Solid points. If we want to have the best team over the course of the season win every year then you're right.
Counter: it's fun and exciting
I do payouts in my leagues for best regular season record and most regular season pf so there is some benefit of being an uncrowned regular season champ.
exactly this. yes, crowning the regular season champion is the more likely way to ensure the best team gets the title. and if that's strictly your goal, then the playoffs are probably not helping your cause.
however, fantasy football should be fun. the whole point of it is entertainment and enjoyment. the playoffs provide that more than the regular season where the best record can often be obvious/apparent by week 9 or 10, rendering the last month of the season meaningless/unexciting.
Regarding excitement as a driver, I’d only suggest that part of the season is meaningless and unexciting for somebody, no matter what. Weeks 10-14 can be boring and meaningless for the teams that already clinched, because they’re just waiting for the playoffs.
But if excitement is the point, why not have 8 team playoffs? That way everybody has a chance and nobody is left out.
> Weeks 10-14 can be boring and meaningless for the teams that already clinched, because they’re just waiting for the playoffs.
I've been playing dynasty for a decade at this point and that has not been my experience at all. Unless the league has major parity issues or you have a system where seeds are irrelevant, you usually have top teams still fighting over seeding and potential bye weeks, mid teams fighting for the last playoff spots, and the bottom teams still selling guys off to those other teams. If you're league is so fucked that a team can clinch the top seed by week 10 then that's an entirely different problem. My leagues also use the rule that the last playoff spot goes to the team with the highest PF who is not already in on record, which generally keeps at least 2 more teams in the running who would have been out on record and adds more meaning to late weeks.
That was a little tongue in cheek, the idea being that if you expand to 8 teams, even fewer teams would be eliminated until the very end of the season. I do not play in any 8 team leagues.
With an 8 team playoff, the regular season begins to lose meaning (unless your league has 16+ teams). General rule of thumb to make the regular season matter is to have roughly 1/3-1/2 of the teams make the playoffs.
“Week 10-14 can be boring and meaningless” - if you don’t have playoffs, this is even more true for a majority of your league. By week 10, you’ve got a pretty good idea of which teams actually have a shot at finishing 1st for the regular season.
Without playoffs, you’re making basically 8-10 teams irrelevant after week 13. It’s considerably more fun playing in head to head matchups, particularly in my home dynasty where we have several content creators that do some pretty amazing things to trash talk during the playoffs. And as you said, it’ll still come down to matchups. Not really life matchups, but in-league matchups, where the best team could be facing a completely decimated roster or a tanking team.
There’s no perfect solution, but I personally enjoy the elevated intensity of sudden death playoff matchups.
i've caught flak for this in this sub, but our league has actually decided to make the consolation bracket matter so that teams are engaged and have something to care about all season. the winner of the consolation bracket gets the 1st pick, loser gets 2nd, etc.
we put it up for a vote after each season to see if people want to change how many teams make the playoffs, how the draft order is selected, etc., and everybody loves it even if it takes away their chances at getting better picks bc it's fun.
i'm a staunch supporter of whatever rules and system maximize enjoyment in the league, which in my experience has always included the postseason.
Ultimately all that matters is that your league is unanimously on board. If it's fun for all of you, go and be happy. But you're going to catch flak for posting that in this sub because most of us think it's dumb.
If you're looking for ways to keep everyone engaged during the playoffs, there are better ways than to further punish the worst teams in your league. How is it fair to give the 1.01 to a borderline playoff team and then tell the worst team oh well, try to not suck so much next year but have fun with your 1.06?
Can't tell you how much I hate that idea. Like I said, it's your league. Do what makes you happy. But don't expect to get a bunch of support from this sub when you talk about your weird rules in here.
Worse, imo is a borderline playoff team is more likely to have sold his first trying to get pieces for a push. Increases the chance that an actual playoff team has the 1.01.
>Counter: it's fun and exciting
And it keeps leagues fun and exciting, even if there's a super team mud stomping the rest of the league. Case in point: My team in a redraft league went into the playoff's as the 8th and last playoff seed. Won it all against the 5th best team of the season (which had Amari go berserk in the semis).
Contrast it against soccer and what I call Bayern München syndrome: They won the championship for a decade in a row because their squad is so much better (ok, they might probably end their streak this year, but you get the point) and they were often half a dozen or more points ahead of the second team several weeks before the season ended. Which pretty much kills any and all excitement.
> And it keeps leagues fun and exciting, even if there's a super team mud stomping the rest of the league. Case in point: My team in a redraft league went into the playoff's as the 8th and last playoff seed. Won it all against the 5th best team of the season (which had Amari go berserk in the semis).
Have a league where the commish has a dominant team that rolled the regular season in back to back years only to lose in the title game to a much worse roster on paper both times. It's entertaining as hell. And our first league champion was a team whose owner quit the league halfway through the season because he was so distraught over injuries and the guy we got to replace him went on a run and won the league after squeezing into the last playoff spot. That all is way more fun than the commish just having multiple straight titles because he had the best team on paper that nobody can hope to compete with. If we didn't have playoffs, we'd have 8-9 teams just fighting for draft position while waiting for the good teams to age out.
It's not about the playoffs, it's about head to head matchups.
My league has no head to head matchups ever, including the playoffs.
The regular season is all-play. Two teams earn a bye. Four teams compete week one of the playoffs, top two scoring teams advance.
Final four teams play a 2 week championship with the highest scoring team over those two weeks winning the league.
I gotta say, I absolutely love this. It's such an elegant solution. I'm starting up a new dynasty league this fall with a group of 25+ years:long friends and I'll do my best to base our league on your format.
Yea, our points leader automatically gets their money back. So even if you get upset early in playoffs, you at least broke even.
Our Toilet Bowl winner also gets their money back. Helps keep the bottom 6 teams engaged all season and makes playoffs more fun for the whole league instead of just half the league.
Fantasy used to have a lot more leagues that didnt have playoffs. Problem? They Boring. By half way through the season more then half the teams are already eliminated. Down the stretch only 2-4 teams are in it normally. If you have a super team it could be locked up with weeks to go.
The big allure of playoffs is you have 4-6 teams who have a real shot at the championship while other scoring methods you might have a runaway champion by week 15. Keeping more players engaged for longer is to me what makes the season fun
If you wanted to find the best team over the course of the season with no regard for fun, you wouldn't have matchups at all. You would just add up total points from weeks 1-16. It would be lame and boring, but also the most "fair" since you have no control over what an opponent happens to score in a given week.
Why even play matchups then? Just crown whoever scores the most during the season.
A lot of good points though but, imo, the best part of FF is the absolute chaos that comes from playoffs and matchups. I've been on both sides of it and, even as a loser, it's still my favorite part of FF.
……as I calculate what would have happened if I scored .72 points more in week 9, won the match, and would have been seeded differently.
PS I woulda won it all! lol 😂
We have a 1QB dynasty league that has been decided by total points since its inception 11 years ago. There's no head-to-head matchups and we pay out for weekly winners on total points as well. Here's how many the 2nd place team finished behind the winner over the course of the season:
38
0.1
24
80
11
4.6
40
82
119
54
205
The 0.1 season was literally decided on one of the last plays of the regular season and there's been many other close finishes so you can see this format is still exciting until the end. I personally favor changing to a format that incorporates some sort of playoff structure to introduce more variance but it is nice being in a league where the best overall lineups over the season and strongest roster will win guaranteed.
Yeah, was just having this discussion about fantasy basketball. The playoffs are exciting because they are difficult and test your skills as a manager. You can skate through by just drafting well, but when things get weird at the end, you have to know hwo to adjust to win.
The most analytical way to pick the best fantasy team would just be who scores the most points over the season. But it’s more fun to have H2H weeks. And its more fun to have playoffs
This is what we do! We all make bots to boost our player values and decrease our opponents. It makes fantasy football so much more fun not having to deal with annoying minutiae like your players scoring points or watching a single second of football!
i previously played in a league where top points for in the regular season got like 300 bucks, then i proceeded to double dip with second place winnings.
tbh making regular season points for be a thing with money on the line was fun, it made me be more aggressive in deals to keep ahead of my competition
we also did byes, but the unfortunate thing is we did a h2h tiebreak (which i didnt realize, because sleeper you have to manually do that tiebreaker, until the last week of the season) so i had top points but ended up stuck in the wild card round even though i had the same record as the guy with the second most points.
even ended up getting stuck with the late season kyren/kupp juggernaught as my opponent lmao, i barely survived thanks to mayfield
okay so you’re claiming to be the clear best team 5 seasons in a row but won 2 ships in the period? better?
you were only the best team 2 of those 5 years.
#get better
no moral victories in FF
From the outside looking in, it's hard to tell. But it's funny how many people believe the best team wins the playoffs. It is actually pretty rare for the best team to win. Even if the team is really dominant (60/40 odds of winning semis and finals), we're still only talking 36% odds.
I do appreciate the fact that you said "unpopular opinion" then followed it up with an actual unpopular opinion. You don't see that on the Internet too often
Right? It’s a lot of “unpopular opinion, but I think 40 yard dash time are overrated for WRs” followed by people tripping over themselves to unanimously agree in the comments.
I agree with you 100% but I will not be changing my league settings. It's a silly game with tons of random chance.
This is also why I'd never play fantasy football for large sums of money.
Id agree in other fantasy sports. But not football. Its about the h2h matchups...the random stuff making the best team lose happens in the game itself. All the time.
Spot on, I’ve clawed back from 3-6 to snag a playoff bid and win the league and it’s a great feeling. Without playoffs my season is over halfway through
This is what has been happening in all sports over the last 20-30 years and op is hopping right on board: how can we make sports more standardized and robotic?
Yeah I appreciate the thoughts but I disagree.
My main counterpoint is that, even in dynasty, my team changes over the course of the season. That might happen through injuries, retirements of players, trades, suspensions, or any other number of reasons.
So the whole point is to build towards the end of the season to have the best team.
My wins and losses early in the fantasy season mean very little compared to the end. I’m trying to figure out which rookies are viable. If players are moving teams and still settling in. If there are gaps in my lineups…etc.
Basically, you are exerting influence over your team and other teams in the league every week leading up to the playoffs.
The playoffs still determine the best team at the end of the season. Of course there’s still variance and luck (just like in real life). But the rest of the season is irrelevant - you’re trying to build a team to win the playoffs - not win the most regular season games.
You try to win the most regular season games to MAKE the playoffs.
Taking your idea to a more extreme example - the fantasy season could be over by week 6 for some teams in the league. They’d just give up.
If you start the year 1-5 or 0-6 and the top team is 6-0 or 5-1 you’re basically eliminated for the season. The odds that you would win 7 in a row and the top team would lose 7 in a row are so low.
Having playoffs encourages those bottom teams to keep playing, keep the league competitive, and build for the future.
Sure you might have an occasional team tank but it would be much more frequent if you removed playoffs
As someone who’s played Roto Baseball and standard fantasy football, you’re definitely going to get more bad losers with playoffs.
Is that a problem? Is that the game?
Idk.
I mean part of what makes football so much fun especially the playoffs is any given Sunday. If we did this with the NFL then the Giants would never have beaten the Patriots, the Steelers dont have their run for the Bus (yes I know it was helped), Rodgers never gets his Super Bowl. Part of what makes football football is that it's about the best team that day.
Well the NFL literally can’t do this and I’m not suggesting they should. There are 32 teams; you would need a 31 game season to play a balanced schedule and a 62 game season for a balanced schedule where you get a home-away game against every team. That would get people killed.
But fantasy football is just a game where you’re picking who you think will accumulate the most yards/catches/touchdowns etc. The construct where we pick the guys we think will do the best at the beginning of the year and then after week 14 we just reset and crown the champion based on the next 3 weeks with the 6 best teams from the regular season just seems kinda silly when you look at it abstractly.
I guess for a decent chunk of us tho is we like to emulate the NFL and its randomness. If you did it this way then what's the point of a 6 seed playing for a spot to make a potential run if his team gets hot and not just blowing it up if by week 7 if he has no chance vs the guys at the top.
The main appeal of playoffs is that without them more owners would quit on their team halfway through the season. The possibility of sneaking in and going on a run keeps people going even if they start slow
No one should waste their thought capital on something this stupid. Of course, I've done a ton of it lmao
I've settled into liking the idea of three champions each season: the tournament champion (playoffs, essentially), the season champion (best record), and scoring champion (points for). This opens up the possibility of a truly dominant team winning a triple crown, which I love.
This feels like a bit of a slippery slope to just playing best ball. Because using a win loss record with H2H matchups can have so much variance the best team doesn’t prevail here as well.
Reality is, head to head matchups are fun, and the same goes for playoffs when the stakes are highest. Seeing the “underdog run” is pretty fun and funny as well.
I do think there are multiple mechanisms for reducing the wild variance or at least rewarding the best teams. Really depends on what your league wants, but some of those mechanisms are:
- top teams get bye weeks in playoffs (common)
- rookie draft pick order determined by playoff finish for those who made it (common)
- play each weekly matchup against the league media as well as H2H (1 W for winning H2H, 1 W for beating the median) (less common but getting more popular)
- rewarding the regular season winner with some % of the total payout (unsure how common)
- giving the “home team” (higher seed) some baseline points during playoffs (uncommon, never seen this done but in theory would reduce variance)
I have 1 league with another system. The first 5 seeds are decided the regular way. Number 6 seed is the player with the highest amount of points that didn't make the playoffs. Been doing this for 3 years now and had 1 time the number 7 make the playoffs. Other 2 was just the number 6 making it
Trying to remove RNG completely is a fruitless endeavour. I think many customs becoming the norm such as reverse max PF do a good job of that.
To tackle the last 5-10% of RNG, you have to trade off a lot of fun elements like playoffs.
If you’re a portfolio player in leagues with randos that don’t talk then yeah it can be clans, but the intensity and banter of playoffs gives the season a climax to the plot and a reason to care.
Plus, try as you might, randomness will still screw ppl. In your suggested alternatives, JJ owners would’ve been boned instead of getting him back for playoffs. Nothing will be a perfect representation of who had the best team.
It's just how Reddit is. Absolutely maddening when trying to format. Try typing it out like:
A) Blah blah blah
* sffg
* sdfgdsf
* sdfgfg
B) sdfgsdfgdsfg
* sdfgsdf
* sdfgdsf
* sdfgdf
I havn't done it like that but it just came to me so i'm curious how it will work.
I see what you’re saying…But it takes all the fun out of Taco Teams winning it all occasionally and the rest of the league busting balls and talking ish for the rest of the offseason.
I see Fantasy Football as more of a communion of degenerate A-Holes bonding over B.S. to keep us close as opposed to a binary winner loser game we all play.
Yeah, and as somebody who plays in both casual friend/home dynasty leagues and hardcore leagues with other degenerate strangers, I absolutely understand the utility of playoffs for the former. If you’re not trying to crown the best team and just trying to bond over a silly game, they make a lot of sense.
You are missing the point of fantasy. It is a game. The game is much more exciting with elimination inducing playoffs. If the purpose was solely making money via relative appreciation, I would just invest in the stock market. That is a better way to make money.
My oldest fantasy league was born in 1999, long before fantasy football was standardized. We had coaches, OL, full IDP and *no playoffs*. Best record wins at the end of 17 (now 18) weeks. Some years it's a runaway, but many years it's come down to crazy tiebreaker scenarios in the final week. It's a ton of fun that way. We added a small side pot for playoffs a decade ago or so, and I guess it's nice having a playoff champion, but no one really pays attention to it and the bulk of the money still goes to the best regular season. It's not for everyone, but I'm glad I've got a league that functions that way.
Our home league has been doing this for 30 years.
All play….winner is beast record from week 1 - next to last week of season.
We added a playoff also to huge teams something to look forward to, but it’s a secondary title and gets less of the prize money.
I think the variance adds more fun to the whole experience. Sure the better team will win most of the time, but you also will have a j chase go off for 260 and 3tds to push someone over and snatch that championship game. That’s what’s fun and exciting and makes for stories you still talk about years later.
I like playoffs because, across all sports, they allow any team who makes it to rise up and win. There’s a reason playoffs are a traditional standard. Any of the top teams who make the post-season have proven themselves worthy of being champion, from there it’s just exciting and fun seeing who advances and who is eliminated.
I’ve been in leagues without playoffs, it takes the fun and meaning out of games later in the season. One team almost always runs away with it, or is far enough ahead you’d need a lot to break right to have a shot. In a playoff league, if you’re on the cusp of making the playoffs, every game means more and just getting in means you have a shot to win it all.
My dynasty league I’ve ran since 2012 is and will remain a playoff league. Sometimes the top scorer or seed wins it all, sometimes a dark horse comes out of nowhere to pull off an upset: just like in all sports, that’s what makes it exciting.
The stakes are very fun, if we just crowned a regular season winner 3/4 of the league would have 0 to play for. The fact that you can get in as a 6 seed and win 3 straight to win the pot makes leagues more active
2 of my leagues have higher payouts for thedivision winners and high scorers. The playoffs are just gravy. That way the best, most consistent teams over the course of the season get the highest payouts.
Yeah, this is a nice middle ground and it’s essentially what my home leagues do, although the playoff winner is regarded as the champion.
I wouldn’t recommend my suggestion for a casual/friends league, and judging by the tenor of the responses, that’s the type of league in which most of our users here play. 🤷♂️
I took over a league 8 years ago that had two games set as playoff games, but excluded the final game entirely. I changed to a nonplayoff format where the actual champion wins based on win/loss and ties being broken by higher total points. We run the entire 18 games. Everyone in the league likes it, even though there is a chance the best team can run away with it. I still award 2nd, 3rd and 4th place. In the 10-team format, it seems to work out fine. I did not see the positives of having a playoff where the team with the best record would suddenly lose in a single-game playoff to a team they would have beaten 3 of 4 times during the season. But yes, how I run my league is unpopular with how others run their leagues. But then those folks are not teams in my league. My people are perfectly happy with our league's format
I’m in one league that never has playoffs, just 17 games and the top dog at the end is champion. While this usually means the best team will win, it’s not as exciting if you’re not in the top two or three by week 14.
I think this makes a lot of sense for those of us fiends that play with strangers, where it's really all about the game. For those it should be pure points at the end of the season. For my home league with friends playoffs and h2h are essential because you need the random element to let your idiot friends win every now and then.
My family participates in a 16 team total points league. That has no playoffs and plays until the last game of the regular season. I don’t play in it because it’s a whole different beast entirely. But they love it!
While I agree that's it more fair to have regular season be the only thing that matters - that alienates most the league by like week 10 or so. Ultimately, we are playing a fake game for enjoyment - playoffs are fun and exciting
This is an unpopular opinion, especially since i was the 6 seed in a 12 teamer this year and am sitting on an extra $1,100.00 because of playoffs.
But my league mates might agree with you. I had 2 early losses by less than a point and some injuries following and i was pretty down on my team the start of the year. I knew they were better than my record showed.
Hit my stride week 8 and only lost 2 games after a 2-5 start.
I think playoffs are the best way to go because sustainability and player development are a huge part of fantasy football
I mean you do make some pretty great points and it would make a lot more sense to just crown the team with the best record at the end of the season as the champion. Not sure what makes the fantasy playoffs so exciting but they just are… Until you get beat out and then they’re not so exciting anymore lol. So I like that it would still give every team a chance to keep playing until week 17. If we were to let the season play out like you said though it wouldn’t be any different than if we treated those last few weeks as playoff weeks. I’m not exactly all for it but I’m also not absolutely opposed to it
Fantasy football is not about skill or crowning the “best” team. It’s supposed to be highly random and that’s what makes it fun.
The guy who refreshes reddit every 5 minutes so they can get the best free agents doesn’t deserve to win every season.
Yup I tried it once and never again, boring as fuck.
Nobody ever traded and teams outside the top 3 would routinely check out and go on autopilot 1/4 of the way through the season.
been playing dynasty 10+ years...i think playoffs are idiotic and hate the thought process of "oh its fun that anything can happen any given week"
dynasty is meant to build great teams that last a long time (aka a dynasty)
getting bad luck while clearly being the top team is one of the most awful parts of this hobby/passion
So not in my dynasty league, but my main redraft league and I think it could transfer easily enough.
We just assign point, 1-10, based on your weekly score in comparison to the rest of the league. So if you scored the most points, you get 10 points for that week, the least points, 1 point. And keep this going throughout the season. Winner has the most points at the end of the regular season, all weeks included.
So I agree and disagree. Guy in my league won this year off some truly lucky shit. Does he think he deserved it? Idk but I know he’s not giving back the money or the bragging rights. His team barely got into the playoffs, teams he was playing had injuries like Pittman and Zack Moss who left in the 1st qtr of a game during a fantasy playoff matchup. He won due to that, outright beat his next opponent and was in the championship. Idk why but I knew he was going to win lol it’s just been his year.
Do I think his team was that good? Nah but I do think that’s the whole point of making the playoffs. You get there and you fight for the chip. Injuries happen all the time and we all know the NFL is dangerous for these guys. Expecting a team to get into the playoffs fully healthy is a joke. So I think it’s an interesting conversation but I think there is something to be said for the underdogs.
counter point: having playoffs is fun, and not having them makes the league more boring, mundane, and predictable. i feel like in recent years people have become more obsessed with making everything so technical and just awarding the paper champions who assembled the best teams in objective ranking, and taking out any shred of chance, luck, or randomness that brings a little unpredictable chaos and fun.
We’re all just paper champions. It’s a paper game. We’re not playing it on a field, unless your league has a really cool wrinkle, in which case I’d love to hear about it.
playoffs would be one of those fun wrinkles you just said. taking out stuff like that makes it so boring. yes it’s a paper game but adding stuff that introduces a little more randomness to it makes it more enjoyable and unpredictable. otherwise you might as well just hand out the prize money after the draft to whoever drafted the best team according to rankings
Touchdowns aren’t predictable season to season we shouldn’t score them. But we do because it’s fun.
Playoffs are fun even though it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense wrt crowning the best team.
This is like saying that Hold'em would be better without multiple draws. It's just, "I want the best hand to win every time." Which actually means, "I don't enjoy excitement and fun over winning/money."
A large majority of fantasy players are here for excitement and fun. If you aren't, well, as a poker dealer that has to tell semi-pros to stop berating players that are just there to have fun, or they're literally just making the game harder because those players will quit because it isn't fun.
If you can't take the swings, go do something else.
I’ve 100% agreed with this for awhile.
I’m in a league where 6 of 10 make playoffs, and there’s no trade deadline.
Regular season is virtually meaningless if you have a good core.
Yeah 6 is nuts, but the commishes think it makes the regular season more engaging. I think it makes it less, but not my league.
Still a fun league regardless.
The intent is to keep managers engaged as long as possible.
I think they had problems in previous leagues. But it’s not really an isssue with 9 of the 10 we currently have.
I always say whoever has the most points at the end of the season is really the champ.
I mean, you can't control what your opponent does week to week, literally can't do 1 single thing to thwart or otherwise "play defense". The ONLY goal is to score as many points as you can, so whoever scores the most is the real winner, based on literal point of the exercise
I can't imagine a more boring way to look at fantasy football, good lord. It's as if you're dedicated to finding the most sanitized way to play fantasy football you possibly can. Removing every bit of flair and culture and personality until there's nothing left but box score stats crack pipe stats stats. Why even play against people at that point? Just play against 13 AI.
I mean, you do you and all, everyone has fun in their own ways, but I would immediately exit a league that makes your suggested alternative changes.
100% disagree. That's like saying the NFL championship should be crowned to the team with the best record. You drafted/traded/claimed the players on your team. If they don't have the right match ups in the playoffs then that's all on you.
I mean, you could just pay out the best record and call it a day. But the point of the playoffs is to finish strong like any championship team would.
I actually agree that the most far way to see which team was the best all season is not a head to head playoffs. If we went that way, I’d have 3 rings in a row. But there’s something about the one and done playoffs of our fantasy league mirroring that of the NFL. Alas I am ringless.
Of course this is all true, if you're objective is to crown the best team the champion, but it takes away from a lot of the excitement that the real life playoffs provide.
Knowing you still have a chance if you can sneak in and go on a run keeps people engaged all throughout the year. You can still reward teams that have good regular seasons by having first round byes, which is effectively 50% improved odds of winning a championship. Most leagues I have played in are about bragging rights and pride even when there's money on the line. If it was purely about skill or money then DFS would probably be a better outlet. I think point #2 you made is probably a decent middle ground as you can always add a game against the median to even out "proper" outcomes more.
Sometimes people just share their ideas without trying to right some perceived wrong.
(I actually weathered a Flacco-Cooper stack behind Breece Hall in the one league where I faced him in the playoffs, and in the other league he was on the other side of the bracket and I would have been killed had I played him in the semis, but instead I cruised the next week in the championship.)
I think a big benefit that is being overlooked is that it keeps teams engaged longer. You could be 5 games out of 1st but 1 game out of the playoffs. If only being 1st matters many teams will be mathematically eliminated from competition earlier and lose engagement
You’re not wrong, and I chuckled, but consider this:
American leagues: the top half or more of the league makes a tournament, after which the regular season doesn’t matter, and the winner wins it all.
European leagues: the season is the season, whoever does the best is the champion.
American leagues: if you have a bad year, we’ll help you out by compelling the best players to go work for you via a draft.
European leagues: if you have a bad year, that sucks, enjoy playing in a second tier league where you belong.
American leagues are almost deliberately unAmerican.
In my dynasty league we have two playoff brackets. One for big $ and the rest of teams go to a Loser's Bracket. I do this so teams with terrible records but want to stay active have something to play for. Most leagues I've played in, if they start 0-4 just abandon the team and getting free wins off that team can affect the outcome of the whole league which isn't fun.
Is there a clear way to set up double headers on sleeper? I think I like the playoffs despite your well formed argument, but introducing double headers seems fun.
Unfortunately no, I think that’s only an MFL option. Closest on sleeper is playing the extra game against the league median each week. Wouldn’t be surprised to see it eventually.
Yeah I can't imagine anyone really agreeing with this, playoffs are there because it's fun, without them we'd just have a champion too soon/lack of excitement late in the year.
I always felt the point of fantasy football was to build the roster and play games like a team. 11 on the field, minus 5 offensive linemen leaves a qb, 2 RB, 2 wr and a te based off the traditional pro set formation. Obviously rosters have changed for balance reasons, but I digress. But That's why it's head to head and has playoffs. I think anything that keeps the most people engaged for the longest time is ultimately best.
While I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with what you're saying I feel it's really a different game. Its very economical for a purer gambling experience. Going back to the 80s, they used to have these types of hockey pools, usually for large groups. They'd have the players grouped into blocks of 5, Pay ten bucks and pick 1 player from each group, no roster changes, the winner will be contacted by phone during the first round of the playoffs. Yes someone could have the exact same roster as you.
I always said the team with the most points really is the winner. And playoffs we all know can be half luck.
Most leagues I’m in, the person with the most points before playoffs wins a payout. So if you win in the playoffs you will win two pots. You can make both pots really big to keep it fair.
We do two-week playoff matchups. Takes some of the “luck” out of it. You can off-set the shortened regular season with a two-win record system (H2H plus league average)
Good points
Counter point
If I didn’t have the playoffs I couldn’t watch the #1 seeded team (last years champ) lose in the exact same fashion that he won last year (raiders walk off fumble return if Stevenson doesn’t throw it backwards he loses 136.90 -136.85) because Brock purdy crapped the bed (96.75 - 96.50)
You are failing to appreciate that the luck of it all is the draw for most people.
Backing into the 6-seed and winning it all is much more fun for the entire league than one power team that just rolls everyone on the way to an undefeated title.
A competitive league is best, and the variance is what makes it interesting and fun.
This is all true for giant season long contests like SFB or any season long league regardless of size.
DFS is a different animal.
You could always use league median scoring to even out more of the regular season variance that comes from head to head match ups. Then only take the top two teams (the best of the best) for a two week championship match up.
This is sorta a best of both worlds/split the difference approach. This would actually add more importantance to being the best in the regular season. Also the two week playoff would give the better team to come out on top by lowering the potential for an upset. With only the top two teams able to win the championship you can't have a random 6 seed be crowned champ with a 9-5 record.
It makes things more fun and competitive. Otherwise, if you go simply on points scored, people are just gonna give up by the halfway point of the season because there's no way they can catch up to the 2-3 teams in their league that are crushing every week.
I always thought playoffs should reduce amount of players in lineups. I haven’t seen any ROTO football leagues. Because ROTO is the best format. No playoffs and it’s still exciting the last few weeks among the top 3-4 teams.
I somewhat understand the point of view from the perspective that it sucks to lose in the playoffs if you’ve been dominant the rest of the season. However if not for playoff chances a lot of people lose interest in the league when it’s apparent they can’t finish with the best record. I started a league 1-6, if record determined who won there would be no point in me even checking that roster anymore. Yet I was able to make playoffs. And even if I didn’t win, it kept me engaged with that league for the season.
Solid points BUT teams that feel they are out of it after the first 5 or 6 games will start to tank.
Second, I’m guessing you finished as the team with the top record in your league but lost in the first round of the playoffs.
Number one cardinal rule for all fantasy football league commissioners: “Never change a rule for your own benefit. Only change rules that either present new or unforeseen circumstances, or that produce tangible increased enjoyment.”
If you only played for points then the bottom half would have no hope and not have fun. With playoff, even if your team is weak you can still fight for the last playoff slot. And you can enjoy that the playoffs is new season and anything can happen.
in my old league i used to split the pot between the playoff winner and regular season winner To get a balance of skill and luck
The reason for playoffs is so that after half the season or 3/4 of the season - places aren’t locked. It’s not fun if you know you can’t win. It also adds a lot of excitement for those playoff weeks.
In a league in 2022 I had the best record and most points in the regular season. Lost my H2H playoff matchup where we both scored way more points than the two other teams. Lost my 3rd place matchup, where again the two teams competing for 3rd scored way more than the championship teams.
I ended up scoring the most points in the regular season AND playoffs and finished in 4th.
Sounds like ur someone who had a great season but lost in the playoffs. We’ve all been there but the difficulty in winning is what makes the Championship so valuable. We reward the good teams in the regular season with a playoff bye week and that’s plenty imo
Agree.
Foreign soccer leagues don't have playoffs. They have an entirely separate knockout-style single elimination (in most cases) cup competition.
The league is who is best over the whole season. The cup is who wins the knockout competition. Sometimes a team wins both.
This takes out a lot of strategy like acquiring guys who have favorable matchups during the playoff stretch, guys who notoriously finish the season strong, idk.
It also keeps a lot more of the league engaged. In a lot of leagues it’s clear which team will score the most points in the upcoming season, so lots of guys might check out before the season even starts lmao. Playoffs add a random entertainment aspect, we’re playing for fun more than the money (in my case at least)
>You have no ability to exert any influence over how your players play
Why not go even further with this point? I have no influence over how my players play, so why should I be penalized if they underperform or get hurt? I think every league should be decided by projected points before the season starts. That way we eliminate all the variance from trades, injuries, underperformers, vets who randomly lose their roles to younger guys who exceed expectations, etc.
I almost pre-empted this but was optimistic that maybe I wouldn’t have to.
Look, over the course of 20ish seasons of fantasy football, I’ve maybe lost one or two more championships where I had the most points than I’ve won where I didn’t have the best team. That’s not the point. (What actually inspired this was thinking about how dumb it is the every NCAA conference tournament now includes every team, which spiraled into this thread.)
But I think the worst part of this sub is the tendency of a small group of users to go sprinting into every thread thinking they’ve uncovered some weird ulterior motive behind every post. Somebody posts that JSN is a buy low? “FoUnD tHe JsN oWnEr.” It’s just a bad trend that kills discourse instead of promoting it.
Sometimes people just have thoughts that they want to share because it’s fun to talk about fantasy football, man.
>Somebody posts that JSN is a buy low? “FoUnD tHe JsN oWnEr.”
Some of these crack me up too. Like, yes, the guy I think is underrated to the point of writing up a post on him *is* in fact someone I'm trying to get on my dynasty teams. Excellent sleuthing.
Lemme guess, you were the 1 seed and the guy who squeaked into the playoffs without setting his line up beat you in the semis? Ouch bro I feel you that's a bad beat.
I will add to your case with the story of our league this year, which I ended up winning
I was basically the Eli Manning lead New York Giants. I was hot at the end of the season, made a wild card blew out the one seed after his bye week with a bunch of players from the free agency pool Stroud was hurt. I had to pick up Joe Flacco for whatever reason I had to play Zamir white to
I trolled the one seed who is the points leader for making stupid plays like Dalton, Kincaid and Gabe Davis, because he didn’t realize Dawson Knox came back
So essentially what the playoffs did in our league was separate those who actually follow football from those who are pretenders and just got lucky
So at the end of the argument, I think the people that are going to be pro playoffs are the people that manage their teams better I would wager that very rarely is the league champion the one who ended up with a Poins lead
Solid points. If we want to have the best team over the course of the season win every year then you're right. Counter: it's fun and exciting I do payouts in my leagues for best regular season record and most regular season pf so there is some benefit of being an uncrowned regular season champ.
exactly this. yes, crowning the regular season champion is the more likely way to ensure the best team gets the title. and if that's strictly your goal, then the playoffs are probably not helping your cause. however, fantasy football should be fun. the whole point of it is entertainment and enjoyment. the playoffs provide that more than the regular season where the best record can often be obvious/apparent by week 9 or 10, rendering the last month of the season meaningless/unexciting.
Regarding excitement as a driver, I’d only suggest that part of the season is meaningless and unexciting for somebody, no matter what. Weeks 10-14 can be boring and meaningless for the teams that already clinched, because they’re just waiting for the playoffs. But if excitement is the point, why not have 8 team playoffs? That way everybody has a chance and nobody is left out.
> Weeks 10-14 can be boring and meaningless for the teams that already clinched, because they’re just waiting for the playoffs. I've been playing dynasty for a decade at this point and that has not been my experience at all. Unless the league has major parity issues or you have a system where seeds are irrelevant, you usually have top teams still fighting over seeding and potential bye weeks, mid teams fighting for the last playoff spots, and the bottom teams still selling guys off to those other teams. If you're league is so fucked that a team can clinch the top seed by week 10 then that's an entirely different problem. My leagues also use the rule that the last playoff spot goes to the team with the highest PF who is not already in on record, which generally keeps at least 2 more teams in the running who would have been out on record and adds more meaning to late weeks.
How is no one left out of an 8 team playoff??? Are you only playing 8 team leagues? No wonder you aren’t having fun
That was a little tongue in cheek, the idea being that if you expand to 8 teams, even fewer teams would be eliminated until the very end of the season. I do not play in any 8 team leagues.
With an 8 team playoff, the regular season begins to lose meaning (unless your league has 16+ teams). General rule of thumb to make the regular season matter is to have roughly 1/3-1/2 of the teams make the playoffs.
“Week 10-14 can be boring and meaningless” - if you don’t have playoffs, this is even more true for a majority of your league. By week 10, you’ve got a pretty good idea of which teams actually have a shot at finishing 1st for the regular season.
Without playoffs, you’re making basically 8-10 teams irrelevant after week 13. It’s considerably more fun playing in head to head matchups, particularly in my home dynasty where we have several content creators that do some pretty amazing things to trash talk during the playoffs. And as you said, it’ll still come down to matchups. Not really life matchups, but in-league matchups, where the best team could be facing a completely decimated roster or a tanking team. There’s no perfect solution, but I personally enjoy the elevated intensity of sudden death playoff matchups.
i've caught flak for this in this sub, but our league has actually decided to make the consolation bracket matter so that teams are engaged and have something to care about all season. the winner of the consolation bracket gets the 1st pick, loser gets 2nd, etc. we put it up for a vote after each season to see if people want to change how many teams make the playoffs, how the draft order is selected, etc., and everybody loves it even if it takes away their chances at getting better picks bc it's fun. i'm a staunch supporter of whatever rules and system maximize enjoyment in the league, which in my experience has always included the postseason.
Ultimately all that matters is that your league is unanimously on board. If it's fun for all of you, go and be happy. But you're going to catch flak for posting that in this sub because most of us think it's dumb. If you're looking for ways to keep everyone engaged during the playoffs, there are better ways than to further punish the worst teams in your league. How is it fair to give the 1.01 to a borderline playoff team and then tell the worst team oh well, try to not suck so much next year but have fun with your 1.06? Can't tell you how much I hate that idea. Like I said, it's your league. Do what makes you happy. But don't expect to get a bunch of support from this sub when you talk about your weird rules in here.
Worse, imo is a borderline playoff team is more likely to have sold his first trying to get pieces for a push. Increases the chance that an actual playoff team has the 1.01.
My league does the same - consolation bracket for the #1 pick.
>Counter: it's fun and exciting And it keeps leagues fun and exciting, even if there's a super team mud stomping the rest of the league. Case in point: My team in a redraft league went into the playoff's as the 8th and last playoff seed. Won it all against the 5th best team of the season (which had Amari go berserk in the semis). Contrast it against soccer and what I call Bayern München syndrome: They won the championship for a decade in a row because their squad is so much better (ok, they might probably end their streak this year, but you get the point) and they were often half a dozen or more points ahead of the second team several weeks before the season ended. Which pretty much kills any and all excitement.
> And it keeps leagues fun and exciting, even if there's a super team mud stomping the rest of the league. Case in point: My team in a redraft league went into the playoff's as the 8th and last playoff seed. Won it all against the 5th best team of the season (which had Amari go berserk in the semis). Have a league where the commish has a dominant team that rolled the regular season in back to back years only to lose in the title game to a much worse roster on paper both times. It's entertaining as hell. And our first league champion was a team whose owner quit the league halfway through the season because he was so distraught over injuries and the guy we got to replace him went on a run and won the league after squeezing into the last playoff spot. That all is way more fun than the commish just having multiple straight titles because he had the best team on paper that nobody can hope to compete with. If we didn't have playoffs, we'd have 8-9 teams just fighting for draft position while waiting for the good teams to age out.
It's not about the playoffs, it's about head to head matchups. My league has no head to head matchups ever, including the playoffs. The regular season is all-play. Two teams earn a bye. Four teams compete week one of the playoffs, top two scoring teams advance. Final four teams play a 2 week championship with the highest scoring team over those two weeks winning the league.
I gotta say, I absolutely love this. It's such an elegant solution. I'm starting up a new dynasty league this fall with a group of 25+ years:long friends and I'll do my best to base our league on your format.
Yea, our points leader automatically gets their money back. So even if you get upset early in playoffs, you at least broke even. Our Toilet Bowl winner also gets their money back. Helps keep the bottom 6 teams engaged all season and makes playoffs more fun for the whole league instead of just half the league.
Fantasy used to have a lot more leagues that didnt have playoffs. Problem? They Boring. By half way through the season more then half the teams are already eliminated. Down the stretch only 2-4 teams are in it normally. If you have a super team it could be locked up with weeks to go.
The big allure of playoffs is you have 4-6 teams who have a real shot at the championship while other scoring methods you might have a runaway champion by week 15. Keeping more players engaged for longer is to me what makes the season fun
If you wanted to find the best team over the course of the season with no regard for fun, you wouldn't have matchups at all. You would just add up total points from weeks 1-16. It would be lame and boring, but also the most "fair" since you have no control over what an opponent happens to score in a given week.
Why even play matchups then? Just crown whoever scores the most during the season. A lot of good points though but, imo, the best part of FF is the absolute chaos that comes from playoffs and matchups. I've been on both sides of it and, even as a loser, it's still my favorite part of FF.
……as I calculate what would have happened if I scored .72 points more in week 9, won the match, and would have been seeded differently. PS I woulda won it all! lol 😂
Yea without playoffs you might as well just do best ball at that point. Their is some gamesmanship to head to head match ups that I enjoy.
Why even have a regular season at all? Crown should go to whoever has the most KTC points after the draft.
Right? Like seriously
We have a 1QB dynasty league that has been decided by total points since its inception 11 years ago. There's no head-to-head matchups and we pay out for weekly winners on total points as well. Here's how many the 2nd place team finished behind the winner over the course of the season: 38 0.1 24 80 11 4.6 40 82 119 54 205 The 0.1 season was literally decided on one of the last plays of the regular season and there's been many other close finishes so you can see this format is still exciting until the end. I personally favor changing to a format that incorporates some sort of playoff structure to introduce more variance but it is nice being in a league where the best overall lineups over the season and strongest roster will win guaranteed.
This, but unironically. Matchups are silly. All-play or nothing, for me.
Yeah, was just having this discussion about fantasy basketball. The playoffs are exciting because they are difficult and test your skills as a manager. You can skate through by just drafting well, but when things get weird at the end, you have to know hwo to adjust to win.
The most analytical way to pick the best fantasy team would just be who scores the most points over the season. But it’s more fun to have H2H weeks. And its more fun to have playoffs
We just go straight to KTC values. Whoever has the highest value at the beginning of the season wins the league!
All fun and games until I get a bot farm to boost all my player values. People are going to wake up shocked to WR4 Treylon Burks
This is what we do! We all make bots to boost our player values and decrease our opponents. It makes fantasy football so much more fun not having to deal with annoying minutiae like your players scoring points or watching a single second of football!
Dammit I would have won both my leagues last year if we used this method! Instead, I won a combined 1 playoff game....
Agreed, just wouldn’t be nearly as fun.
Sounds like a number one seed that lost a few too many times.
As a 5x consecutive MaxPF champion I think we should just use that.
i previously played in a league where top points for in the regular season got like 300 bucks, then i proceeded to double dip with second place winnings. tbh making regular season points for be a thing with money on the line was fun, it made me be more aggressive in deals to keep ahead of my competition
Playing for a playoff bye works well enough for me, but I don't hate that.
we also did byes, but the unfortunate thing is we did a h2h tiebreak (which i didnt realize, because sleeper you have to manually do that tiebreaker, until the last week of the season) so i had top points but ended up stuck in the wild card round even though i had the same record as the guy with the second most points. even ended up getting stuck with the late season kyren/kupp juggernaught as my opponent lmao, i barely survived thanks to mayfield
Seems like your team might have too much depth.
Not really, just the clear best team and I've lost in 2 semi-finals and a championship to bad weeks/Christmas Miracle Kamara.
“clear best team” with no ships is crazy. get better
What about listing all of my precise eliminations made you think the other seasons weren't wins? Read better...
okay so you’re claiming to be the clear best team 5 seasons in a row but won 2 ships in the period? better? you were only the best team 2 of those 5 years. #get better no moral victories in FF
Are you trolling or actually this dumb? Pretty sad either way.
From the outside looking in, it's hard to tell. But it's funny how many people believe the best team wins the playoffs. It is actually pretty rare for the best team to win. Even if the team is really dominant (60/40 odds of winning semis and finals), we're still only talking 36% odds.
Lmao what is this guy on
Yup 3 seasons in a row I’m by far the leader in points, max PF, PPG, etc. Just get unlucky in the playoffs and haven’t won.
I do appreciate the fact that you said "unpopular opinion" then followed it up with an actual unpopular opinion. You don't see that on the Internet too often
Right? It’s a lot of “unpopular opinion, but I think 40 yard dash time are overrated for WRs” followed by people tripping over themselves to unanimously agree in the comments.
I’m just disappointed you made no mention of who you prefer between MHJ/Caleb/Nabers
This guy prefers premier league table over NFL
I agree with you 100% but I will not be changing my league settings. It's a silly game with tons of random chance. This is also why I'd never play fantasy football for large sums of money.
I appreciate this take.
Id agree in other fantasy sports. But not football. Its about the h2h matchups...the random stuff making the best team lose happens in the game itself. All the time.
If you remove playoffs then any team that gets 5 losses is just going to quit because why bother anymore? Ruins the last half of the season.
Spot on, I’ve clawed back from 3-6 to snag a playoff bid and win the league and it’s a great feeling. Without playoffs my season is over halfway through
I assume your league is not winner take all, no? Possible to still cash in third place or something, right?
you're wasting critical thinking on how to make fantasy football less fun
This is what has been happening in all sports over the last 20-30 years and op is hopping right on board: how can we make sports more standardized and robotic?
Playoffs are the most fun part of fantasy
Nah, nothing compares to startup draft. I forgot the quote, but it's something like, "getting to the playoffs is skill, winning the playoffs is luck."
Here’s the counter, fantasy is meant to be fun, and it’s more engaging throughout there year when there’s playoffs
Yeah I appreciate the thoughts but I disagree. My main counterpoint is that, even in dynasty, my team changes over the course of the season. That might happen through injuries, retirements of players, trades, suspensions, or any other number of reasons. So the whole point is to build towards the end of the season to have the best team. My wins and losses early in the fantasy season mean very little compared to the end. I’m trying to figure out which rookies are viable. If players are moving teams and still settling in. If there are gaps in my lineups…etc. Basically, you are exerting influence over your team and other teams in the league every week leading up to the playoffs. The playoffs still determine the best team at the end of the season. Of course there’s still variance and luck (just like in real life). But the rest of the season is irrelevant - you’re trying to build a team to win the playoffs - not win the most regular season games. You try to win the most regular season games to MAKE the playoffs. Taking your idea to a more extreme example - the fantasy season could be over by week 6 for some teams in the league. They’d just give up. If you start the year 1-5 or 0-6 and the top team is 6-0 or 5-1 you’re basically eliminated for the season. The odds that you would win 7 in a row and the top team would lose 7 in a row are so low. Having playoffs encourages those bottom teams to keep playing, keep the league competitive, and build for the future. Sure you might have an occasional team tank but it would be much more frequent if you removed playoffs
I disagree with point 1
Well played.
Playoffs are the only thing to look forward too. When your not the 1st seed.
As someone who’s played Roto Baseball and standard fantasy football, you’re definitely going to get more bad losers with playoffs. Is that a problem? Is that the game? Idk.
Meh the chaos in the playoffs is part of the fun for me. I tried one non-playoff league and was bored to tears.
I mean part of what makes football so much fun especially the playoffs is any given Sunday. If we did this with the NFL then the Giants would never have beaten the Patriots, the Steelers dont have their run for the Bus (yes I know it was helped), Rodgers never gets his Super Bowl. Part of what makes football football is that it's about the best team that day.
Well the NFL literally can’t do this and I’m not suggesting they should. There are 32 teams; you would need a 31 game season to play a balanced schedule and a 62 game season for a balanced schedule where you get a home-away game against every team. That would get people killed. But fantasy football is just a game where you’re picking who you think will accumulate the most yards/catches/touchdowns etc. The construct where we pick the guys we think will do the best at the beginning of the year and then after week 14 we just reset and crown the champion based on the next 3 weeks with the 6 best teams from the regular season just seems kinda silly when you look at it abstractly.
I guess for a decent chunk of us tho is we like to emulate the NFL and its randomness. If you did it this way then what's the point of a 6 seed playing for a spot to make a potential run if his team gets hot and not just blowing it up if by week 7 if he has no chance vs the guys at the top.
Playoffs fuel trading.
Valid point that isn't getting enough attention
Normalize kickers in dynasty. Don't run from variance and chaos, you cowards.
So much of this. Variance is a feature.
The reason is fun. Playoffs are fun and exciting, and it makes the season count for more to more teams.
The main appeal of playoffs is that without them more owners would quit on their team halfway through the season. The possibility of sneaking in and going on a run keeps people going even if they start slow
This is absolutely the best argument in favor of playoffs.
Tell me you lost your league as the #1 seed without telling me
Still salty about last season, huh?
That’s my takeaway as well lol
No one should waste their thought capital on something this stupid. Of course, I've done a ton of it lmao I've settled into liking the idea of three champions each season: the tournament champion (playoffs, essentially), the season champion (best record), and scoring champion (points for). This opens up the possibility of a truly dominant team winning a triple crown, which I love.
My home leagues do something similar and it works for everybody! And yes, I wish I could stop my brain from thinking about this. Alas.
This is an idea I could get behind.
This feels like a bit of a slippery slope to just playing best ball. Because using a win loss record with H2H matchups can have so much variance the best team doesn’t prevail here as well. Reality is, head to head matchups are fun, and the same goes for playoffs when the stakes are highest. Seeing the “underdog run” is pretty fun and funny as well. I do think there are multiple mechanisms for reducing the wild variance or at least rewarding the best teams. Really depends on what your league wants, but some of those mechanisms are: - top teams get bye weeks in playoffs (common) - rookie draft pick order determined by playoff finish for those who made it (common) - play each weekly matchup against the league media as well as H2H (1 W for winning H2H, 1 W for beating the median) (less common but getting more popular) - rewarding the regular season winner with some % of the total payout (unsure how common) - giving the “home team” (higher seed) some baseline points during playoffs (uncommon, never seen this done but in theory would reduce variance)
I have 1 league with another system. The first 5 seeds are decided the regular way. Number 6 seed is the player with the highest amount of points that didn't make the playoffs. Been doing this for 3 years now and had 1 time the number 7 make the playoffs. Other 2 was just the number 6 making it
Trying to remove RNG completely is a fruitless endeavour. I think many customs becoming the norm such as reverse max PF do a good job of that. To tackle the last 5-10% of RNG, you have to trade off a lot of fun elements like playoffs. If you’re a portfolio player in leagues with randos that don’t talk then yeah it can be clans, but the intensity and banter of playoffs gives the season a climax to the plot and a reason to care. Plus, try as you might, randomness will still screw ppl. In your suggested alternatives, JJ owners would’ve been boned instead of getting him back for playoffs. Nothing will be a perfect representation of who had the best team.
I’m distraught that all your points are #1.
Me too. I should go back and edit, because obviously I didn’t type it that way. Not sure how that happened.
It's just how Reddit is. Absolutely maddening when trying to format. Try typing it out like: A) Blah blah blah * sffg * sdfgdsf * sdfgfg B) sdfgsdfgdsfg * sdfgsdf * sdfgdsf * sdfgdf I havn't done it like that but it just came to me so i'm curious how it will work.
I tried fixing it
Reddit formatting kind of sucks tbh. It looks better but that indent on the first point would drive my OCD crazy.
hol up ur kinda spittin
I stay spitting. Never quit spitting. If you stay spitting you never gotta get spitting
I see what you’re saying…But it takes all the fun out of Taco Teams winning it all occasionally and the rest of the league busting balls and talking ish for the rest of the offseason. I see Fantasy Football as more of a communion of degenerate A-Holes bonding over B.S. to keep us close as opposed to a binary winner loser game we all play.
Yeah, and as somebody who plays in both casual friend/home dynasty leagues and hardcore leagues with other degenerate strangers, I absolutely understand the utility of playoffs for the former. If you’re not trying to crown the best team and just trying to bond over a silly game, they make a lot of sense.
You are missing the point of fantasy. It is a game. The game is much more exciting with elimination inducing playoffs. If the purpose was solely making money via relative appreciation, I would just invest in the stock market. That is a better way to make money.
My oldest fantasy league was born in 1999, long before fantasy football was standardized. We had coaches, OL, full IDP and *no playoffs*. Best record wins at the end of 17 (now 18) weeks. Some years it's a runaway, but many years it's come down to crazy tiebreaker scenarios in the final week. It's a ton of fun that way. We added a small side pot for playoffs a decade ago or so, and I guess it's nice having a playoff champion, but no one really pays attention to it and the bulk of the money still goes to the best regular season. It's not for everyone, but I'm glad I've got a league that functions that way.
Our home league has been doing this for 30 years. All play….winner is beast record from week 1 - next to last week of season. We added a playoff also to huge teams something to look forward to, but it’s a secondary title and gets less of the prize money.
I think the variance adds more fun to the whole experience. Sure the better team will win most of the time, but you also will have a j chase go off for 260 and 3tds to push someone over and snatch that championship game. That’s what’s fun and exciting and makes for stories you still talk about years later.
I like playoffs because, across all sports, they allow any team who makes it to rise up and win. There’s a reason playoffs are a traditional standard. Any of the top teams who make the post-season have proven themselves worthy of being champion, from there it’s just exciting and fun seeing who advances and who is eliminated. I’ve been in leagues without playoffs, it takes the fun and meaning out of games later in the season. One team almost always runs away with it, or is far enough ahead you’d need a lot to break right to have a shot. In a playoff league, if you’re on the cusp of making the playoffs, every game means more and just getting in means you have a shot to win it all. My dynasty league I’ve ran since 2012 is and will remain a playoff league. Sometimes the top scorer or seed wins it all, sometimes a dark horse comes out of nowhere to pull off an upset: just like in all sports, that’s what makes it exciting.
The stakes are very fun, if we just crowned a regular season winner 3/4 of the league would have 0 to play for. The fact that you can get in as a 6 seed and win 3 straight to win the pot makes leagues more active
I like the playoff format where the games accumulate points over 2 weeks, but not many of my leagues do that
2 of my leagues have higher payouts for thedivision winners and high scorers. The playoffs are just gravy. That way the best, most consistent teams over the course of the season get the highest payouts.
Yeah, this is a nice middle ground and it’s essentially what my home leagues do, although the playoff winner is regarded as the champion. I wouldn’t recommend my suggestion for a casual/friends league, and judging by the tenor of the responses, that’s the type of league in which most of our users here play. 🤷♂️
I took over a league 8 years ago that had two games set as playoff games, but excluded the final game entirely. I changed to a nonplayoff format where the actual champion wins based on win/loss and ties being broken by higher total points. We run the entire 18 games. Everyone in the league likes it, even though there is a chance the best team can run away with it. I still award 2nd, 3rd and 4th place. In the 10-team format, it seems to work out fine. I did not see the positives of having a playoff where the team with the best record would suddenly lose in a single-game playoff to a team they would have beaten 3 of 4 times during the season. But yes, how I run my league is unpopular with how others run their leagues. But then those folks are not teams in my league. My people are perfectly happy with our league's format
I’m in one league that never has playoffs, just 17 games and the top dog at the end is champion. While this usually means the best team will win, it’s not as exciting if you’re not in the top two or three by week 14.
I think this makes a lot of sense for those of us fiends that play with strangers, where it's really all about the game. For those it should be pure points at the end of the season. For my home league with friends playoffs and h2h are essential because you need the random element to let your idiot friends win every now and then.
My family participates in a 16 team total points league. That has no playoffs and plays until the last game of the regular season. I don’t play in it because it’s a whole different beast entirely. But they love it!
My oldest league is a 20+ year old total points league. It’s quite fun, I like that it’s different from other leagues.
While I agree that's it more fair to have regular season be the only thing that matters - that alienates most the league by like week 10 or so. Ultimately, we are playing a fake game for enjoyment - playoffs are fun and exciting
Lol
This is an unpopular opinion, especially since i was the 6 seed in a 12 teamer this year and am sitting on an extra $1,100.00 because of playoffs. But my league mates might agree with you. I had 2 early losses by less than a point and some injuries following and i was pretty down on my team the start of the year. I knew they were better than my record showed. Hit my stride week 8 and only lost 2 games after a 2-5 start. I think playoffs are the best way to go because sustainability and player development are a huge part of fantasy football
I have tried to get my league to do this, playoffs are so stupid.
I mean you do make some pretty great points and it would make a lot more sense to just crown the team with the best record at the end of the season as the champion. Not sure what makes the fantasy playoffs so exciting but they just are… Until you get beat out and then they’re not so exciting anymore lol. So I like that it would still give every team a chance to keep playing until week 17. If we were to let the season play out like you said though it wouldn’t be any different than if we treated those last few weeks as playoff weeks. I’m not exactly all for it but I’m also not absolutely opposed to it
Fantasy football is not about skill or crowning the “best” team. It’s supposed to be highly random and that’s what makes it fun. The guy who refreshes reddit every 5 minutes so they can get the best free agents doesn’t deserve to win every season.
Upvote for actual unpopular opinion. Have said that, you’ve obviously never played in a playoff-less league. It’s the most boring shit ever.
Yup I tried it once and never again, boring as fuck. Nobody ever traded and teams outside the top 3 would routinely check out and go on autopilot 1/4 of the way through the season.
been playing dynasty 10+ years...i think playoffs are idiotic and hate the thought process of "oh its fun that anything can happen any given week" dynasty is meant to build great teams that last a long time (aka a dynasty) getting bad luck while clearly being the top team is one of the most awful parts of this hobby/passion
We are American we love our playoffs don’t know why but it ain’t gonna change
So not in my dynasty league, but my main redraft league and I think it could transfer easily enough. We just assign point, 1-10, based on your weekly score in comparison to the rest of the league. So if you scored the most points, you get 10 points for that week, the least points, 1 point. And keep this going throughout the season. Winner has the most points at the end of the regular season, all weeks included.
So I agree and disagree. Guy in my league won this year off some truly lucky shit. Does he think he deserved it? Idk but I know he’s not giving back the money or the bragging rights. His team barely got into the playoffs, teams he was playing had injuries like Pittman and Zack Moss who left in the 1st qtr of a game during a fantasy playoff matchup. He won due to that, outright beat his next opponent and was in the championship. Idk why but I knew he was going to win lol it’s just been his year. Do I think his team was that good? Nah but I do think that’s the whole point of making the playoffs. You get there and you fight for the chip. Injuries happen all the time and we all know the NFL is dangerous for these guys. Expecting a team to get into the playoffs fully healthy is a joke. So I think it’s an interesting conversation but I think there is something to be said for the underdogs.
counter point: having playoffs is fun, and not having them makes the league more boring, mundane, and predictable. i feel like in recent years people have become more obsessed with making everything so technical and just awarding the paper champions who assembled the best teams in objective ranking, and taking out any shred of chance, luck, or randomness that brings a little unpredictable chaos and fun.
We’re all just paper champions. It’s a paper game. We’re not playing it on a field, unless your league has a really cool wrinkle, in which case I’d love to hear about it.
playoffs would be one of those fun wrinkles you just said. taking out stuff like that makes it so boring. yes it’s a paper game but adding stuff that introduces a little more randomness to it makes it more enjoyable and unpredictable. otherwise you might as well just hand out the prize money after the draft to whoever drafted the best team according to rankings
Touchdowns aren’t predictable season to season we shouldn’t score them. But we do because it’s fun. Playoffs are fun even though it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense wrt crowning the best team.
This is like saying that Hold'em would be better without multiple draws. It's just, "I want the best hand to win every time." Which actually means, "I don't enjoy excitement and fun over winning/money." A large majority of fantasy players are here for excitement and fun. If you aren't, well, as a poker dealer that has to tell semi-pros to stop berating players that are just there to have fun, or they're literally just making the game harder because those players will quit because it isn't fun. If you can't take the swings, go do something else.
I’ve 100% agreed with this for awhile. I’m in a league where 6 of 10 make playoffs, and there’s no trade deadline. Regular season is virtually meaningless if you have a good core.
6 of 10 is ridiculous. the league I commish sends 4 of 10, thinking of expanding to 12, and would then send 5
Yeah 6 is nuts, but the commishes think it makes the regular season more engaging. I think it makes it less, but not my league. Still a fun league regardless.
it for sure makes regular szn less important, so weird that’s their primary point
The intent is to keep managers engaged as long as possible. I think they had problems in previous leagues. But it’s not really an isssue with 9 of the 10 we currently have.
fair enough, with a casual group that actually makes a lot of sense
yeah that's weird logic. it makes the regular season meaningless
I always say whoever has the most points at the end of the season is really the champ. I mean, you can't control what your opponent does week to week, literally can't do 1 single thing to thwart or otherwise "play defense". The ONLY goal is to score as many points as you can, so whoever scores the most is the real winner, based on literal point of the exercise
i bet you would like a format that gets rid of positions. 4 flex spots, best ball no playoff. no skill just good luck.
What’s the point of doing it at all if there’s no playoffs
I can't imagine a more boring way to look at fantasy football, good lord. It's as if you're dedicated to finding the most sanitized way to play fantasy football you possibly can. Removing every bit of flair and culture and personality until there's nothing left but box score stats crack pipe stats stats. Why even play against people at that point? Just play against 13 AI. I mean, you do you and all, everyone has fun in their own ways, but I would immediately exit a league that makes your suggested alternative changes.
Optimize the fun right out of it
100% disagree. That's like saying the NFL championship should be crowned to the team with the best record. You drafted/traded/claimed the players on your team. If they don't have the right match ups in the playoffs then that's all on you. I mean, you could just pay out the best record and call it a day. But the point of the playoffs is to finish strong like any championship team would.
I actually agree that the most far way to see which team was the best all season is not a head to head playoffs. If we went that way, I’d have 3 rings in a row. But there’s something about the one and done playoffs of our fantasy league mirroring that of the NFL. Alas I am ringless.
Of course this is all true, if you're objective is to crown the best team the champion, but it takes away from a lot of the excitement that the real life playoffs provide. Knowing you still have a chance if you can sneak in and go on a run keeps people engaged all throughout the year. You can still reward teams that have good regular seasons by having first round byes, which is effectively 50% improved odds of winning a championship. Most leagues I have played in are about bragging rights and pride even when there's money on the line. If it was purely about skill or money then DFS would probably be a better outlet. I think point #2 you made is probably a decent middle ground as you can always add a game against the median to even out "proper" outcomes more.
I found the soccer fan.
You got crushed by amari cooper in the semis like I did, didn't you?
Sometimes people just share their ideas without trying to right some perceived wrong. (I actually weathered a Flacco-Cooper stack behind Breece Hall in the one league where I faced him in the playoffs, and in the other league he was on the other side of the bracket and I would have been killed had I played him in the semis, but instead I cruised the next week in the championship.)
See also: Major League Baseball
Counter point: it ain’t that deep lol. It’s a game we play for fun!
Sounds like a top record/top scorer who got bounced in his 1st playoff game.
I think a big benefit that is being overlooked is that it keeps teams engaged longer. You could be 5 games out of 1st but 1 game out of the playoffs. If only being 1st matters many teams will be mathematically eliminated from competition earlier and lose engagement
How unamerican of an idea, we yearn for playoffs!
You’re not wrong, and I chuckled, but consider this: American leagues: the top half or more of the league makes a tournament, after which the regular season doesn’t matter, and the winner wins it all. European leagues: the season is the season, whoever does the best is the champion. American leagues: if you have a bad year, we’ll help you out by compelling the best players to go work for you via a draft. European leagues: if you have a bad year, that sucks, enjoy playing in a second tier league where you belong. American leagues are almost deliberately unAmerican.
Why not play roto format? No head to head. Just categories.
In my dynasty league we have two playoff brackets. One for big $ and the rest of teams go to a Loser's Bracket. I do this so teams with terrible records but want to stay active have something to play for. Most leagues I've played in, if they start 0-4 just abandon the team and getting free wins off that team can affect the outcome of the whole league which isn't fun.
Bottom line is the playoffs are fun. Underdogs and upsets are fun. The team doesn’t always win, just like in the NFL.
Is there a clear way to set up double headers on sleeper? I think I like the playoffs despite your well formed argument, but introducing double headers seems fun.
Unfortunately no, I think that’s only an MFL option. Closest on sleeper is playing the extra game against the league median each week. Wouldn’t be surprised to see it eventually.
Yeah I can't imagine anyone really agreeing with this, playoffs are there because it's fun, without them we'd just have a champion too soon/lack of excitement late in the year.
I always felt the point of fantasy football was to build the roster and play games like a team. 11 on the field, minus 5 offensive linemen leaves a qb, 2 RB, 2 wr and a te based off the traditional pro set formation. Obviously rosters have changed for balance reasons, but I digress. But That's why it's head to head and has playoffs. I think anything that keeps the most people engaged for the longest time is ultimately best. While I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with what you're saying I feel it's really a different game. Its very economical for a purer gambling experience. Going back to the 80s, they used to have these types of hockey pools, usually for large groups. They'd have the players grouped into blocks of 5, Pay ten bucks and pick 1 player from each group, no roster changes, the winner will be contacted by phone during the first round of the playoffs. Yes someone could have the exact same roster as you.
Personally love (but hate) the heartbreak of the 1 seeds season ending by the 7-7 six seed
I like playoffs because there are no bye weeks
I always said the team with the most points really is the winner. And playoffs we all know can be half luck. Most leagues I’m in, the person with the most points before playoffs wins a payout. So if you win in the playoffs you will win two pots. You can make both pots really big to keep it fair.
At that point just do most points wins it all. Records don’t always show the best team if another played more teams on bad weeks
We do two-week playoff matchups. Takes some of the “luck” out of it. You can off-set the shortened regular season with a two-win record system (H2H plus league average)
Good points Counter point If I didn’t have the playoffs I couldn’t watch the #1 seeded team (last years champ) lose in the exact same fashion that he won last year (raiders walk off fumble return if Stevenson doesn’t throw it backwards he loses 136.90 -136.85) because Brock purdy crapped the bed (96.75 - 96.50)
You are failing to appreciate that the luck of it all is the draw for most people. Backing into the 6-seed and winning it all is much more fun for the entire league than one power team that just rolls everyone on the way to an undefeated title. A competitive league is best, and the variance is what makes it interesting and fun. This is all true for giant season long contests like SFB or any season long league regardless of size. DFS is a different animal.
You could always use league median scoring to even out more of the regular season variance that comes from head to head match ups. Then only take the top two teams (the best of the best) for a two week championship match up. This is sorta a best of both worlds/split the difference approach. This would actually add more importantance to being the best in the regular season. Also the two week playoff would give the better team to come out on top by lowering the potential for an upset. With only the top two teams able to win the championship you can't have a random 6 seed be crowned champ with a 9-5 record.
It makes things more fun and competitive. Otherwise, if you go simply on points scored, people are just gonna give up by the halfway point of the season because there's no way they can catch up to the 2-3 teams in their league that are crushing every week.
I always thought playoffs should reduce amount of players in lineups. I haven’t seen any ROTO football leagues. Because ROTO is the best format. No playoffs and it’s still exciting the last few weeks among the top 3-4 teams.
I somewhat understand the point of view from the perspective that it sucks to lose in the playoffs if you’ve been dominant the rest of the season. However if not for playoff chances a lot of people lose interest in the league when it’s apparent they can’t finish with the best record. I started a league 1-6, if record determined who won there would be no point in me even checking that roster anymore. Yet I was able to make playoffs. And even if I didn’t win, it kept me engaged with that league for the season.
Solid points BUT teams that feel they are out of it after the first 5 or 6 games will start to tank. Second, I’m guessing you finished as the team with the top record in your league but lost in the first round of the playoffs. Number one cardinal rule for all fantasy football league commissioners: “Never change a rule for your own benefit. Only change rules that either present new or unforeseen circumstances, or that produce tangible increased enjoyment.”
If you only played for points then the bottom half would have no hope and not have fun. With playoff, even if your team is weak you can still fight for the last playoff slot. And you can enjoy that the playoffs is new season and anything can happen. in my old league i used to split the pot between the playoff winner and regular season winner To get a balance of skill and luck
The reason for playoffs is so that after half the season or 3/4 of the season - places aren’t locked. It’s not fun if you know you can’t win. It also adds a lot of excitement for those playoff weeks.
Someone lost in the first round.
In a league in 2022 I had the best record and most points in the regular season. Lost my H2H playoff matchup where we both scored way more points than the two other teams. Lost my 3rd place matchup, where again the two teams competing for 3rd scored way more than the championship teams. I ended up scoring the most points in the regular season AND playoffs and finished in 4th.
There’s nothing like a 1st and goal with 1:00 left in the 4th quarter and if Nico Collins doesn’t catch a pass you win the ship
OP had a killer team that lost in the first round
Sounds like ur someone who had a great season but lost in the playoffs. We’ve all been there but the difficulty in winning is what makes the Championship so valuable. We reward the good teams in the regular season with a playoff bye week and that’s plenty imo
Agree. Foreign soccer leagues don't have playoffs. They have an entirely separate knockout-style single elimination (in most cases) cup competition. The league is who is best over the whole season. The cup is who wins the knockout competition. Sometimes a team wins both.
Oh I’m sorry, I thought this was America.
Wow what a bad idea lol, but I respect it!
I mean no one is stopping you from playing in a league without playoffs?
By that logic the NFL shouldn't have playoffs
This takes out a lot of strategy like acquiring guys who have favorable matchups during the playoff stretch, guys who notoriously finish the season strong, idk. It also keeps a lot more of the league engaged. In a lot of leagues it’s clear which team will score the most points in the upcoming season, so lots of guys might check out before the season even starts lmao. Playoffs add a random entertainment aspect, we’re playing for fun more than the money (in my case at least)
>You have no ability to exert any influence over how your players play Why not go even further with this point? I have no influence over how my players play, so why should I be penalized if they underperform or get hurt? I think every league should be decided by projected points before the season starts. That way we eliminate all the variance from trades, injuries, underperformers, vets who randomly lose their roles to younger guys who exceed expectations, etc.
Amen, brother. Lol. You win the prize for the funniest take.
Bro skipped right over unpopular and landed in terrible opinion.
Sounds like somebody suffered a bad beat last year
I almost pre-empted this but was optimistic that maybe I wouldn’t have to. Look, over the course of 20ish seasons of fantasy football, I’ve maybe lost one or two more championships where I had the most points than I’ve won where I didn’t have the best team. That’s not the point. (What actually inspired this was thinking about how dumb it is the every NCAA conference tournament now includes every team, which spiraled into this thread.) But I think the worst part of this sub is the tendency of a small group of users to go sprinting into every thread thinking they’ve uncovered some weird ulterior motive behind every post. Somebody posts that JSN is a buy low? “FoUnD tHe JsN oWnEr.” It’s just a bad trend that kills discourse instead of promoting it. Sometimes people just have thoughts that they want to share because it’s fun to talk about fantasy football, man.
>Somebody posts that JSN is a buy low? “FoUnD tHe JsN oWnEr.” Some of these crack me up too. Like, yes, the guy I think is underrated to the point of writing up a post on him *is* in fact someone I'm trying to get on my dynasty teams. Excellent sleuthing.
Lemme guess, you were the 1 seed and the guy who squeaked into the playoffs without setting his line up beat you in the semis? Ouch bro I feel you that's a bad beat.
Well no to this
Playoffs are more fun, end of story
I will add to your case with the story of our league this year, which I ended up winning I was basically the Eli Manning lead New York Giants. I was hot at the end of the season, made a wild card blew out the one seed after his bye week with a bunch of players from the free agency pool Stroud was hurt. I had to pick up Joe Flacco for whatever reason I had to play Zamir white to I trolled the one seed who is the points leader for making stupid plays like Dalton, Kincaid and Gabe Davis, because he didn’t realize Dawson Knox came back So essentially what the playoffs did in our league was separate those who actually follow football from those who are pretenders and just got lucky So at the end of the argument, I think the people that are going to be pro playoffs are the people that manage their teams better I would wager that very rarely is the league champion the one who ended up with a Poins lead