Dynasty Fantasy Football Championship Solutions

Nathan Powell

Editor’s note: In light of the on-field incident involving Bills safety Damar Hamlin, we want to be sensitive to this situation. There is no easy way to deal with trauma, so in order to account for all preferences, we going to continue our normal content schedule. Our thoughts are with Hamlin and his family as we all hope for his swift and full recovery. If you would like to contribute to Hamlin’s charity, we strongly encourage donations be made here.

The football world was shocked and concerned about the collapse of Damar Hamlin during the Bills-Bengals game on Monday Night Football. Millions of dollars flooded Hamlin’s toy charity as the football world showed their support for Hamlin as he was battling for his life. Medical updates throughout the week have continued to improve, but Hamlin is still in critical condition as of writing this article. Following the injury, the game was suspended for the evening and eventually fully canceled on Thursday night as the NFL announced the game would not be restarted or resumed.

While the fantasy world stressed the importance of fantasy football taking a backseat to concern for Hamlin’s health, the game cancellation had a large impact on fantasy football with the cancellation occurring in week 17, which is the championship week in most fantasy football leagues. In this article, I will break down a variety of options on how to settle championship games that were still in the balance and we’re relying on the conclusion of the Bengals-Bills game to reach a conclusion. In addition, one of these solutions can be used to determine draft order for rookie drafts in 2023.

Follow The League Hosting Protocol

As a commissioner, my first and best option is to follow the league hosting protocol for decisions on what to do, as that is an unbiased third party and also the default setting if no changes are made by the commissioner. On myfantasyleague, they zeroed out the scores of the Bills-Bengals players as the game that started technically no longer exists. My default reaction as commissioner is to keep the Bills-Bengals as zeroes as decided by the league software. Anything different than this method, in my opinion, requires unanimous agreement between affected parties as anything different from this is highly subjective and I don’t necessarily blame leaguemates if they want to stick with what the league host decided.

Count the Bengals-Bills scores up until the Injury

This is not a common resolution, but I do think it could be one of the more fair options. For games that were close enough to be decided by the opening minutes of the game, like a team down one with James Cook scoring 1.8 or a team down five with Tyler Boyd scoring 8.4. Yes, there was still plenty of time for players to potentially score negative points, but more likely than not, if a team took the lead with a Bengals-Bills player against a finished roster, they were going to win that game. For games with larger deficits or players on both sides, this option is likely not a solution, but in the scenario outlined, it’s a fair one if all parties agree to it.

Use Individual Players’ Per-Game Season Averages

An un-biased, subjective way to handle Bengals-Bills players is to use their per-game season averages as their final scores. This would give each player an average number of points to replace what they may have done in the game had it been played in its entirety.

Use Week 17 projections

A simple, yet highly subjective way to make a decision is to input Week 17 projections as final scores for Bengals-Bills players. This gives the players the projected score that they were anticipated to have which may be the avenue that is closest to deciding the game the way it would have been decided had the game been played fully.

Take Week 18 Scores

An imperfect solution to an imperfect problem, yes, the matchups are completely different but taking the Week 18 scores of the players involved is a possible solution. This gives the players a full game like what was being expected when they were started by fantasy players in Week 17. This solution doesn’t rely on projections, scores in a game that technically didn’t happen and does more than just leaving scores as-is. While controversial, this would be the route I would recommend to private leagues if they are deviating from option A.

Flip a coin

If the game was close with players on both sides of the matchup in the game and both teams really want to deem a champion while also not just going with the default zeroes based on the league platform, flipping a coin is an option. Is a completely unbiased and random option that provides equal chance to both teams at being deemed champion.

Chop the pot

One of the more used solutions by fantasy managers that I’ve seen this week is chopping the pot. Chopping the pot means splitting the payout 50/50 or even differently than previously assigned/agreed to. In a game that looked like it’d be close, chopping the pot 50/50 makes the most financial sense. For those that want a more finely tuned chop, Twitter user Nathan Braun created a chop calculator based on week 17 projections to help decide exactly how to chop your payout based on likelihood of winning on each side. Once again, financially this is probably the most fair way to approach things. As a commissioner, the one thing I don’t necessarily like about chopping the pot is it has no impact on deeming a champion/draft order for the championship game and 3rd/4th place game. In all my leagues where a pot has been chopped, I made the decision that the non-financial end of things with deeming a champion and draft order will be decided by what’s on the league site, so if the 3rd/4th place teams chop that payout, the higher scoring team will get the 1.10 and the lower scoring team will get the 1.09 in a traditional 12 team league.

Regardless of the method of deciding week 17 championships that you or your commissioner have decided on, it’s important to keep in perspective how silly fantasy football is and the circumstances that led to this point are much more important in the scope of life than groveling over your preference of a solution of A vs B vs C.

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Dynasty Fantasy Football Championship Solutions