Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - Frequently Asked Fantasy Questions

More things happen, right? Where you facilitate activity. So zero dollar bids versus restricting movement. Right. It takes away the fun of the league. There's less to talk about. And if there's less to talk about, the league's just going to be less dynamic. It's going to be less engaging. Playoff wise. We've talked about this before. Best weeks for fantasy playoffs. I think the general rule is not week 17.

Yes, it should be. Please, people, don't do it. This is the time to change it right now. If you're in one of those leagues that has non-fractional scoring in week 17, which is probably their hand in hand, you should move it to end your league, go weeks 14 through 16, whatever it might be, 15 and 16 if you're in a smaller league, and move to ending the season when relevant players are playing, okay, and change the fractional score. Yeah, when you get into week 17 and you've had a juggernaut.

uh tearing it up and i'll and you're let's say this year you're running uh elliott's your run maybe you have deck you get into your championship the player who carried you there they're not playing and that's just garbage it's but but my yes voice of public opinion isn't that just part of the strategy where you got to go and draft players that are from okay teams that

I can't even say it. You said that was the whiniest voice of public opinion that has ever spoken. Yeah, I've heard that arguments of, well, you need to make sure you get players who are just not as good. Arguments for full point scoring are incredibly good by comparison to arguments for week 17 playoffs. I will tell you this. I'm not joking every year that we've done the show.

after week seven or when week 17 is rolling around we get a couple tweets like i should i should have listened to you guys on week 17 and now i'm in my championship and i don't have my star running back or star wide receiver this is garbage piggyback question how do you feel about owners who are not in contention for the championship putting in waiver claims for top pickups this is where we may i think we might disagree really with what a a uh

opinions out there i don't think there's a unanimous opinion on this but for me i love it i do too i love it i don't think it's to me it's not well we're we are the elite we're in the playoffs peons plebs please shut it down you are not playing anymore you're like uh no i'm going to continue to play because uh spoiler playing the role of the spoiler when you have nothing left at least you have that and i can ruin your day

And that makes me feel good. It is a little bit of a jerk move sometimes. That's how it feels when you're the other guy. Yes. And it feels good. Where you draw the line is you can't have teams in contention petitioning other teams to sign players away. That's called collusion.

Yeah, exactly. That's collusion. That's straight wrong. But the reason I think that we lean towards liking that is similar to what Andy just said a minute ago. That's the theme is more, more activity. Because what's the alternative? Let's say you don't have players that are out of the playoffs being active or involved anymore. They just kind of, they don't care.

They're apathetic. Is that the kind of fantasy football league you want to be in, an apathetic league where, look, if they're making those waiver moves, they're also tracking your championship game and your playoff matchups, and they care about who's winning, and they're watching football, caring about, oh, is it Andy or is it Mike winning this game and going back and forth? Those leagues are exciting and fun. If I'm like, oh, I'm not in the playoffs, I'm checking out. I don't care. Tell me next year who won the championship.

It's twofold here. One is this is one of the reasons we like Keeper Leaks because you can be invested in signing players beyond being in contention and wanting those players on your roster for potential keepers. And two, it's another reason we do things that make it fun for non-contention teams towards the end of the year, whether it would be the fact that we don't.

incentivized tanking by making a lottery out of the bottom four teams or the fact we have you know in one of our leagues we have the five and six team compete against each other for that pick um and if say if you're in a if you're playing in a cash league take some of that grand prize and have a small winnings for top points of the week you keep people you keep people engaged all throughout the year

even weeks 16 championship week the team with the absolute worst record you're playing for something and to me and and that also involves they they're active on the waiver wire so just i'm all for this all right let's talk about some commissioner frequently asked questions when is it okay to veto a trade oh my goodness is there is there a question we get asked more than this one

Never. There's one reason to veto a trade, one reason only. And I would veto a trade 100% of the time. If it's with Jason. Oh, sorry. It's collusion, meaning if there are teams that are kind of teaming up with one another to make a strategy that is good for one team.

even if it turns out better for both teams, but at the expense of another. Like, you know, if two players are really both need this guy to lose this week, and so they team up and make a trade to make one of the teams stronger, that's two teams working in cahoots, working together. Every team should be working independently against one another. And as soon as that breaks, then you've got a problem. Otherwise, if someone fleeces someone in a trade, too bad. Yeah, I mean, the only time that...

this comes into question at all is if you're in like, I don't know, like a family league or a beginner's league and someone's blatantly taking advantage. But the reality is you have to learn. And there are no guarantees in trades. There is no guarantee that what looks like on paper is a one-sided trade will end up a one-sided trade in the end. And so you have to let people.

make their own bed and then sleep in it if it's not collusion. And that is, we all strongly feel that way. We feel like it's better for your league. It stops players from being hesitant about making moves, which makes your league less active and exciting and less discussion and trades. You want to facilitate trading. You want to facilitate discussion and rants. And then, you know what, five weeks down the line, all of a sudden that trade might look a lot different because you just don't know how these things pan out. We've been in enough leagues for enough years.

to know that when a trade looks like a fleecing, sometimes it just plain isn't. Yeah, and I'll throw in here because we don't, we advocate the time to veto a trade is essentially never. Turn on instant trades. Don't have this two-day waiting period where now you've created a problem where, well, we made an agreement at Friday at 9 p.m. Oh, oh, that it's not going to clear before the weekends, and now this trade is.

going to blow up and we have to put it on hold. Just we're grownups here. We're all playing. Sort of sometimes. But just if a trade is agreed on between player A and player B, just let it go. Yeah. And if it's collusion, you can undo it. Right. I mean, you don't, you don't have to like affect every single trade during the whole year with a two-day waiting period when only one trade might have an impact. Exactly. Most leagues think about how many trades get vetoed in that year. What is it like?

One or two of... I've heard some leagues where it's... Well, yeah. It's ridiculous. That's where you need to rewind the tape about, you know, two minutes and just listen again. Don't beat it like that. When is the best weekend to hold your draft? What's the general strategy with drafting? After week three of the fantasy... Yes, pre-season. Well, obviously. Yes, after week three of the regular season, you really know how teams are working. No, uh...

In the preseason, after week three, that basically is, that means after everybody that's going to get injured, you know, has gotten injured. Generally. Generally. You're basically trying to prevent injury to starters. To starters so you don't draft everybody before the preseason starts. I will admit, it is hard to wait that long, though. Because when you get into August, I mean, you are just.

you know, salivating at fantasy drafts. And I want it every day. And then it's like, okay, I want to draft before the preseason. I want to draft. Oh, I saw one week of preseason. I want to draft. But after week three is probably the best week. To me, the hardest problem for waiting is when I feel like I have a gold nugget of information on a player and the more you wait.

The more someone else has a chance to figure that out or for that player to do something in preseason. Let's draft. And destroy their ADP to a point where I don't want to draft them anymore. Beware of Labor Day that's always around that time of year. And look, plan your draft early. There's a good resource we've used before called Doodle. You can go to doodle.com. It basically you can put in, I don't know, let's say five different draft days that would work. And then you have all of your league mates go.

to the link that you provide for them and put in their availability. Maybe I'm available for three of those five days. Jason's available for four of them. Mike's available for two. It'll show you which day everybody's available for and beat. How did we ever find?

like a draft day before because people used to call people on the telephone no i remember trying to schedule on facebook and we would we would start in june because maybe even earlier because we knew it would take two months to find one single day where everyone can do it now if you're in a dynasty startup when should you do that draft uh the o dynasty startup you can it depends on how you want to do it with handle it with the rookies i've experienced

both before the draft and after the draft. That's really just, that's up to you. I would do it after the NFL draft. I don't like the idea of drafting people based on their college tape, but not knowing where they land. So I would do it after the NFL draft. Anytime after that is fine. You don't have to wait until preseason. And in fact, that's part of what's great about having a dynasty league in your, you know, in your,

this is a hard word to come up in your catalog yeah there you go that's perfect mike you should you should talk for me in your catalog of leagues because it allows you to to have activity in the months where you know redraft leagues have none as far as rookie drafts for me you know basically right when the NFL draft is done have at it have at it get the new league you're going how do you go about booting a friend oh no out of a league if they're inactive

I talk to Andy and I said take care of business. I'm the commissioner and I have no heart. This is a really tough scenario because we are playing a game and you don't want to destroy your friendship with your best friend because they are not active and you don't want them in the league. I don't have an answer for this question. You don't have an answer? I don't know how to kick your friend out of a league.

Well, you certainly don't go from zero to 100 on the kickout of the league. That's the answer. The answer is you set the ground rules for the league and you make them public to everybody. And then you give that person an opportunity to get in line, okay, to get in line before you kick them out. And you don't have to do that in some jackbutt way and be a jerk about it. Like, you know, sometimes commissioners of fantasy leagues can be very similar to like the president of an HOA.

Oh, look, they're the worst. And you get a little bit of like a taste of power and then you, you know, use that to. And then you drive around my street and like, hey, you were parked on the street. Yeah. At 1230 a.m. No parking in the yard. Yeah, because we're cool. And we have friends over at 1230. So you don't want to be power hungry about it. Just explain. Look, we're trying to build a very fun league. And you need to be active to be in this league. If you don't want to be, that's okay. You can leave.

And you say that in a nice way. You say, hey, you could go be a co-commissioner. You can go do something else. But we want to get somebody in here who wants to be active. Get a list of people waiting to get into your league. Always have that going because that can help put pressure on people who are kind of on the cause of they're like, I don't know if I want to stay in this league or not. Sometimes the reason they don't leave.