Tag: DynaBowl

MAX’S STAT BLATS! – Week One

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Once the final scores are tallied each week, I, Maximilian Cubberley, feed them into a colourful spreadsheet to produce spurious stats that range from the inaccurate to the irrelevant.  Last season I kept this to myself for the most part but now, you lucky bunch, you get to share in the fun too!  Here’s some stats complete with half-arsed analysis from week 1 of the new season.  As always, when we start something new we look to the past for validation.  Let’s see how everyone’s week 1 compared to last season.

Don’t Take Offence

A lot changed in the off-season.  Players were cut, players were traded, players were drafted, all David’s linebackers retired.  Here’s a sweeping overview of the top offences for week 1 vs the top offences from last season.

Top 5 Offences in 2015:

  1. Dynaforone Firebirds (125 points on average)
  2. Kelkowski Don’t Play By No DynaRules (120 poa)
  3. Dynasore Losers (116 poa)
  4. Champions of the Sun (110 poa)
  5. DynaHard (108 poa)

Top 5 Offences in Week 1:

  1. Dynaforone Firebirds (132 points)
  2. DynaHard (122 points)
  3. Tamworth Two (115 points)
  4. East Flanders Dungeoneers (110 points)
  5. Champions of the Sun (107 points)

Firebirds still sit top of the pile with Champions of the Sun also holding rough position.  DynaHard have powered up the rankings powered by free agent signing Joseph Randle and the surprising competence of the Tennessee Titans offence.  The news is not so good for Kelkowski though where an injury to Arian Foster, Jeremy Maclin’s new position as ‘A Chiefs’ Pass Catcher Who Isn’t Travis Kelce’ and Julius Thomas’ need to break his own hand to avoid having to play for the Jags has dropped them out of the top 5 and resulted in a loss of 14 points from their average.  They can console themselves with the fact that at least they’re not the Dynasore Losers though who plummet from 3rd place to 9th after one week with a staggering loss of 42 points from last season’s average.  Although many predicted a sharp drop-off for Slater’s boys I don’t think anyone can have expected this and the fans will be hoping that this is a blip for the Broncos not the whole story as the Losers’ offence looks lost without Manning and Sanders as Jordy Nelson is also gone for the season.

On the other hand, maybe we should all just take solace in the fact these stats clearly mean nothing.  I mean, the freshly re-branded East Flanders Dungeoneers have somehow appeared in the top 5 there gaining 16 points over their average from last year.  Time will tell if the improvement is sustainable.

As a general note, whilst there are obviously big swings in points from one week to the next it should be noted that for both offence and defence, 4 of the top 5 teams at the end of last season were also in the top 5 in week 1 of last season.

On the Defensive

Top 5 Defences in 2015:

  1. Champions of the Sun (80 poa)
  2. Tamworth Two (79 poa)
  3. DynaHard (77 poa)
  4. Here Comes the Brees (75 poa)
  5. Dynabummer Blastermensch (75 poa)

Top 5 Defences in Week 1:

  1. DynaHard (115)
  2. Champions of the Sun (90)
  3. Here Comes the Brees (71)
  4. DynaforOne Firebirds (65)
  5. Dynasore Losers (61)

As with Offence we can see the Champions of the Sun holding steady and DynaHard showing improvement for what was already a good unit.  Both teams should be encouraged by week 1 of this season and take it as a sign that they can improve on their positions from last season.  Worryingly for the rest of the league, the Firebirds have held steady on offence and improved on defence, cracking the top 5 in week 1 when they finished 2015 as the worst defensive unit.  This improvement is in no small part due to a big improvement at linebacker where Derrick Johnson’s return seems to have sparked life into the team.

Both the Tamworth Two and the Dynabunny Boostermonks dropped out of the top 5 in week 1.  For the Hogs this may not be more than a blip.  They scored 61 points on defence, which is a significant drop but it was a quiet week for elite rushers Chandler Jones and Olivier Vernon that should not become the new norm for these players.  The Dynaboomer Bustermuffs dropped from 75 points to 39 in week 1, in large part due to a dismal 2.5 point effort from their defensive line of Kyle Williams, Cameron Wake and Mario Williams.  Whilst this looks more alarming than the story for the Hogs you can’t look at those three names and say you expect single-digit defensive line performances going forward.  The Bambimoons should bounce back next week.

Don’t Be Down on D

Some of you may be looking at your week 1 performances with a frowny face, worrying, particularly, about performance on the defensive side of the ball.  With an average score of 64.5 on D this week the league is running at nearly 10 points under the average defensive performance than last year.  There’s good news however as defensive point scoring trended up as the season went along last year.  In weeks 1 to 5 last season, the average defence scored 65.1 points.  In weeks 10 to 14 the average score jumped to 77.1.  A lot of defensive positions are volatile, particularly DT, CB and S and it takes a while to pinpoint who the best players on the roster (or the wire) are for the coming season.  Chances are that you will see your defences start to pick up more points as the season goes along and getting ahead of that knowledge curve in those volatile positions will help with that.

First to Worst

Now it’s time to overreact!  Which units on which teams were good last season and terrible in week 1?  Let’s find out.

  1. Champions of the Sun RBs – 2015 rank: 3rd, Week 1 rank: 10th.  With Le’Veon Bell and Lagarette Blount suspended, CJ Spiller injured and the Cleveland Cabal traded away it was no surprise to see the Champions rushing attack falter in week 1.  Starting only two players for a combined 8.3 points it must have been painful viewing for the Dayman, even if it doesn’t seem to have cost him the win (disclaimer: scoring adjustments on Thursday are likely to make this statement false very shortly).
  2. Dynasore Losers LBs – 2015 rank: 1st, Week 1 rank: 10th.  As with the Champions’ rushers above, David Slater can’t have been surprised to see his linebacking corps disintegrate.  DeAndre Levy released, Terrell Suggs injured, Tamba Hali another year older and, worst of all, Chris Borland retiring has left the Losers with a makeshift unit heaped on the shoulders of Ryan Kerrigan.  It may pick up (to be honest, they scored 8 points between them this week, it couldn’t get worse) but we won’t be seeing the Losers back to the top of the charts at this position this year.
  3. East Flanders Dungeoneers and Dynasty of Sadness Special Teams – 2015 rank: 4th and 3rd, Week 1 rank: 9th and 10th.  It’s a sure sign that teams have been focusing their off-season efforts in the wrong places when special teams takes a hit.  Despite how commonly acknowledged it is, both Pete Conaghan and Geoffrey Manboob seem to have forgotten that kickers and punters are the lifeblood of the team.  If this course is not corrected immediately I foresee a dismal season ahead for both teams.

Last in the Past

Now let’s look at some of the units that have improved vastly over last season based on week 1 performance.

  1. East Flanders Dungeoneers Running Backs – 2015 rank: 10th, Week 1 rank: 2nd.  When the Dungeoneers gave up Eddy Lacy for the 2nd pick in the draft it seemed like Pete Conaghan was accepting that sub par was the new par at running back.  When he then traded away Lagarette Blount it seemed the white flag was already waving.  Little did we know that Carlos Hyde was the second coming of LaDainian Tomlinson.  Hyde put up 168 yards and 2 TDs in week 1 against the Vikings.  Whilst you might question the sustainability of this, Justin Forsett and Rashad Jennings contributed another 17 points and the unit was only narrowly pipped to #1 by an Ameer Abdullah and Eddy Lacy-led Sadness rushing unit.  The Dungeoneers won’t get 47 points from this lot every week but they seem to be in a position to sustain a good performance for the season.  They won’t win anything if they don’t sort out their special teams though.  Seriously.  Sort out your special teams, Pete.
  2. Dynaforone Firebirds Linebackers – 2015 rank: 10th, Week 1 rank: 2nd.  Julius Peppers was a lone bright spot for the Firebirds last season at linebacker.  This improvement may need to be taken with a pinch of salt as, despite coming 2nd on the week, the Firebirds’ linebackers put up a good week, not a great week.  Derrick Johnson is a big plus for them though and Brandon Graham will have better days ahead.  The unit is not deep though so an injury in the wrong place or age catching up to Peppers could see the Firebirds dropping back down the rankings again.

That’s it from me for week 1.  Theoretically I will be doing more pointless stats in the coming weeks but, realistically, I’ll probably not be bothered.

Guest Previews 2015 – Champions of the Sun by Pete Conaghan

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2014 Record: 6-7, missed playoffs.

Offseason Review

Wily old fox Max Cubberly went in a contrarian direction in the draft, going for defense early and often. You’re not going to win championships by doing the same thing as everyone else, so the Champions took Leonard Williams with the second pick of the third round to get a jump on building their ever-expanding stable of defensive ends. This was followed by another pick in the same round taking the injured Dante Fowler. As eyes narrowed in GM offices around the league, Cubberly told his secretary to immediately instigate a campaign to introduce the generic defensive lineman position, rather than have tackle and end. The work continues.

Marcel Dareus was added in Free Agency, which had DeSean Jackson going the other way, and this was offset by a long brewing trade with Tamworth in which the Champions acquired John Brown, who they hope will be a rising star.

LeGarrette Blount was signed on the eve of the new season, and with the release of Jonas Gray, should provide some semblance of reliable production in New England. A tactical signing, he should be good enough to single handedly win the Gameweek 6 matchup for the Champions, when NE play the Colts.

Where they will improve:  Most position groups did not get significantly better, with the exception of Quarterback. Ben Rothlisberger was scooped up in free agency, and signed to a team-friendly deal.  If he can produce at 2014 levels, and John Brown fulfils expectations,  the team will improve on offense. CJ Spiller’s move to New Orleans has improved the running back group immeasurably, and if he can stay healthy and Latavius Murray produce some measure of success on Oakland’s baseball dirt, then the team can kick on from 2014.

Khalil Mack is expected to make up for lost time, sack wise, and the addition of Dareus gives the Champions a rising number of star names on defense.

Where they will regress:  Will Mike Evans survive a sophomore slump? Will DeAndre Hopkins survive Brian Hoyer? Both receivers have shown they can overcome impossible quarterback odds and be successful, so we should expect that to continue this year.  But if they don’t, then we could see the notably more mercurial Percy Harvin and Allen Robinson coming into play. Which should also be fine, really.

2015 Prediction: 7-6, and missing the playoffs.  If everything goes right for the Champions, they should be a playoff team. However I am arbitrarily deciding that not everything will go right.

 

2015 Commish Preview: Here Comes The Brees

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Team: Here Comes The Brees – Ben Archer/Dan Sayles

2014 Record: 8-5, 9th pick, Superb Owl runner-up

Significant Additions:

Draft – Tevin Coleman (RB), Breshad Perriman (WR), Phillip Dorsett (WR), Maxx Williams (TE)

Free Agency – Charles Johnson, WR), Ryan Fitzpatrick (QB), Owen Daniels (TE)

Trade – DeSean Jackson (WR), Charles Sims (RB), Isaiah Crowell (RB), Terrance West (RB), Marqise Lee (WR), Allen Hurns (WR)

Significant Losses:

Free Agency – Ben Roethlisberger (QB), Justin Forsett (RB),

Trade – Marcel Dareus (DT), Roy Helu (RB), Corey Brown (WR), Kendall Wright (WR), Martellus Bennett (TE)

Preview:

Runners-up in the Superb Owl, yes. Second best team in the league? Not so much. Here Comes The Brees was the little engine that could in 2014, reciting to itself over and over “I think I can, I know I can”. It came up just short in the most one-sided Superb Owls in history*. It was impressive, but was it sustainable? AWE tells us the Brees were the most over-performing team in the league. By more than 2 wins. They would have been expected to win just 5.88 games with their performance. They had a 14% chance of reaching 8 wins, but they made it and no one can take that away from them. Now comes that difficult second season.

They were 6th in total points scored, but 8th in potential points, with only the Dungeoneers and the Sadness having the potential to score fewer. The luck of the draw got them to the heights, but GMs Archer and Sayles have worked hard through the off-season to improve the roster.

Andrew Luck is a brilliant starting point for any fantasy team, but the running backs of Tampa, Cleveland and second string in St Louis are not the next building blocks you’d be looking for. Lamar Miller is a great option and Tevin Coleman holds promise but in a more pass-orientated offense.

DeSean Jackson and Charles Johnson are decent WR2/3 options but here they are carrying the can with a hobbled Cruz, a retiring Steve Smith, and an indeterminate Reuben Randle being the main back-up. The rookies all offer decent potential , but are either coming through camp with injuries or battling for a place in a crowded field. They look good, just not for 2015. Tight end holds promise, if any of them can make it through a full season.

The defence is more promising. Anyone who can put out Aaron Donald every week is cheating because one week he’ll be on a bye, but Donald is an immense talent and, Luck aside, the best player on the roster. However, this is a league brimming with DE talent and it’s an area where the Brees are lacking. Two ends will be needed each week which will not be to their advantage.

Further back, Harrison Smith is a star at safety but otherwise the defence is middling. Those stars should push the defence into mid-table existence, but the question is, have they improved enough from 2014?

Verdict:

Let’s get right to it and answer that question I posed at the end of the preview – no. They haven’t. Sorry. Did you want me to wrap that up in cotton wool and put a bow on it? Last season the astute pick-up of Justin Forsett after week 1 helped the team push on. Similar waiver work will be needed to turn this team into something competitive in 2015, but there are enough young players on the roster now to suggest there’s hope for 2016 and 2017.

Prediction:

5-8 and the 2nd pick in the draft. That 2nd pick could come in pretty handy when it comes to redeveloping this squad.

*While this statement may be true right now purely because there’s only been one, come back in 10 years and it’ll still be just as true. DynaForOne more than doubled the Brees’ score.

Scheduling and Relative Strength

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Following on from league schedule chat, I got thinking about the level of luck involved in the schedule and what the chances were of teams getting different amount of wins, considering the number of points they scored each week. It’s important to understand, of course, that just because a team scored a lot of points, it doesn’t mean they could have been consistent winners. If they scored massive amounts in just 3 weeks and at or below average the rest of the season they could look like big time Charlies when actually they were … erm … small time Freddies? Also, some weeks the entire league scored highly so a high score is merely par (weeks 8, 10 and 13 all featured average team scores of 190+), while other weeks the points were low so a high score had the chance to dominate (week 2 had an average score of only 158.7).

The point is that it definitely matters when you score those points, as well as how many of them you score.

So given I have the full weekly scoring available I decided to run some scenarios. In fact, practically every scenario. Sort of. There are some weakness which I am going to acknowledge up front.

So what I did was rank everyone’s score from first to last in the league in each week. From this you can derive the chance of winning in any given week. If you top scored you had a 100% chance of winning. If you were the 5th top scorer you had a 55.55% chance of winning (you could beat 5 teams out of 9 – 5/9 = 55.55%) and thus a 44.44% chance of losing. And so on.

By multiplying your chance of winning in week 1 by your chance of winning in week 2 and so on we can work out the chance of you winning every single game. If we create a list of all possible scenarios (ie every combination of win or lose for every week of the season), we can then work out the likelihood of each scenario. Add up all the scenarios that result in 7 wins and you have the % chance of that outcome.

The caveats:

  1. In week 10 Dyna Hard and Kelkowski had the same score. They didn’t play each other so there was no tie, but this would add a tie into the possible outcomes. This would change the number of scenarios across a 13 week season from 8,192 to 1,594,323. To avoid doing this I have knocked Dyna Hard down by 0.05 points so there’s no tie that week. This means that I slightly under-estimate Dyna Hard’s position in the end results and slightly over-estimate Kelkowski’s, but the difference is minimal.
  2. I have not done this based on feasible schedules that fit with our ‘play your division twice, the other division once’ rules. This is purely done on the basis of how many teams could you beat each week. This means that while it may say a team has a small percentage chance of winning every week or losing every week, this may not actually be the case because that may rely on playing The Sadness or Kelkowski every week.

However, what this does do is provide an analysis of relative strength across the division as well as estimate the role schedule luck played in each team’s performance.

So first off I want to walk you through an example. East Flanders had a 0.13% chance of losing all 13 games in the season. The table below shows the ranking of each weekly points score for the team, the chance of losing in that individual week, and the cumulative chance of losing each week, one after the other:

Score Rank Chance of Losing Cumulative Chance of Losing
Week 1 6 55.56% 55.56%
Week 2 4 33.33% 18.52%
Week 3 10 100.00% 18.52%
Week 4 8 77.78% 14.40%
Week 5 8 77.78% 11.20%
Week 6 7 66.67% 7.47%
Week 7 10 100.00% 7.47%
Week 8 8 77.78% 5.81%
Week 9 9 88.89% 5.16%
Week 10 7 66.67% 3.44%
Week 11 8 77.78% 2.68%
Week 12 2 11.11% 0.30%
Week 13 5 44.44% 0.13%

A decent start and end to the season didn’t cover up a pretty terrible middle.

So doing this for every win/loss combination for every team gives the following table of likely win totals:

Win Expectancy 1

The figures highlighted in bold are the percentage chance the team had of recording the number of victories they actually did record. So Champions of the Sun ended up with 6 wins and there was a 24.75% chance of that happening based on their weekly scores (accepting the caveats listed earlier), while Dyna Hard had just a 9.86% likelihood of getting exactly 5 wins, as they managed across the year.

So for all bar two teams, the chances of ending with the record they ended with was between 22.52% and 29.19%, though only 3 teams ended with the record they were most likely to.

So the next stage is to look at the cumulative win chances – ie adding the percentage chances up as you move along. So each column in the table below shows the chances of winning between zero and n games (n being the number at the top of the column).

Win Expectancy 2

What this is saying is that the higher the cumulative number the luckier you would need to be to get that number of victories, while approximately 50% is where you would expect to be. So in 95.54% of scenarios Here Comes The Brees would win 8 or fewer games and only in 4.46% of scenarios would they win over 8 games. As we can see, there was only a 13.60% chance that Dyna Hard would win 5 or fewer games.

We can also reverse this and produce a table which shows the chances of reaching a minimum number of wins:

Win Expectancy 3

This shows that The Brees had only a 14.66% chance of getting at least the 8 wins they managed, while Dyna Hard were as close to guaranteed as you could reasonably expect to get to hit the 5 wins they did, with over a 96% chance of reaching that level. The Dynasty of Sadness were the second luckiest franchise, with only a 35% chance of getting 5 wins, although they had a better chance of getting 4 wins than East Flanders, while the Champions of the Sun were very lunlucky to register just 6 wins.

So what can we do with all this data? Well, we can use it to create an expected win number. By looking at where the 50% position falls in the above 2 cumulative tables and taking the average of the 2 positions we can see the expected number of wins for each team based on their performance.

Team Expected Wins Exp. Win Rank Actual Wins Diff. % Difference
Kelkowski Don’t Play By No Dyna Rules 8.59 1 8 -0.59 -4.52%
Dynasore Losers 8.34 2 8 -0.34 -2.61%
DynaForOne Firebirds 7.33 3 7 -0.33 -2.50%
Dyna Hard 7.12 4 5 -2.12 -16.27%
Champions of the Sun 6.89 5 6 -0.89 -6.88%
Tamworth Two 6.43 6 6 -0.43 -3.34%
Dynablaster Bombermen 6.11 7 7 0.89 6.88%
Here Comes The Brees 5.88 8 8 2.12 16.30%
East Flanders Dungeoneers 4.18 9 5 0.82 6.31%
The 4th Dynmension: Dynasty of Sadness 4.12 10 5 0.88 6.74%

So most teams were within 1 win of where they would be expected to end up, but Dyna Hard and Here Come The Brees were both over 2 wins difference from what their week to week performance merited.

All told I am pleasantly surprised at how little difference the schedule made for most people. This may be a case of there being so few games it’s harder to separate from the mean, but then again, 20% of the league – a not insignificant proportion – were over 2 games different from their expected level.

What can be said at this point is that we don’t really know if this is a problem or not. Will there always be teams who get very lucky or unlucky or was 2014 an anomaly? Should we look to provide a degree of stabilisation to try to get the best performing teams over the course of the season into the playoffs? Or should we embrace randomness?

Kommish Komment Korner (again)

The fact that the match-ups, in a randomly assigned order, can make a large difference to the outcome of the season – something beyond the control of the GM – seems an unfair punishment (or reward) and if something can be done that removes an element of that, while maintaining the excitement of head-to-head match-ups, my view is it should be included.

What we have is not broken, but there are a few cracks in the facade and it would be nice to address those so that we have a league which is both fun and robust. The magic of the cup will remain, regardless, in the playoff stage. What the regular season should at least try to do is ensure that the best teams end up in the playoffs while the worst teams get the best picks in the draft in order to better themselves and make themselves more competitive. In 2014 the playoffs were 3/4 right in that regard, but it’s not as though the 4th part of that equation was a borderline case. Had Dyna Hard come 5th, just behind Champions of the Sun, the issue wouldn’t have been a talking point (and I realise I am the only one talking about it really so you may not consider it one anyway). But I think it is tough to argue that Dyna Hard merit the first pick of the draft ahead of DoS and East Flanders.

I’m not suggesting a revolution, I’m suggesting evolution. The league is one year old and we knew we wouldn’t get things right the first time. We need to adapt to make the league as good and as fair as possible. I don’t want playoffs to be decided based on all-play or total points or anything. We all put in a lot of time and effort and it is better that we have a system that rewards that time and effort and, where appropriate, skill as best as possible.

This won’t change for 2015 and the above analysis will be repeated after the 2015 season to see how different the league was from actual performance. There will then be a vote sometime in the new year about whether we should change the schedule and/or ranking system for teams. Cases will be made and, whatever the outcome, we will move forward, older and allegedly wiser.

Alternative Uptown Top Ranking the 2014 Season

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Some of you may remember that at the end of the last season of the DynaBowl, when tallying up wins and losses and working out the draft order there was some ‘heated’ debate. I forget who was involved or exactly what the outcome was, aside from Dyna Hard, the 4th top scorers in the league in 2014, getting the first pick in the draft.

Anyway, it got me thinking. Firstly, how did a possible perception of unfairness occur and secondly is there anything that could be done to rectify this?

So, one of the quirks with Fantasy Football is how short the season is and how few games are played in a typical, traditional season. 13 games is not very many. It’s less than are played in the NFL, let alone football, basketball, ice hockey or let alone baseball. As such, it’s really difficult to use the season as a marker of true quality.

This is often noted in NFL, but at least in the NFL your opponent on any given weekend (or Thursday night. Or Monday night) has an impact on how you play your game. In fantasy football it would theoretically be possible to be the second highest scorer every single week and not win a game. Or be the second lowest scorer every week and win every game. Obviously the chances are ludicrously small, but it is just about possible. Therefore a win/loss record doesn’t necessarily reflect the strength of the teams.

Extrapolating from this, not only does it mean that the order the picks are made in could be compromised, but so too could the teams making the playoffs. In theory the best 4 teams should make the playoffs, but in 2014 The Brees made the playoffs despite scoring more regular season points than only 2 teams. Again, this isn’t like the NFL (or the Premier League) where a low scoring team can be successful by having a really good defence. A low scoring team has no control over whether they get beaten or not – it’s entirely based on luck.

In a venture like the ChatterBowl this is less of an issue (to me, at any rate), but the DynaBowl is a comparatively serious endeavour, given the time spent assessing rookies for the draft, assessing the value of contracts, managing the cap etc and so on. Given the time spent on managing teams, shouldn’t we work to reward the best teams rather than leaving it up to luck?

Of course, luck will always be present (as will Luck, the unbreakable man). This can be in the form of a defensive player getting 3 of his 5 sacks in one week or a 90 yard pick 6, or it can be that your opponent loses his bets 3 players to a bye the week you play him. I’m not saying we completely eliminate luck – we couldn’t.

What I am saying is that we should look to ways to reduce it so that the best teams are rewarded and the worst teams get the chance to pick from the new players before everyone else.

“But wait!” I hear you cry, “How much does the schedule really affect the standings?”

With our schedule in 2014, every team ended up with 5, 6, 7 or 8 wins. But complete fluke we were really bunched together. With a random re-arrangement of the fixtures, ensuring that no one played the same team in the same week they had before (so every fixture was new), the first variation I have produced the following results:

Team Wins Losses
Dyna Hard 11 2
Dynasore Losers 10 3
Kelkowski Don’t Play By No Dyna Rules 9 4
Tamworth Two 7 6
DynaForOne Firebirds 6 7
Dynablaster Bombermen 5 8
Champions of the Sun 5 8
East Flanders Dungeoneers 4 9
Here Comes The Brees 4 9
The 4th Dynmension: Dynasty of Sadness 4 9

I promise this was complete fluke that the worst team in 2014 ended up on top with this schedule and The Brees came in second from bottom.

Under this scenario our 2014 champions, DynaForOne Firebirds, didn’t make the cut for the playoffs.

The point of this is merely to say that schedule plays a massive part of success and perhaps we should look to remove that element as best we can.

I’m not saying we should just work on total points or anything like that. We all like the weekly competition. But there may be other options that operate as halfway houses, which are just as fun but more representative. Specifically two other options (with further variations thereon).

OPTION 1 – DOUBLE HEADERS

This is pretty simple. Everyone plays two fixtures a week. That’s it. It just doubles the number of games per season giving you a better chance of producing a record that is more representative of a team’s talent.

So I had the original schedule and the schedule used to create the above standings. Using those templates I just rearranged the order of the teams (so if, in week 1 team 1 played team 2 etc, I just changed who team 1 was and who team 2 was (etc and so on), which then created effectively a new schedule. I then created tables for how the season would have gone with the new double fixture lists. There are several versions to demonstrate how different results would have been, each of which is reproduced  below for illustrative purposes and because I have no limit on space. The first of these tables uses the original schedule and the revised one produced above as the two schedules (I used total points, not head to head, as a tie-breaker, for simplicity):

Team Total Points Wins with  schedule 1 Wins with  schedule 2 Total Wins Total Losses
Dynasore Losers 2478.93 8 10 18 8
Kelkowski Don’t Play By No Dyna Rules 2494.355 8 9 17 9
Dyna Hard 2396.135 5 11 16 10
DynaForOne Firebirds 2397.8 7 6 13 13
Tamworth Two 2388.085 6 7 13 13
Dynablaster Bombermen 2297.19 7 5 12 14
Here Comes The Brees 2258.885 8 4 12 14
Champions of the Sun 2392.665 6 5 11 15
East Flanders Dungeoneers 2138.915 5 4 9 17
The 4th Dynmension: Dynasty of Sadness 2008.795 5 4 9 17

 

Team Total Points Wins with  schedule 1 Wins with  schedule 2 Total Wins Total Losses
Dynasore Losers 2478.93 9 10 19 7
Champions of the Sun 2392.665 7 9 16 10
Kelkowski Don’t Play By No Dyna Rules 2494.355 8 7 15 11
DynaForOne Firebirds 2397.8 8 7 15 11
Tamworth Two 2388.085 5 8 13 13
Dynablaster Bombermen 2297.19 6 7 13 13
Here Comes The Brees 2258.885 7 5 12 14
East Flanders Dungeoneers 2138.915 5 5 10 16
Dyna Hard 2396.135 6 3 9 17
The 4th Dynmension: Dynasty of Sadness 2008.795 4 4 8 18

 

Team Total Points Wins with  schedule 1 Wins with  schedule 2 Total Wins Total Losses
Dynasore Losers 2478.93 9 8 17 9
Kelkowski Don’t Play By No Dyna Rules 2494.355 7.5 9 16.5 9.5
DynaForOne Firebirds 2397.8 7 9 16 10
Dyna Hard 2396.135 7.5 7 14.5 11.5
Dynablaster Bombermen 2297.19 7 7 14 12
Champions of the Sun 2392.665 7 5 12 14
Tamworth Two 2388.085 6 6 12 14
Here Comes The Brees 2258.885 5 5 10 16
East Flanders Dungeoneers 2138.915 5 4 9 17
The 4th Dynmension: Dynasty of Sadness 2008.795 4 5 9 17

 

Team Total Points Wins with  schedule 1 Wins with  schedule 2 Total Wins Total Losses
Kelkowski Don’t Play By No Dyna Rules 2494.355 10 9 19 7
Dynasore Losers 2478.93 8 9 17 9
DynaForOne Firebirds 2397.8 6 9 15 11
Dynablaster Bombermen 2297.19 7 8 15 11
Here Comes The Brees 2258.885 9 6 15 11
Tamworth Two 2388.085 5 7 12 14
Champions of the Sun 2392.665 6 5 11 15
Dyna Hard 2396.135 6 3 9 17
The 4th Dynmension: Dynasty of Sadness 2008.795 4 5 9 17
East Flanders Dungeoneers 2138.915 4 4 8 18

 

Team Total Points Wins with  schedule 1 Wins with  schedule 2 Total Wins Total Losses
Dynasore Losers 2478.93 11 8 19 7
Dyna Hard 2396.135 6 10 16 10
Tamworth Two 2388.085 7 9 16 10
Kelkowski Don’t Play By No Dyna Rules 2494.355 8 7 15 11
Champions of the Sun 2392.665 7 8 15 11
DynaForOne Firebirds 2397.8 7 6 13 13
Here Comes The Brees 2258.885 7 5 12 14
Dynablaster Bombermen 2297.19 6 4 10 16
The 4th Dynmension: Dynasty of Sadness 2008.795 5 4 9 17
East Flanders Dungeoneers 2138.915 1 4 5 21

 

Team Total Points Wins with  schedule 1 Wins with  schedule 2 Total Wins Total Losses
Dynasore Losers 2478.93 8 10 18 8
DynaForOne Firebirds 2397.8 8 8 16 10
Kelkowski Don’t Play By No Dyna Rules 2494.355 8.5 7 15.5 10.5
Here Comes The Brees 2258.885 7 8 15 11
Dyna Hard 2396.135 8.5 6 14.5 11.5
Tamworth Two 2388.085 7 6 13 13
Champions of the Sun 2392.665 6 6 12 14
Dynablaster Bombermen 2297.19 5 7 12 14
The 4th Dynmension: Dynasty of Sadness 2008.795 3 5 8 18
East Flanders Dungeoneers 2138.915 4 2 6 20

So with this method we end up with more match-ups and more rivalries, but there’s a risk that too many games are happening at once and we lose a bit of focus. It could be more fun or it could be confusing and, frankly, I don’t think we’d know until we did it.

OPTION 2 – VICTORY POINTS

So, under this scenario, each team would get 2 points for a win and 1 for a tie, rather than the traditional W/L result, but what we add in is 2 further points for the top 3 scoring teams in the week, 1 point for the 4 teams that score in the middle and 0 points for the 3 lowest scoring teams. This way, if you are the second top scoring team in a week, and you lose to the top scoring team, all is not lost! You still get 2 points towards your playoff push.

Want examples? Why sure. In week 1 of the 2014 season, the top scoring team beat the 4th top scoring team while the 2nd top scoring team beat the 3rd top scoring team. So under the victory point scenario, Dynablaster Bombermen would have scored 1 point despite the loss and Dyna Hard 2 points, despite their loss.

What would last season’s table have looked like?

Team Victory Points Scoring Points Total Points
Kelkowski Don’t Play By No Dyna Rules 16 18 34
Dynasore Losers 16 17 33
DynaForOne Firebirds 14 15 29
Here Comes The Brees 16 12 28
Dynablaster Bombermen 14 12 26
Champions of the Sun 12 14 26
Tamworth Two 12 13 25
Dyna Hard 10 14 24
The 4th Dynmension: Dynasty of Sadness 10 8 18
East Flanders Dungeoneers 10 7 17

Less of an impact – the same 4 teams in the playoffs and a little shuffling lower down, but I think you’d agree that it is a slightly more fair representation of the quality of teams.

The advantage is that even if you’re clearly beaten or going up against a team that is much stronger you still have something to cheer and getting a few more points in your Monday night game could give you an extra point and push you a step closer to the playoffs.

OPTION 3 (?!?) – COMBINED DOUBLE HEADERS AND VICTORY POINTS!

Using the first double header table to construct a double header and victory points table, we get the following:

Team Total Wins Total Losses Victory Points Scoring Points Total Points
Dynasore Losers 18 8 36 17 53
Kelkowski Don’t Play By No Dyna Rules 17 9 34 18 52
Dyna Hard 16 10 32 14 46
DynaForOne Firebirds 13 13 26 15 41
Tamworth Two 13 13 26 13 39
Champions of the Sun 11 15 22 14 36
Dynablaster Bombermen 12 14 24 12 36
Here Comes The Brees 12 14 24 12 36
The 4th Dynmension: Dynasty of Sadness 9 17 18 8 26
East Flanders Dungeoneers 9 17 18 7 25

 

 

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