Building a Realistic Dynasty League: How Fantasy Can Better Reflect the NFL
At its heart, fantasy football is an attempt to replicate the NFL so that we armchair fans can feel like a coach or general manager. Because the game has grown so much, we’ve introduced a lot of elements that aren’t “realistic” but that’s always in an attempt to get closer to realism in another way. Starting two quarterbacks is obviously not how NFL teams work but it does help to replicate the importance of that position.
There are a thousand types of league around now. All tweak their scoring and settings to try and pose an interesting challenge – and variety is great. However, I believe that the basic game of fantasy football has veered quite far away from how the NFL actually works. So I wanted to investigate how and where it differs and how leagues could be built that reflect the NFL more accurately.
What is important to the NFL?
In the last 20 years, the NFL has undergone a metamorphosis. It’s transitioned from being a league played out in the running game to one increasingly spread out and passing-based. We know rule changes and schemes have led to an explosion of passing statistics. QBs and wide receivers now consistently put up numbers that would have got them into the Hall of Fame a couple of decades previously. Teams spend two thirds of their time with at least three WRs on the field. I remember when nickel back was a part-time position. Now nose tackle is the endangered species.
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When trying to understand how NFL teams value players, we have hurdles to overcome. We don’t know how they really think. There are limited snaps and they go out of their way to sow disinformation about payers. But there’s at least one way we can really see how they feel – with the way they spend their money. In a league with a salary cap, every team is stretched in some way. Seeing how they allocate limited budgets gives us an idea of how they value players. Here are all the players in the NFL ranked by 2018 salary cap hit ranked by position:
As we’d expect, the NFL is dominated by quarterbacks. 14 of the 15 highest-paid players in the NFL are QBs. The other one (Ndamukong Suh) was recently cut by his team for being far too expensive.
Bunched together after QB is five other positions. Wide receivers, cornerbacks, offensive line, edge rushers and defensive line. WR and CB are positions dedicated to the passing game. Pass-rushers and DTs are increasingly pass-rushers first. Offensive linemen are becoming more and more defined by pass protection over run blocking.
After them, we see linebacker, running back, safety and tight end all bunched together. Linebackers and running backs have dropped in salary in tandem with the drop in importance of the running game.
Down at the bottom, we see the specialists. Fullbacks, kickers, and punters are all minor concerns to NFL teams’ front offices.
What is important in fantasy football leagues?
This is quite a different situation. Most leagues are dominated by two positions: RB and WR. The big debate over the last few seasons has just been about which of those positions is more important. It’s consensus that quarterback is a devalued position because of the similarity of production profile through the league (bar leagues that start two or more per team). Tight ends are consistently far less valuable as a position.
It’s worth noting that I’m talking about positional value here. That does not mean that no tight end or quarterback is worth more than any RB or WR in the league.
When we expand it and investigate IDP leagues, then typically LB is seen as the most important position. Just behind are safeties and defensive ends. Defensive tackles and corners are way down the list and have very little value. Again, this is positional value. I understand that the likes of Aaron Donald are exceptions.
Outside LBs are a special case and value is strongly determined by league scoring and settings.
So how can we alter value to be more realistic?
There are some obvious differences here. But let’s go through it position by position. I’ll do it in the order that the NFL (seemingly via spending) values them.
Quarterback
Everyone who’s ever watched football knows that the sport revolves around the quarterback. Superflex and 2QB leagues have made great strides here but I’d argue still not enough. As Thomas Dimitroff said, “If you don’t have a franchise quarterback your search for one consumes you”.
Until that’s true for our fantasy teams, I think we’ve got a way to go in replicating the positional importance.
Edge Rusher
Pass rushers are a top two position in very few leagues that I see (and I’m asked to analyze a great many). Because of the implied variance, commissioners and league-builders seem reluctant to offer high scoring for DEs – but I think they should be ramped up a bit. The current trend toward scoring QB hits is also very smart and should help make good play scoring more consistent.
Defensive tackle
As I said earlier, DTs are often scored and seen as amongst the lowest positions. This needs addressing. We can see that teams are happy to invest in dominant interior players. DT-premium leagues are a good start but they’re not the answer because that only works from a positional stance. It doesn’t much alter how valuable elite DTs are in relation to lesser options at the position.
Making teams start at least two DTs is a more interesting solution to me because stockpiling top-tier talent becomes much more of an advantage to those teams.
Starting Aaron Donald with Damon Harrison on the bench is fun for an IDP owner but being able to start the two of them each week seems like a legitimate route to success.
Wide receiver
My favorite setting in fantasy is half-PPR. For me, it sets just the right premium on players who catch a lot of balls. In most leagues, the importance of WRs isn’t the problem. It’s just that the other positions need adjusting around them.
If I were to make any change at all then it would likely be adding in points per first down at the expanse of PPR or dropping TD points down a bit.
Cornerback
This is one of the biggest issues in fantasy in my mind. Corners are absolutely integral to a real team’s success. But they’re seen as entirely interchangeable in our hobby. This is a problem. It’s literally the sticking point that’s stopping more people join IDP leagues.
I’ve been vocal about my first fix. Currently, corners are scored primarily on tackles – which is a very secondary part of their job. The counting stat that best correlates with CB quality is passes defended. In my favored scoring system, PDs should be worth around five points for corners. A top-12 corner in most seasons averages 19 PDs per season. That’s enough to add real value to individual players but also to be fairly consistent compared to really high points for interceptions.
The second fix I want to make is for fantasy teams to start at least three corners per week. It’s still seen as fairly brave for leagues to require two weekly starters. This leads to the issue that we see. The volume of corners that put up fairly comparable stats week by week is very high, meaning corners are currently supremely streamable. If we added significant PDs to them whilst also mandating more starters, then the streamability drops dramatically.
This might seem fairly dramatic, but it needs to be. Corners are hugely valued by NFL teams. There are 36 corners who will earn over $5m in 2018 compared to ten RBs. It’s time for the position to be rewarded.
Offensive line
This is really hard for me because I know very little about O-line play. I don’t watch much of it. I’m not an expert in any way. But it’s clear that the position group is enormously important to NFL success. GMs pay elite players big bucks and similar to Dimitroff’s QB quote above, the search for linemen is never-ending for most teams.
It’s a position that’s rarely used right now but, in my opinion, needs to be included in any league that claims to be trying to replicate the NFL. Ideally, we’d have individual linemen available but MFL does not currently offer this feature and as far as I know has no plans at all to add it in the future. There’s just currently no demand. Then again, the same was true for IDPs once upon a time. No one thought it could ever be popular.
I’m happy to wait for individual linemen. In the meantime, I’ll be insisting that any attempt to make a league realistic needs to use unit O-lines and score them heavily.
Safety
It hurts for me to say that safety is probably also about right in most leagues as a baseline. It’s my favorite position to watch and research but the NFL does not seem to value most safeties even in an era of innovation at the position. The one exception is deep safeties who score very poorly in most IDP leagues.
The safeties in the NFL in 2018 who will earn more than $10m are Eric Berry, Devin McCourty, Lamarcus Joyner, Earl Thomas, Malcolm Jenkins and Harrison Smith. Those are all players with the ability to man the single-high spot. Many of them have positional flexibility but their most valuable use is playing deep.
The priority for the position in fantasy scoring is to change scoring so that (similar to corners) PDs are scored appropriately as indicators of good coverage ability.
Tight end
This is another position where I’m satisfied with where most leagues have them. There are a handful of difference-makers in the league but most teams do not have an elite talent and therefore don’t highlight their players at the position. This is exactly how it works in the fantasy world.
Linebacker
This is another controversial take. I think scoring for LBs should be reduced in most leagues. They tend to be treated as important assets in IDP leagues and that’s just not how most NFL teams treat them. There are a handful of players who have the skillset that makes them a difference-maker (Luke Kuechly, Bobby Wagner, etc) but for the most part, the NFL treats them as replaceable. Only nine LBs count over $5m against the cap in 2018. One of them is Ryan Shazier who may never play again.
Linebackers put up the biggest numbers in terms of defensive player just because they have the most opportunities to be involved in plays. In reality, the talent level is fairly flat with only a few exceptions.
For this to be accurately reflected in IDP leagues, I believe scoring should be dropped for them across the board. This will ensure that there are a fairly high number of moderate-scoring options available.
Running back
Here’s my final controversial opinion. Running backs are not valued highly by NFL teams. Even after the last few seasons where backs have been taken in the top ten (Todd Gurley, Ezekiel Elliott, and Leonard Fournette), RB is not seen as a position to invest in. Just two RBs count more than $10m against the cap in 2018. 15 WRs, 23 offensive linemen, 19 edge rushers and 13 cornerbacks count that much. Even including the backs taken recently at the top of the draft, we’ve seen teams happy to draft them later and later. The position has never been lower valued by NFL teams and yet it’s still the number one position in terms of scoring for almost all fantasy leagues.
I think we need to seriously think about reducing scoring as a standard. I’d like to reduce rushing yardage points from one point every ten yards down to 0.75. I’d also reduce rushing TD scoring from six to four. If offensive lines are included then rushing TDs should count less for the ball carrier.
With those changes, I’d like to get the position down into the pack in terms of replaceability.
Kicker
It’s fine where it is. It’s not a position really valued much by either the NFL or the fantasy world and I’m fine with that.
Punter
Ditto. I play in one league with punters and it honestly feels like a random modifier. I’m a fantasy nerd. I spend loads of time trying to model corners and make them predictable. But even I draw the line short of punters.
Summary
I have no problem at all with fantasy leagues not being “realistic”. I’m able to divorce myself from trying to create a game that simulates being a GM from a game that maximizes fun given the inputs and variables. They’re both fun in different ways.
But I would like to play in a realistic league. In my experience, 32-team leagues offer their own challenges but aren’t that much fun for me. Because they end up (mostly) being a challenge to simply obtain enough starters rather than putting your faith in certain talents. Especially in a world where team offensive line is a fixture, it seems to me that 16 teams is the maximum realistic size. Otherwise, you’d simply have fantasy teams that do not have access to starters at some positions some weeks. That’s not fun for me.
I’m kind of hoping that someone reads this article and builds a league to reflect some of the ideas here. If you do then feel free to drop me a line…
Thanks for reading.
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