Cool Rules: Playoff Edition
There’s an expected way to go about the playoffs in fantasy leagues. Most leagues allow about half of the teams into the playoffs, start a tournament in week 13 and crown a champion in week 16. It’s fun, but is it as fun as it could be?
Let’s try to spice things up a bit.
Cool Rule #1 – Home Flex Advantage
The best thing about dominating your competition throughout the season and entering the post-season as the number one seed is a bye in the first round in most fantasy leagues. In the NFL however, the number one seed in the playoffs not only gets a bye, they also get home field advantage.
I’ve always thought the best fantasy leagues are those that try to emulate the league it’s trying to portray as closely as possible. If that’s the goal when creating a league, why don’t we try to give an advantage to the team that earned a higher seed throughout the season? Obviously, there is no such thing as a home field on the fantasy gridiron, so we have to come up with the next best thing.
I’ve heard of leagues that try to include a home field advantage in the fantasy playoffs by directly awarding points to the higher seeded team. The commissioner just takes the average amount of points the higher seed scored during the regular season minus the lower seed’s average. For example, if the number one seed averaged 125 points per week during the first 13 weeks of the fantasy season and the number four seed averaged only 104, the number one seed would enter the matchup with a twenty-one point cushion.
That’s certainly one way to award an advantage during the playoffs to the team that had the better regular season. I’ve played in leagues that do it and it’s alright, but I thought there had to be a more creative way to add the home field advantage element to fantasy leagues. I introduce to you the Home Flex Advantage (HFA).
The HFA states that the higher seeded team in a playoff matchup gets to select what position the two teams will use in the flex that week. Not only will the higher seed chose what position and player he or she will start in the flex, their competition must start a player at the same position.
Imagine you have the fourth seed going into the post-season. It’s a six team playoff, so you’ll take on the five seed in round one. Each team starts one quarterback, two running backs, three wide receivers, a tight end, a kicker, a defense and a RB/WR/TE flex. You’re roster has a stacked backfield with Jamal Charles, Matt Forte and Eddie Lacy atop the depth chart. Meanwhile, your competition has on Ray Rice, Zac Stacy and BenJarvus Green-Ellis as the top tailbacks on his roster. You could gain a rather large advantage by choosing running back as the flex position for that week’s matchup.
Obviously, the strategy could completely backfire. Green-Ellis could score two touchdowns and Lacy could go down with an injury, but that’s just part of the strategy that is involved in the rule.
The next week, you take on the number one seed and he has Adrian Peterson, LeSean McCoy and Knowshon Moreno on his roster. Instead of allowing you to play all three of your workhorse backs however, he may want to force you to decide which one to bench. Noticing that you have Tony Gonzalez as your starting tight end with only Dallas Clark backing him up, he could choose to use tight end, where he has Jimmy Graham and Greg Olson.
Many leagues that incorporate the HFA rule use it only until the league’s championship game. Usually, title games take place at a neutral location, so there shouldn’t be an advantage to either team.
I’ll leave the details up to you and the rest of your league, but I strongly encourage you to consider using the HFA rule. It adds strategy and makes for great smack talk, both when it works and especially when it backfires.
Cool Rule #2 – Week 17 Pro Bowl
Most fantasy leagues end their season in week 16 to avoid having key players sit out due to their NFL team having already locked up their playoff position. I’ve been burned by it, so I completely understand why leagues cut the season short. The problem it creates is there’s still a week of NFL statistics that go unused.
I’ve heard of the standard week 17 fantasy Pro Bowl where the winner of each division creates a roster full of only players from that division and that team competes with the other divisions for a small prize. That sounds like fun for the team that wins the division, but what about everybody else?
My favorite way to do a fantasy league Pro Bowl is to have each owner submit a Pro Bowl lineup. They can use players from any roster, but they must follow a couple rules.
First, each team must use at least one position player from every team in the league. So if the league has 12 teams, you must have at least 12 starting positions for your week 17 contest. I prefer to just double the amount of starting spots the league has or start three players at every skill position. I also like to get rid of flex spots in the Pro Bowl to force owners to think harder about what players make their roster.
Second, each owner must start at least two rookies on their Pro Bowl roster. This forces owners to take some chances and introduces even more strategy to the contest.
At the end of week 17 you award a small prize to the team that scores the most points, but the fun doesn’t end there. You also award a prize to the owner of the player that was selected the most among all Pro Bowl rosters. If you want to make it even more interesting you can disqualify the players that are used by their own owners, which adds even more strategy to the contest. For example, if you have Josh Gordon on your roster, select him to your Pro Bowl roster and he’s started on more rosters than any other player, you can’t win the prize.
Playing a Pro Bowl this way gets everybody involved and makes for an exciting way to end a season. You also give everybody in the league one last chance at winning some cash, including those in the middle of rebuilding their dynasty.
Cool Rule #3 – The Ultimate Loser
Many fantasy leagues have a consolation bracket for those that miss the playoffs. It extends the season of the teams that don’t qualify for the post-season, which I’m always in favor of. Some leagues award some type of prize to the winner of that tournament, giving them something to play for. That I’m not quite as open to.
I once read the strongest motivation for a person is fear. So instead of giving an award to somebody for winning the loser’s bracket in a dynasty league, perhaps we should dish out a punishment for losing it. The team that loses every game of the consolation bracket in one of my leagues is known as The Ultimate Loser.
I prefer to make the “prize” for being The Ultimate Loser a tad embarrassing and something that lasts forever. The most common name for the consolation bracket in any fantasy leagues is the “Toilet Bowl” so I thought it fitting that the punishment for becoming The Ultimate Loser includes a toilet.
The “prize” is a pink toilet seat that is bedazzled with the names of every owner that has “won” it. Not only does the “winner” have to take a picture with the prize (which is put on our league website’s Wall of Shame), they have to wear it around their neck during the entire veteran free agent auction and rookie draft the next year (it’s a salary cap league).
Missing the playoffs is awful no matter what league you’re in. It’s even more unpleasant if you’re forced to risk wearing a pink toilet seat around your neck at the next season’s draft.
Before the season started, I wrote about another “Cool Rule” that is my absolute favorite to incorporate into dynasty leagues and certainly fits under the “Playoff Edition” heading. Check it out, along with a couple others, here.
To see a picture of The Ultimate Loser with his prize this season, make sure to follow me on Twitter. @dmeylor22
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