The spreadsheet has been fed this week and my dot matrix printer has finally finished churning out the data for me to pore through. This week I’ll take a look at the first two weeks performance from 2015 and compare it to the first two weeks from 2014 to see if we can build a picture of where each team’s fortunes will go from here.
Reality Bites
Below are comparisons of performance through week 2 of the 2015 and 2015 seasons, ordered by finishing order in the 2014 season.
2014 Week 2
2014 Standing
2015 Week 2
POA Diff
Dynaforone Firebirds
1-1 (137 poa)
7-6
1-1 (181 poa)
+44
Here Comes the Brees
1-1 (146 poa)
8-5
0-2 (152 poa)
+6
Dynasore Losers
2-0 (175 poa)
8-5
2-0 (172 poa)
-3
Kelkowski
2-0 (212 poa)
8-5
0-2 (153 poa)
-59
Dynablinker Obamamen
0-2 (168 poa)
7-6
0-2 (156 poa)
-12
Champions of the Sun
1-1 (181 poa)
6-7
2-0 (192 poa)
+11
Tamworth Two
2-0 (185 poa)
6-7
1-1 (167 poa)
-18
East Flanders Dungeoneers
1-1 (161 poa)
5-8
2-0 (158 poa)
-3
Dynasty of Sadness
0-2 (129 poa)
5-8
0-2 (154 poa)
+25
DynaHarder
0-2 (168 poa)
5-8
2-0 (223 poa)
+55
So let’s get the good news out of the way. DynaHarder have gone from an 0-2 start last season to a 2-0 start this season, having the highest average points in the process. The attendant 55 point jump in average score shows that the team has improved hugely over last season’s average start and there is still the return of Martivis Bryant and abhorrent human being Greg Hardy to come.
The other two significant improvements over last season can be seen at the Dynasty of Sadness and, worryingly, 2014 Superb Owl winners the Firebirds. The Sadness were a flimsy excuse for a fantasy football team last year and anything less than a big jump from 2014’s 129 average points would have been a disaster. Whilst the team are still at the bottom end of the points scorers they are not cut adrift like last season and can expect to be competitive. How the Firebirds improved from 2014’s disastrous start to claim the Owl may warrant an article on its own but the team has started strongly this year, being unfortunate to lose with the 3rd highest score in week 1.
On the other side of the ball it would be remiss not to start with Kelkowski’s 59 point plummet from the first two games of last season. Last week I highlighted some of the reasons Jay and Ian might not be surprised by this but the extent of the drop off is alarming. Despite the poor start of the Breeses this year it’s worth noting that they’ve actually started better in terms of their weekly output this year, suggesting all may not be as bleak as first appeared. Could another unlikely playoff run emerge? Another team I believed to have regressed have proved me wrong through two weeks as the Dynasore Losers are still scoring at the same level as the opening of last season. Whether they can power up to the heights of 2014 as they go along remains to be seen.
What Might Have Been
Looking at what the teams actually scored in the first two weeks is all very well and good but to get a full picture of improvement and regression we should also look at their potential points. What do their best line-ups look like compared to last season? This will also highlight where GMs are more directly responsible for good or poor performance with their team selection.
2014 Week 2
2015 Week 2
PPOA Diff
Dynaforone Firebirds
188 ppoa
228 (79% eff)
+40
Here Comes the Brees
210 ppoa
228 (67% eff)
+18
Dynasore Losers
212 ppoa
244 (70% eff)
+32
Kelkowski
265 ppoa
206 (74% eff)
-59
Dynablaster Bombermen
233 ppoa
232 (67% eff)
-1
Champions of the Sun
204 ppoa
258 (74% eff)
+54
Tamworth Two
261 ppoa
216 (77% eff)
-45
East Flanders Dungeoneers
212 ppoa
208 (76% eff)
-4
Dynasty of Sadness
206 ppoa
211 (73% eff)
+5
DynaHarder
250 ppoa
282 (79% eff)
+32
The numbers here back up the findings for the Firebirds and DynaHarder, showing an overall squad improvement to match their gameday improvement. The other big improvers are the Losers and the Champions, both of whom seem to have added a lot of depth between the start of last season and now, whether it was during the season last year, in the off-season or in the draft. The Breeses too can be happy that, whilst they’re squad still has holes, the actions Dan and Ben have taken have strengthened and added depth.
For the other 5 teams the story is either one of maintaining the status quo or of regression. Despite some strong additions, the Sadness seem to only have a squad as good as the start of last season, suggesting inefficient squad selection contributed to the team’s woes at the start of last year. The Bombermen and, surprisingly, the Dungeoneers also seem to have remained on par with the start of last season. The Dungeoneers are a strange one. To the naked eye, the team seems stronger than last season yet the stats don’t back that up so far. It’s early days, and GM Pete is building for the future, but if the team finishes the season not having outperformed last year’s iteration it should go down as a disappointment.
Kelkowski’s woes have been dwelt on enough but they can at least take solace that a 74% squad efficiency is not horrible and they are doing a good enough job of team selection. The Tamworth Two’s drop in potential points isn’t far short of Kelkowski’s however and that should be a cause of concern. The struggles of Alshon Jeffrey and Jonathan Stewart have certainly contributed to this but the defence has taken the biggest hit with Olivier Vernon and the linebacking unit firing blanks so far. It’s early days yet, of course, and defensive scoring is notoriously streaky but this is a situation worth keeping an eye on. The good news is that the Hogs’ 77% efficiency rating is second best in the league so they, at least, making the most of what they have.
In the efficiency stakes both Bens and both Dans will hope to improve their team selection in the coming weeks as the hot hands become clear and depth chart fog starts to dissipate. Both teams are at sub-70% efficiency which is a major barrier to success. David is, of course, PLOBbing the shit out of himself but what else would you expect? The Losers are still 2-0 so maybe his carefree team selection is motivating the troops.
Join me next time on Stat Blats where I’ll be doing something else with stats, probably, unless I’m not.
Draft – Duke Johnson (RB), DeVante Parker (WR), DeAndre Smelter (WR), Vic Beasley (DE)
Free Agency – Jonathan Stewart (RB), Darren McFadden (RB), Heath Miller (TE)
Trade – Andre Williams (RB)
Significant Losses:
Free Agency – Coby Fleener (TE)
Trade – John Brown (WR), Markus Wheaton (WR), Vernon Davis (TE), Orlando Scandrick (CB), Darren Sproles (RB), Jurrell Casey (DE)
Preview:
8th in points scored, 6th in potential points and 8th in selection efficiency. These are not pretty stats to be starting from. An AWE of 6.43 against their 6 wins says they slightly underperformed as does the 75% chance of hitting 6 wins minimum, but ultimately they were part of the middle morass, the teams who could have finished anywhere from 4th to 7th. The question is do they have players on the books who can be expected to perform significantly better this year, and have they improved their roster enough in order to make that leap up into the top 3, or will they remain reliant on luck in the middle section to make it through?
Truth be told, the team still looks like an also-ran. Two have become one at RB where the top two runners from last year, LeSean McCoy and Fred Jackson, are now both on the same roster, limiting the points potential. The other options at RB are either not guaranteed to be the starting back or, based on recent history, not likely to last the season. Besides which, the O-line in Buffalo is not the kind that to inspire predictions of dominant running performances, even if that’s what the Bills need given the lack of an NFL-quality QB.
The story is similar at wide receiver where Alshon Jeffrey stands out as the only option close to elite. This could be the year he pushes himself up into the top 6 or 8 receivers in the league, but if he doesn’t this could turn into a miserable year for the Two as Landry, Parker, Crabtree and Wallace are all developing or in new pastures and none of them represent anything close to a guarantee. The Miami offence promises a lot and could offer nice boost but equally the large number of mouths to feed in the new system could limit production.
Quarterback is sorted with Aaron Rodgers, assuming he stays injury free, otherwise there are risks around Carson Palmer, returning from injury, and Brett Hundley, a 5th round draft pick for the Packers who can be described as raw at best.
One of the strongest DT pairings in the league isn’t the gateway to a strong defence, with talent further down the roster patchy at best but a smattering of rookies bode well for the future.
Verdict:
Goodson has previously intimated the team has a 3 year plan so going into year 2 with a number of players with the potential for growth lines up with that. The risk is that the team will need to hit more often than they miss for this to turn into a playoff team in 2016. If the GMs have as good an eye for talent as they think they do they won’t have a problem, but either way they don’t look to have the strength to make a playoff run in 2015.
Prediction:
6-7. 2014 all over again. They’d better hope they can push on after this year, becoming the Jason Garrett of consistent middling seasons rather than the Joe Philbin.
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was bonkers. It was insane. It was so crazy it might just work. It was a once in a lifetime experience, in as much as it was brilliant and, I think, that’s about the one time in my life I want to do it. It was, of course, The DynaBowl auction day in Sheffield.
I don’t want to be negative about it – I certainly don’t feel negative about it – but looking back on the day, there were so many things that went wrong, be they with my strategy and planning, or with the way the day itself was run, but they are all part of what is, weirdly (and perhaps shamefully) one of the best days of my life. I both love and hate myself a little bit more for being able to say that.
So, a brief bit of scene setting for those not in the know. We are a UK-based fantasy football (NFL) league. We have played a redraft league for a few years and had decided to step things up to a Dynasty League (Dynasty League basically means you own your players as long as you like and try to build through the draft so you can win year after year). We threw the kitchen sink at this league though. There’s an auction to start things off. There’s full IDP (individual defensive players). There’s a starting line-up of 22 players and rosters totalling 50. There’s a salary cap, and contracts with extension costs, and the ability to structure guaranteed money in different years.
Basically, we figured if we were going to do this, we were going to do everything we could possibly want to do the first time we tried, and it was going to include every feature we could think of. Nearly.
Fantasy Leagues tend to get split into two types – those played with (relative) strangers across the internet and those played amongst a group of friends, and we are definitely part of that latter group. However, we are also part of the former. We are all split out across the country in a variety of locations and rarely get to see each other. Indeed, some of us had never met others before, bizarrely, despite all being good friends. Go figure. We do spend a fair chunk of time chatting with each other via online messaging services, especially during big sporting events. Especially during the NFL season.
Our redraft league is run through the internet and the draft that takes place is internet based. If we were going to set up a Dynasty League though we wanted to do it in style, all meeting up to launch the fucker together. And that is what the Auction Day on July 12th was all about.
The plan – we had a room in a pub booked all day. 10 men would enter, 10 men would leave. Broken shells of men, but 10 of them all leaving. Those 10 men would have bought the fictional rights to 500 players for the next several years. What could possibly go wrong?
As it turns out, two very key things could go wrong. One of us could be stuck in Turkey, and we could all drastically under-estimate the amount of time it would take to buy 500 players. Thank God we weren’t dealing with agents too.
I had foreseen some problems. Availability was always going to be an issue. That’s why I had the day picked out from January. I surveyed the league. I made sure it was good for everyone. And immediately after I picked it out I was told it wouldn’t work for one league member. So we moved it. Then one of our contingent got a job in Belgium, but he would be able to make it back over. Except that then his Belgian employers sent him to Turkey and he wouldn’t be back in Belgium until the morning of the auction. Fine – we’ll Skype him in. Except then there were plane problems and he couldn’t leave Turkey until later… And argh… I started to get that feeling that everything was crumbling around my ears.
So before I get into how the day went, the mistakes, both real and perceived, mine and others and the group as a whole, before all of that, let’s expand a little on the set-up.
Fantasy Football (NFL) is a big thing in America. I mean, in the UK, Fantasy Football (soccer) is quite big – newspapers run their leagues, Sky runs a league. There are some big prizes. But consider this – in America, during games on the scoreboards in the stadium, messages flash up to update the crowd on how many points players around the league have scored. Fantasy Football (NFL) isn’t a bit of fun around the side, it has been woven into the very fabric of the sport.
Imagine if you were reading an article in the paper about a new signing made by Chelsea in the Premier League and the end of the article had a couple of paragraphs about what the signing means for your fantasy league. That happens in America. That’s a real thing. Fantasy Football is central to the sport.
This is reflected in web options. To run your league, you can set up a free league through Yahoo or ESPN or CBS or the NFL itself, but if you’re serious you pay a website to have a fully customisable set-up, so you can change nigh on every single detail. So what do you think we’ve done?
Are we taking our hobby seriously? You bet we are. Too seriously? No such thing. OK, there is, and I am. I’m writing this aren’t I? But I am by no means the worst. Google fantasy football. Google dynasty leagues. You will disappear down a rabbit hole. People pay thousands of dollars each year to enter leagues online against strangers, with winner takes all, or most, of the prize fund. People actively seek out failing and abandoned teams (known as Orphans) for the challenge of turning them into champions.
So why such devotion, and why haven’t things gone this far with fantasy football (soccer)? I think the key is in 3 very specific things. Most North American sports can be broken down into stats very easily, and football (NFL) more than most. The number of yards running, receiving or throwing is a very simple thing to calculate, with bonus points for touchdowns. Compare that to goals and assists – the bulk of fantasy football (soccer) scoring – and you can begin to see there are more options. A typical football (soccer) match sees 3 goals – that’s very few scoring events. In the NFL each team will generate a total of 300-400 yards offence on average, with different players getting credit and earning points for those. Suddenly there’s a lot more ways to score points, and a lot more points to be scored. A canny manager has more control in fantasy football (NFL) than fantasy football (soccer).
The second reason is that in football (soccer) teams have (relatively) large squads but can only let 14 guys on the field per match. That means that your player could get rested for the big European match midweek, and you won’t know until the game kicks off. You don’t have enough information to manage your team. In the NFL, players are active for games, or inactive. The roster has 53 men in total and all could play some part, and you’ll generally know in advance if your guys will or won’t. Therefore, management is, again, more nuanced.
Finally, most fantasy football (NFL) leagues – except the one run by Sky in the UK, which follows the fantasy football (soccer) model – are set up to be individual leagues where teams compete against each other each week, building to playoffs and a superbowl, and – crucially – each player can only be owned by one team in the league. In fantasy football (soccer), everyone can field Van Persie if they want. The level of competitiveness isn’t there in fantasy football (soccer).
So that’s why it’s so great, why it’s so appealing (though having a love of NFL helps, too, of course). Now back to the DynaBowl. I set up the auction. I then had to craft some rules.
The rules. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had some ideas, but would they work. I searched the interwebs. I signed up at websites. I posted on forums. I read archives. And I wrote and I honed. My final rules, I have just found out, clock in at a scary over 7,400 words. Seriously. That’s nearly as long as the dissertation that got me my degree. And they are a fucking work of art.
I thought of everything I could. I thought of all the ways I’d try to gain an advantage and then wrote rules so I couldn’t. I made them as simple to read as possible, but they are still quite complex. We had robust conversations. Well, the people who read them did. Not everyone has yet. Still. They trust that the rules will be there when they need them. No one has found my secret loophole.
The next thing was research. I knew some players. I knew the main players. The redraft league had given me that. I didn’t know most of the defensive players. I didn’t know the depth players. I didn’t know the secret players who might have a break-out season. I didn’t know how consistent or otherwise players tended to be, with regard to point scoring. I didn’t know how much of an impact a trade or free agency signing might have. How would he fit in with the new coach’s offensive line schemes? That kind of thing. So I read lots and lots more. And I read the questions everyone else posed. And I absorbed and I came up with values I thought players would have and I came up with a strategy for who I wanted on my roster.
In the meantime, as Commissioner of the league, I had another duty. An important duty. Every league member was paying me £20 for the first year and £10 each year thereafter to run the league, pay for the site and pay for the prizes. This is not for profit. Anything that didn’t go on the site was going on the prizes, and I needed a trophy. I looked at websites, I visited trophy shops. It turned out they had all closed. I found one run out of an old man’s garage and paid him a visit. He gave me some catalogues. I was *this* close to buying a cup. It was fancy, but it came out of a magazine. It was nice, but it wasn’t special. This league needed special.
A friend of mine makes art and models. Things like dragons and fawns and night elves. They are really, really good. We were chatting about stuff in general and I mentioned the league and the trophy search and I suddenly realised – maybe, if paid enough, she could create the ideal trophy.
Amongst my friends, the NFL championship is referred to as the Owl. Not just any Owl, the Superb Owl. I commissioned my friend to produce a Superb Owl for me. And it is fucking superb. See for yourself:
The Owl on display in the DynaBowl League Trophy Room
See… superb. I teased the league in the build-up to the auction, but I didn’t let them know what I had done. It was to be a surprise.
Anyway, back to the best of times, the worst of times. We were meeting in Sheffield. I don’t live in Sheffield. I live a long way from Sheffield. I allowed an hour longer for my journey than was suggested. It was a beautiful day and everyone else was on the road. I used up all of my hour and arrived at the pub at about 5 minutes past midday. 5 minutes late. Not a good precedent. Fortunately we were waiting for others to arrive too. I didn’t keep too many people waiting.
We got into the pub, relaxed with a drink before getting started, and then went to our ‘function’ room to set up. It was a decent room. A good size for all of us. Unfortunately we all had at least one laptop and/or iPad, and we were using a projector. And, as discussed, it was a lovely day. That room got hot, quick. We were promised a fan. It never arrived. It would have just moved hot air around anyway. It wasn’t a huge loss.
So once we set up I unveiled the Owl to gasps of delight, and flashes of cameras from the local press.
My one chance to proudly hold up the Owl
And then we got down to business. I wanted a bit of pageantry. We drew marbles in an FA Cup style to determine who called the next player for auction (we stuck with the same order throughout, we didn’t do this every single time). The first person called was Neil. Neil had no idea who he wanted to nominate. It was an inauspicious start.
Once Neil had nominated the bidding got under way and, with the help of a broken chair leg for a gavel, I announced the sale closed. The player, Cam Newton, quarterback for the Caroline Panthers and general all-round stud player. He was bought by Mike for $50. Mike subsequently revealed that he had not planned to spend $50 on a quarterback or to bid on Cam Newton. This is what the pressure of a live auction can do to a man. By the end, I think we had all experienced this to one extreme or another.
This process went on. Most people had no idea who they wanted to nominate each time it came round to them. I was probably the worst for it. I was juggling running the auction, entering all the sales into a database, keeping people up to date with how much they had spent AND trying to buy players for my own team. There was too much happening. It is now 3 weeks later and I still haven’t fully recovered my brain function. I made a lot of mistakes. But before we get to those, let’s stop a moment to watch a lengthy video of the first round of purchases being made.
As you can see, I am well placed to take up a professional auctioneering job, should commissioning fall through.
I am going to go into detail (“What?!? This isn’t detail yet???” – you) around my strategy and how I messed up and what I felt about the way in which things went from a buying players perspective, but first I wanted to talk more generally about what I learned from doing this whole thing.
PRACTICAL LESSONS
1) If you’re thinking about doing something like this – a live auction with a bunch of friends – always err on the side of caution with regards to time. We had estimated that we’d start of at 30-40 players per hour – that’s one player sold every 90-120 seconds – and would get up to somewhere between one player every 30-60 seconds.
We thought big names would go first, with lots of bidding, hence the longer time-frames, and then we’d get down to a lot of $1-3 players – barely any bidding. This wasn’t the case. As I mentioned before, most of the time people didn’t know who they were nominating next. There were lots of players that got a “Who?” reaction around the table which meant, before bidding could commence everyone had to look them up – their name, team, position, past performance – and then make a snap decision to bid or not. It all added up.
For 500 players to be sold off, we’d probably need to have started at 9am and gone for 12+ hours. As it was we went from 1pm until about 7:30pm as the last train from Sheffield for some team managers left at around 8pm.
I never thought we would be done by 8pm, but even if we’d stayed until 11pm, closing time, we wouldn’t have made it to 500 players.
Let’s get down to bizniz
2) Have a contingency. If there’s a risk that you might not be able to get through the whole thing in one day, have a plan for what you do next. We had to make one up pretty much on the spot. Those who could stay on talked in the bar about how to sort it and then I had to figure out the finer details.
To explain what we did, we took the positions one by one (or in a couple of cases, grouped them together). People submitted a list in preference order along with their maximum bid and some vague instructions (like “If you get X, don’t bid on Y”). I then collated all of that information and worked out who got which player. Teams went into a ‘first-preference’ order to break ties, dropping the team who won the player to last on the list.
It was a complex process and more gut than scientific to be honest. The complications over person A put player X 5th on his list and bid $10 while person B put them 1st with a bid of $8 (and that’s very much a simple example) meant I had to bring my own interpretation to it.
I like to think that during my time in leagues with the other GMs means that I am trusted as being fair and rational and impartial in these situations and that’s why it worked. I wasn’t questioned once about where the players ended up and for how much, though the big difference in player evaluations made that easier – there weren’t many instances of teams ending up with their 10th choice on their list.
Still, I would recommend having some kind of plan set up and agreed in advance.
Phil’s about to buy someone – that’s what I had just decided
3) Have some kind of contingency for if someone can’t attend. Who knows what can happen, especially when you set your auction date so far in advance. We were caught out by one member’s job situation taking him to the other side of the continent and we mad as good a stab at covering for him as possible.
I bought him a few players – none that I was targeting myself of course – when the info he had managed to send through at short notice seemed a bit shallow. He couldn’t have known that the values for the players he had given me would go above his maximum, and there was no ability to adjust on the fly so I took some decisions.
This wouldn’t work with a different group of people, which is why a more robust plan should be in place before it goes ahead, just in case.
In the end, he’s ended up with, arguably, a decent but not great. At least he’ll be competitive and, as Commissioner, it’s in my interest to make sure the league as a whole and all teams individually remain competitive.
The look of a man who wants to show the Racists how to properly build a roster
4) Try to find somewhere with air conditioning.
5) Get someone to be auctioneer. Someone who is not buying a team. I managed to pull together a pretty decent team, but I made a fair few mistakes along the way and didn’t follow my plan. Not having to run the auction itself would have allowed me to pay more attention to the bids I was making and how much I was spending.
On a related note, if you can rope 2 people in (and I get that getting someone to be auctioneer could be hard enough), then having someone separate to enter all the sale details as you go would be ideal.
James plots his next move
AUCTION LESSONS
1) Defensive players. No one knew how to value them. The big names went for big bucks, and that’s fair. Robert Quinn and JJ Watt are behemoths and will score more than anyone else on defense, but all my researched showed that the next tier below tended to be a) very similar in performance and b) relatively inconsistent. This means that paying for the 7th best linebacker last season is basically the same as paying for the 25th best linebacker last season.
Why, then, did I make Ryan Shazier my most expensive defensive player, at $16? He’s a rookie linebacker. He may be terrible – he’s never played one professional snap – and yet I made him the joint 8th most expensive linebacker.
Just by way of comparison, I got Kyle WIlliams, the best performing defensive tackle (DT) in 2013 (by 24 points) for $6. Each team only needs to field 1 DT, but can field 2. If we assume that every team fields 1 and there’s even skill distribution (and there isn’t, as I have 3 of the top 10 from 2013), Williams scored 70 points more than the fifth best DT in 2013, and 89.5 more than the 10th.
It’s no guarantee of future performance of course, but that’s potentially a substantial point advantage, especially when you consider the most expensive DT went for $26.
We won’t see just how good that purchase was, or how inconsistent the scoring turns out to be for defensive players until the season takes place, but I think it’s clear this is the area we knew the least about and were least prepared for. Those contracts will even out over time as they need to be renewed or players hit free agency, but for now they are all over the place.
Everyone is focused on what matters most to them. To Ian, that’s the camera.
2) Quarterbacks. In any given week there are up to 32 players starting as QB across the league. This league requires exactly 10 to start each week. There are some excellent QBs out there who can score a lot of points, however, given the requirement to start 3 or 4 WRs and 2 or 3 RBs which means that those pools of major talent would be in high demand, I had decided my strategy was to pay low fo QBs and spend on performers in those positions.
I was right, as well. I could have picked up Matt Ryan, Phillip Rivers and Tony Romo – three players with several top 10 fantasy seasons behind them – for a combined $25.
Unfortunately, I spent $64 on my three QBs – one of whom is Ryan – but the other two are overpriced gambles, RG3 and Johnny Manziel. RG3 could be a top 3 player – he was 5th in his rookie season and only 27 points behind Drew Brees in 1st – but his injury record and inconsistent play in his second season show the direction this gamble could take.
I’m not unhappy to have RG3. I actually think his upside is more likely and he’ll be a great player to watch this season, but I’d rather have spent less and invested the extra money in WRs or RBs.
Related to this, Aaron Rodgers, arguably the best QB in the league and with many seasons ahead of him, was the highest valued player at the auction, sold for $77. Given the prices for other players, this to me was an overspend. Despite being a Packers fan, I had ruled out going for Rodgers before the auction because I thought he’d be too expensive and I think I was proved right.
Ultimately this boils down to how many points can, say, $40 buy you? (Matt Stafford scored 1.5 points per game fewer than Aaron Rodgers in 2013, 4 fewer in 2012, and cost $44 less at auction). Could the investment of $20 in two RBs or WRs net you a gain of more than 4 points per game over the players actually bought? I think that’s entirely possible. If I had spent $40 less on my QBs, as I intended, I would have invested in a couple of other bigger players.
But hey, it’ll all come out in the wash, and maybe the Tamworth Two, who paid that $77 for Rodgers, will be proven right with a trip to the Owl.
Geoff doesn’t think much of David’s purchase, while James counts his pennies for the Rodgers purchase.
3) Rookies. This was the foundation of my plan. I had read theories around structuring a dynasty roster which said it was a better strategy to go for longer term, don’t look to go for year one. Why? Because a team that is built to win from year 1 rarely has the depth to win for much longer afterwards and so requires immediate work to rebuild. By investing in youth (younger studs too, not just rookies), you hopefully prime your team to be stacked for years to come. This strategy may have a sneaky added advantage of giving you a bad finish in season 1 and so netting you a high draft pick in the first rookie draft too.
I went after this big time, with a combination of rookies who had high upside (Jordan Matthews at Philadelphia, for example) and those I thought were assured to be at the least very solid for years to come (Brandin Cooks, New Orleans). I also threw the dice in a couple of areas. At Tight End (TE) I have taken 4 young guys who may or may not come to something. If one of them hits to any degree I should be in a good position.
Of course, there are no guarantees any of these guys hit, and that’s why I also made sure to grab some guys who were proven to some degree, but had years ahead of them. AJ Green of the Bengals was my main purchase, the second most expensive player at auction at $71, and alongside him I picked up some second and third year guys who can hopefully break out this year. At least I know they can already perform to a reasonable standard in the league.
Finally, I grabbed a couple of veteran WRs cheap in the post-auction portion of proceedings. Anquan Boldin and James Jones should provide something for at least a year. They may not set the world on fire, but they provide options.
The same kind of thing with RBs, except here I tried to pair guys up. I only succeeded with 49ers veteran and rookie combo of Frank Gore and Carlos Hyde, but I still feel I have a good mix of experience, youth and rookies, along with a couple of players who could surprise or could just disappear.
It may all backfire, of course, with nary a stud between them, but I can’t imagine all of them busting. Even if they don’t all become studs, there should be enough players with a good future ahead of them to keep me in with a shout for a few years.
David is shocked at the Flacco valuation while Ian intently ignores him
4) Contracts. Of course, the one thing I had forgotten to factor in was contracts. We have a limit as to the number of contract years that can be assigned at the start which means that some/many of these players will need renewing or releasing in a year or two. If I offer short term contracts to young players I run the risk of not being able to afford to keep them when that time comes around, but if I offer them longer contracts and they bust, I end up wasting money on them. It’s a fine balance, but one that effects everyone. The potential issue with all the rookies is if too many of them do too well too early and I can’t afford to keep them all, but that would be a nice problem to have and one I’ll worry about if or when it comes up.
Chris looks studious – you’d not guess he’s from Manchester
5) Other teams. It was really good to see the variety of approaches taken and I was very pleased by the balance across the league. I think some teams are better than others, but there’s no one there who will be either winning or losing all their games this year. I was concerned some teams might end in a terrible state and that poor balance might lead to managers wanting to leave the league but I don’t think there’s a risk of that. I have my own favourites for the title this year, but I think it’s pretty wide open. Despite my plans for the future, I think I stand a chance of the playoffs this season, and if that’s achieved, who knows what will happen?
So overall it’s been a great deal of fun so far, and it’s opened my eyes to a lot of things. It could have been a farce and, in many ways, it was a bit, but we’ve ridden through the storm and now can’t wait to get down to the real business, when we see just how wrong we were about the players we bought.
Laughter after David unveils an hilarious stat about Colin Kaepernick
In January 1998, two Tamworth pigs escaped as they were being unloaded at an abattoir and went on to become a national and international cause celebre. Subsequently named Butch and Sundance, the pair were spared their certain death when The Daily Mail bought them and their exclusive story. Sixteen years later, their story is just a distant memory (the pigs died in 2010 and 2011 aged 13 and 14), but it comes rushing back to me when I ask Mat Ward and James ‘Goody’ Goodson about their DynaBowl franchise. Despite being awarded the an organisation in the fantasy NFL start-up, the pair have yet to name or locate their team and I want to know about their plans.
“Has anyone taken Tamworth?” asks Ward, an experienced tri-athlete and clearly the ‘Butch’ of this partnership, “Is Tamworth still available?”
At least the pair are singing from the same hymnsheet. “Tamworth? I hope Tamworth is available. It’s the type of intimidating locale we should be aiming for,” says Sundance… sorry, Goody.
It’s difficult to tell if they’re serious, but if the stadium plans on display in their office on the 85th floor of The Shard in central London is anything to go by then Tamworth is in for some serious regeneration. The 250,000 capacity stadium would be the largest in the world, something truly unprecedented, but at the moment it is only a pipedream.
As they appear coy about the plans for their franchise I change tack and ask about their working relationship.
“Our working relationship is very much in its nascent stages,” says Ward. “Although, I think we are agreed that James is the Head Coach and I am the waterboy.” Goody is a little more candid. ” I don’t think there will be one lead, more of a synergy of visions. A dynamic hybrid of wit and cunning. Our relationship will be the definition of ‘nuanced’. I don’t even care if that doesn’t make sense.”
It’s clear they are close. Their office features two offset desks pointing in opposite directions; between them what’s normally referred to as a ‘kissing bench’ ensures the pair are always on hand to each other.
Ward & Goodson’s choice of office furniture
Goody sets the bar high for the partnership. ” To summarise, I think Mat and I will be the best joint managers since Steve Gritt and Alan Curbishley took over Charlton in 1991. You have been warned.”
Of course, the close working relationship can’t last, with Ward due to return to America in under a month, narrowly missing out on a chance to attend the DynaBowl auction in Sheffield on July 12.
“I’d love to make an appearance at the auction, but unfortunately it’ll have to be via video conference rather than in person,” he laments. But being bi-continental has its advantages. “With the time difference we will be able to work on our team approximately 20 hours a day without losing sleep.” It’s also clear he’s also been learning from the best: “We’ve managed to have a brief conversation or two with some league connections. I can’t reveal any names, but I will say that I’ve picked up some tips on spying on NFL teams in training.”
Belichick – “An inspiration and Adonis”
Goody agrees that a man on the ground across the pond will be advantageous, but it’s also obvious he expects a lot from his colleague. ” I like a tight ship. I would be disappointed if I don’t have a scout report in my inbox each Friday after Thursday Night Football from Mat.”
The light tone of the conversation comes down a little when I ask about their preparations. Both men took charge of teams in the Chatterbowl in 2013 and will be doing so again in 2014, but the DynaBowl is a whole different beast – one of Mason Verger’s killer pigs to the Chatterbowl’s sweet Tamworth piglets. So how do they feel their experiences in the Chatterbowl will prepare them?
” I love two things in life,” says Goody, “Hazing and spreadsheets. Both are mutually beneficial to the NFL. I enjoyed learning about it as a complete noob and got sucked in to reading several blogs or columns a week about it. By about 3 weeks in, I had a few spreadsheets on the go and knew who was under performing and who I wanted in the free agency.”
His preparation and research paid off as he went to the playoffs as the number 1 seed, but a disastrous 56 point performance in the semi-finals put paid to his title dreams, eventually securing the 3rd place finish. “It was tough and I still have limited knowledge on the whole thing,” he confesses. “In one way our inexperience may help us see the wood through the trees. Or maybe blow up in our faces with more busts than booms.”
Ward wasn’t quite as successful, narrowly missing the playoffs in a tight division that came down to the last week. He subsequently ‘won’ the loser ladder and a 9th place finish in the league. ” It was a pretty steep learning curve but part of me feels that coming to league with no preconceptions helped. It will be good to start the new season with a broader knowledge base of players. The big difference is the inclusion of defensive players. I’ve head of this Revis guy and the bully guy but that’s about it.”
Of course, you shouldn’t take those statements at face value. The approach of the auction means it’s every team’s duty to sell misinformation about knowledge and targets. Underestimate these two at your peril.
” James Goodson is one of the sharpest minds in fantasy sports. I’m relying on him to pick up most of the Denver Broncos’ offense remarkably cheaply again,” says Ward, referring to Goody’s Chatterbowl strategy.
One of the targets that it’s pretty well known they’re keen on is Andrew Luck, but recent analysis has shown he might not be the valuable investment people think he is. What do the pair make of that?
Mat takes the lead: “Andrew Luck is the greatest prospect since Elway. Good ‘Luck’ outbidding us for him.” But as he says it the air turns heavy. Is this the first sign of troubled waters in Tamworth?
“Mat took my only Andrew Luck joke,” says Goody, through gritted teeth, before letting on the terms he might consider sinking to should they be out bid for the QB of his dream and be negotiating a trade. “It’s no secret that I [will] suck for Luck.”
And why does he view the QB nicknamed Andrew The Giant? ” He’s an all round nice guy who falls within a nice ethical framework for our franchise. Which will probably be based out of Tamworth. No racists, no bullies, no safeties that have got away with homicide. You get the picture.”
So this is a franchise that will be investing for the long term? “Seriously, I think it’s a trap to get too focused on the medium to long-term and be always playing for 3 seasons’ time,” says Ward. “The key focus should be on the upcoming season.”
” Mat is right,” says Goody, the storm clouds now passed. “You can’t be too caught up on the long term. Even the most ardent Draft scouts regularly get it wrong. The average peak for most players is only a couple of years, which means, although it’s a high risk environment, the continual turnover of the next ‘big thing’ is pretty accommodating.”
“Still, that doesn’t mean I won’t be turning up to Sheffield with several spreadsheets, my Bluetooth headset on, and Mat on speed dial. We will have the best war room. As Mat always says, buy cheap, buy twice. We want the best players.”
As frequently as the pair speak as if they are the left and right sides of one brain, ever so often a disparity seeps through, as happens when I ask the key questions.
Who are the pre-auction favourites?
Goody: Whoever gets Andrew Luck.
Ward: Us. Next Question.
And what’s a realistic goal for the team going into the inaugural season?
Goody: To have a jolly good time and try our best. Hurrah!
Ward: DynaBowl or bust!
Either way, for Butch and Sundance, the DynaBowl is jumping in at the deep end.