooray the waiver process for that week is complete. 

FAAB brings to the table a whole new means of how to acquire players off of the waiver wire. At the start of the season, the commissioner sets a budget that can be used to pick up players. Note, this budget does not get refilled at any time during the season unless FAAB dollars are used as part of a trade, yes that does happen. 

Each week, managers bid on players to pick up from waiver wire using the budget provided to them. Where this differs from normal waiver wire procedure is using FAAB, it places a value on each player to be claimed. The higher someone bids, the more valuable they are to that manager. With waivers, the best player available each week is going to go to the lowest ranked team in the league, leaving the top teams no chance at those guys. Now with FAAB, those top teams can become waiver wire competitive again. I am the commissioner of 6 leagues and a member of 8 leagues, and in 7 of 8 there is FAAB in utilization. It makes the waiver process a bit more intriguing, just to see who pays what for key players off of waivers each week. 

Note, I would also look to make waivers continuous each day. This means that players will not have the ability to make immediate add/drop decisions until Sunday of each week. This eliminates the mad rush of managers hurrying to the app to pick up a player that once had no value when the player in front of them goes down with an injury. A great example of this in practice is when Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt both went down with injuries, managers rushed to the waiver wire to pick up D’Ernest Johnson immediately. Now with this system, that rush is eliminated. Each manager will have the night to put claims in for players with waivers running each morning, except Sunday of course when free pickups are allowed. 

Re-Shaping the Last Playoff Seed 

I cannot stress how much it annoys me that so many leagues do not have an alternative system for who is last into the playoffs. Sure, maintain the status quo, I got it. But I am here to propose a much different case for how the last seed should be determined. 

For one, I am all for the highest scoring team out of the remaining teams making the playoffs. For me, this is the best way to do it. How many times do we see managers who are just unlucky, putting up ridiculous points for week-in week-out, only to not make it because their points against is so high. It happened to me just this past year. Now, I am encouraging leagues to reward that manager. Even if this team is 3-11, I say he should be making it given he has outscored every other team in contention for that last spot. Not to mention this promotes competitiveness in the league, as teams won’t quit during week 8 having a team with a terrible record. 

If this is not a viable method, then payout structure needs to be changed. Normally, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, will make money in most fantasy leagues. If allowing the top scoring team into the playoffs, regardless of record, is no good for you then we need to come up with a way to reward the highest scoring team. I recommend having a separate payout for non-playoff teams that have the most points for. Again, this promotes competitiveness and ensures that teams aren’t going to just throw in the towel. 

The sanctity of any fantasy league is so important, and nothing ruins the credibility of a league more than having an inactive manager. I cannot stress this enough when I say there is nothing that bugs me more as a commissioner than having to manage another team on top of my own. Yes, it is their money and they can decide how to best utilize it. But, as a commissioner, I cannot let an inactive team ruin a league. And trust me when I say this, inactive teams ruin leagues. Any manager who decides to be inactive during the season, at least in my leagues, is immediately expelled the following season. I don’t budge on that one either, that is a nonnegotiable. 

Make Fantasy Football Fun Again

At the end of the day, this is what fantasy football is supposed to be: fun. It is an opportunity to have friendly competition amongst peers and family, and it should never be stressful (unless of course you are a fantasy football expert who will get shredded for not doing well, not speaking about anyone specific here). The fun is supposed to start even earlier than the draft. When selecting draft order, a lot of people opt for the standard pick out of a hat. Yes, effective and simple, but do something fun. One year, I had a Cameo done where the person selected the draft order. Another year, a league I am associated with raced ducks down a stream and the order of finish determined the draft order. That is a fun, interesting, great way to determine the order while keeping everyone involved.

Draft night itself, get the league together. I know during these COVID times it has been hard to do that, but this year I urge all of you to try and get together with your leagues and do either an online draft in person or an offline draft. I have two offline drafts every year, and the offline drafts are the time of my life. They are fantastic, and it is extra special when the entire league is there thinking about one thing and one thing only, fantasy football. 

Encourage different league types, try out different league and scoring formats. This year, I will be running a guillotine league for the first time and I am really looking forward to it. Now the question I am certainly being asked is what is a guillotine league. Well, a guillotine league is very simple. Draft your team, compete each week as normal. At the end of each week, whomever scored the least amount of points is out for good. That’s it, their season is done. Someone could be finished after week one, that is the style of the guillotine. Complete this process each week until at the end, we have a winner. 

Fantasy football is supposed to be fun, and sometimes that gets lost given the high stakes nature of each league. Nobody wants to be last, everyone wants to be first. But the most important part of our game is to enjoy it. We have this incredible opportunity every year to play this silly game, and the least we can do is have a great time doing it, right? 

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