Most leagues use max points for to determine draft order.
As far as benching players for playoff position, if there's no set rule against it then its fair game even though its bush league
Agreed. It's a tricky one because it's clearly tanking, but not so egregious and I kind of understand... 3 lowest in maxPF but making the playoffs is pretty unlucky.
I had it a couple years ago. By far the worst team in the league. Lowest MPF and lowest points for. However I had the lowest points against as well. For some for forsaken reason everyone had their awful weeks against me and I kept hanging around. Praying to miss the playoffs and get the 1.01 to draft tlaw, as I had been selling off players left and right to go and get my QB of the future, but couldn’t not win some weeks and didn’t want to be the dickhead that throws games by starting people who wouldn’t play. Snuck into the playoffs as the last seed.
I won the whole league. My team went fucking nuclear 3 weeks in a row setting by FAR my 3 highest scores of the season and the clear favorite had an injury combined with a bad week. It’s my favorite championship I’ve had.
If you are tanking/rebuilding and you make the playoffs because you go out against heavily injured teams or teams that happen to score super low that week, you could make playoffs. That would be bad for a team needing to rebuild lol.
I took over one of the worst teams I've ever seen and then had the weirdest luck all year starting players that wouldn't even usually make my bench. I mean Robby Anderson was my WR1. It set me back a year falling ass backwards into 3rd place. It was almost worth it seeing the guy I took out in round 1 losing his goddamn mind in the chat though.
I don't think the third-worst team had much of a shot at winning anything. Just seems like a pure value burn and nothing more. The fifth- or sixth-worse team making it in would be lucky, but I'd say expected value here implies this team would be unlucky.
in a 12 teams league i play in, a team with the 2nd worst points for won it all. odds are against you, but it can happen.
regardless, if you make the playoff with a shit team, some of it is luck, but it also means that there are shittier teams than yours and you didn't deserve that 1.01 anyway.
For my leagues the playoff teams can still get a good draft pick as long as they don't finish in the money. So if you finished 3rd lowrst maxpf and got knocked out 1st round, you'd still get the 3rd pick.
Most leagues use max points for only for non-playoff teams to determine draft order. Which is literally why OP specifically asked the question despite using the most common way to determine draft order.
They do use max PF.
It wasn’t playoff positioning.
He was about to make playoffs due to lucky match ups. He tanked to avoid being a playoff team and likely get a top 3 pick.
He played by rules to the letter. And confirmed with commish before enacting said plan.
Not bush league. Good strategy if he was willing to accept missing playoffs.
I don’t think it’s bush league at all. You’re using the rules the league goes by to do what is best for your team. If you don’t want it allowed, put it in the rules. Otherwise, you’re just acting in your team’s best interest
Bush league just means amateur. There's nothing wrong with doing it if your league allows it, but most committed dynasty players would say that not having rules against it is pretty amateurish.
My league had an issue with owners not setting lineups and leaving bench spots open. We made a rule that each instance of not setting a full lineup will add 10 points to your maxpf and I'm trying to lobby for a 5 point penalty be added for each empty roster slot.
I'm the commissioner and I'm more than happy to track that headache
Why would you have a penalty for empty bench spots? If a player wants to drop some of their bench players in hopes of lowering their MaxPF, that doesn’t really hurt anyone other than them. If you make a rule that they have to have full rosters, then they’ll still do the same thing but just pick up useless players to fill those spots. That rule wouldn’t make any effective positive change.
But it doesn’t. Them dropping real players does, but they can do that either way. Your rule would do nothing to change that. Would there be any real difference to a team having an empty bench spot or Tim Tebow filling that spot?
Ok, then the last string WR or 3rd string QB then. There are tons of ways to fill spots just to fill spots. Also, not counting retired players is BS, since occasionally there’s a case for holding one that you think might return.
Roster all the scrub nobodies/IR players you want. Because even nobdies can have a 30 point week.
But leaving bench spots open for the sake of lowering your maxPF lacks integrity.
Need to have something about “making your best effort to set the optimum competitive lineup” or something. Obv you don’t want to play lineup police, but it’s there if someone is blatantly sitting studs for depth guys.
Any playoff team can win a championship; you only need to get lucky three weeks in a row. If a team is potentially playoff-bound but decide their team is bad enough to pass up that shot, I’m fine with them benching studs and tanking out of contention.
Yeah I lean that way as well, but a few people were upset because if that team won they would've made the playoffs.
To be fair, the team that benched had less than 1% chance of winning. He was ravaged by injuries, starting QBs getting benched (Ridder, Mac Jones) so I understand why he did what he did.
They have a right to be mad; I’d be mad too. And I’d also accept that that’s how the game goes sometimes. Totally frustrating for the other teams, but totally fair.
agree, we had no rules against it so I agree they made the right play.
They other players see it that way as well, but reasonably they want to mitigate for future
Yes, we have a general rule that you have to set your best lineup and that tanking is a roster decision not a lineup decision. If someone does want to complain about not setting someone’s lineup properly, there’s a formal process if a player is projected 5 points more on the bench than in the lineup for the commissioner to review reasoning and then make a decision.
Some people don’t like that, but “best lineup” is subjective so this adds some objective parameters to trigger a subjective review.
Don’t have the bylaws in front of me but I think commish basically tells them they need to make a change, and if they want to argue it still then it goes to a league vote minus the two parties and the commissioner.
But usually it’s pretty obvious when someone is being underhanded, if you’re starting Xavier Hutchinson over Jaylen Waddle then something is amiss 99/100 times
We do max PF for non-playoff teams, but this is about individual weeks and matchups, as max PF doesn’t solve the issue that OP is talking about where the week to week decision making changes who is eligible for playoffs and not
Like if I’m barely squeaking by each win and have a low max PF but a good record, I’m incentivized to miss the playoffs if that means I’ll likely get a top 2 pick (we had that happen this year where the #5 team had the lowest max PF by far)
Yeah I was just talking about your league. Max PF can solve OPs issue too though if you just drop the completely arbitrary and goofy criteria of excluding playoff teams that most people choose to use though.
Our only rules against tanking is you have to start a complete roster, no one injured or on a bye and don’t make it obvious lol
Also our bottom 4 teams of the regular season go into an nba style draft lottery… last place gets extra chances to get 1.01 but it’s not guaranteed
Think it goes last place gets 4 chances, 2nd to last gets 3, 3rd gets 2 and 4th gets 1
The rest of the teams then go in order of regular season finish… it’s a 12m
If I'm on the bubble to making the playoffs vs missing and potentially getting the 1.01, I would honestly look to do what OP said in your league. There's even more upside to just missing then making the playoffs for your dynasty team.
We had a similar issue in our league. The team with the lowest max pf needed one more win to make it to the playoffs. He ended up losing even though he made a reasonable effort to start his best players. What if you did Max PF for the regular season no matter what? The worst max pf team would get the #1 pick, and the 2nd worst team max pf wise would get the second pick and so on. The only caveat I would do is that whoever wins the title automatically gets slotted last in the draft order.
This is what we do, max pf for all teams except champ and 2nd because this scenario happened two years ago. 1st pick vs 7th pick for the team who had to decide about tanking the final week.
I wouldn't litigate against this, to be honest.
It's a really, really stupid decision based on the randomness of the game, but if someone wants to give up their playoff spot for a chance at a slightly higher draft pick, I'm good with that. Let someone who doesn't have a loser mentality have a shot to win a chip.
TBH it wasn't, they were barely fielding a roster at the end of the season with benched and injured players and were averaging below 100 points, top few teams average 140+
They would've lost the matchup even if they didn't bench Chase and CeeDee, it's more a matter of CAN YOU
They would've gotten demolished round 1 and between having the 6th draft choice, and the 3rd
Its not that he is giving himself losses that is the problem, its that he is handing out wins to folks, while others had to play his team when he was 'trying'
My league hasn’t had to implement any rules yet bc for the most part everyone has been pretty good about trying to win no matter what their record is. We have a group chat and if there’s ever something questionable with rosters it usually gets put on blast. Luckily we haven’t really had any egregious happen yet. Sure there have been a few times that you might raise an eyebrow but nobody is benching CMC.
Somehow “reverse Max PF for teams that miss the playoffs” became the standard, but really you should do “reverse max PF for teams that don’t cash.”
If 3 teams cash, they get the last 3 slots, everybody else is reverse max PF. Doesn’t eliminate OPs problem but I suspect it mitigates it pretty well.
My league does reverse MaxPF for non-playoff teams to determine draft order. This should stop teams from benching their good players to intentionally lose matchups, but unfortunately, some people just don’t understand. We’re implementing a penalty system this year where that week’s highest point scoring player’s points get added to your MaxPF. So if you bench a RB (either a 3rd string guy when you have better options, an injured player, or an empty slot) and Breece Hall has a huge week with 30 points, then 30 points are added onto your MaxPF. Same goes for QB, WR, and TE. A blank flex would be the highest scorer for whichever positions your flex allows. These penalties are kept track of in a pinned message to avoid any confusion.
>My league does reverse MaxPF for non-playoff teams to determine draft order. This should stop teams from benching their good players to intentionally lose matchups,
If you actually read the post, so does his lol
The entire scenario. The worst team in the league in max pf can either tank the final week to secure top pick or win the final week and then get 7th pick at best. This is why max pf should be applied to all teams, not just non playoff teams.
Yeah and he guarantees the loss to not make the playoffs by benching players to get a high pick. I’m saying that in my league you receive a penalty added to your MaxPF if you do that. That way your pick isn’t as good.
It's a bit of a slippery slope because you want to ensure competitive line ups but still allow people to make calls on their lineups... which leads to inherit bias/judgement calls. My league has this in the charter
"League members must set competitive weekly lineups. Competitive means a full lineup with players who can reasonably be assumed to see play (no backup players) and league members cannot sit obvious studs. League members are allowed to make match up calls and sit a player they think will have a bad week even if experts say otherwise. Similarly league members can elect to not start a position if they only have one player of that position and they are on bye, but this is only applicable if your worst bench player is not worth dropping for a flyer"
But only because one year an owner got very cute sitting top players for duds to tank a matchup and change playoff seeding. We have never had to enact this rule thankfully (and the one time the guy did this we didn't have it in charter so it was allowed) and it would have to be VERY blatant for us to ever even discuss it.
Any money league I’m in has some type of rule book, all of them say you need to start a full lineup.
Huge gray area on tanking rules though. Some leagues obvious tanking is against the rules (ie no starting a backup QB when you have a starter available), and other leagues almost encourage tanking.
I’m team let the team owners decide how to manage their teams. Full lineup rule is fine, but I’m not going to tell someone else how to compete.
I think it's a real issue that no one wants to discuss. In my opinion it's poor game design to have someone essentially pay a trade back in the first round for their shot at the championship. One way I like to fix it is set draft order by max pf at the end of the regular season, so play off finish has no bearing on the final draft order. You could do a compromise where everyone except the eventual champ is determined by max pf and the champ gets 12th. There isn't a perfect solution to it but I feel it's a problem with how our leagues are set up that every year you have teams forced into the decision between a better draft pick or making the playoffs.
While draft order being determined by Max Points prevents this from doing anything to improve their draft position, I'd be concerned if they did this against someone whose win would alter playoff seeding. I'd be pretty pissed if I was looking at sneaking into the playoffs, knowing I needed someone to lose, only for their opponent to submit an objectively inferior lineup.
I understand if your plan for a season is to get a better rookie pick. You should still do bare minimum in the league which includes recognizing leaguemate's DMs, trade requests, and most importantly setting a proper competitive lineup. I don't expect you to agonize over sit/starts on that last flex spot, but if you're not moving out bye/injured players or sitting studs for backups then you can find another league.
Part of the contract when participating in a fantasy league, whether written or not, is respecting competitive integrity and setting your best lineup to the last matchup.
If you’re already using maxPF for draft order, I honestly don’t see anything wrong with what they did, as long as the people they started were actually active.
People can say playoffs are a crapshoot and they’re not wrong, but playing the odds, someone whose team has the 3rd lowest PF probably doesn’t feel confident in their chances in the playoffs.
As long as they actually set a lineup with active players so it wasn’t a true tank, I think they should be fine.
Tried a league with no max PF rule and we did not have detailed enough anti-tanking rules to try that. Wasn't an issue for 11 people in the league, but 1 guy would regularly leave empty roster spots, start a teams wr4 while benching their wr2 because of CB matchups, etc. It happened enough that he was clearly pushing the boundary of the rules (no one else in the league was doing anything remotely similar). It caused a bunch of arguments about vague rules even though reasonable people thought the rules were fine, and only 1 guy figured he was smarter than everyone. Turns out he was only an ass hole. Ended up getting 1st overall and kicked from the league after starting so many arguments and getting disrespectful
Max PF is the only way
I generally love this sub because I think dynasty ff plauers are much more dialed in and it’s way less watered down than the regular ff sub.
But one thing I can’t stand on here is the Max PF robots that just comment the same exact thing on any post related to tanking.
Yes, max pf is a good way to decide draft order, but it does absolutely nothing to address in-season issues that tanking causes like giving away a free win to a borderline playoff team.
Nobody wants to lose a shot at the playoffs because their rival got a free win against some tanker who benched CMC to tank.
Any self-respecting league should have rules that every team must set their most competitive lineup every week. Blatant tanking like benching your best players to lose goes against the spirit of a competitive league.
I'm starting my first dynasty league this year, despite playing FF for 11 years now. The first time I heard about using MaxPF for determining draft order was here in this thread and I really like the idea.
Although I don't get this part:
> Nobody wants to lose a shot at the playoffs because their rival got a free win against some tanker who benched CMC to tank.
If we're using MaxPF, CMC on your lineup or on your bench doesn't make a difference, right? So the owner should have no interest in putting him on his bench, because it will have no impact on his MaxPF, therefore he's encouraged to roster his best lineupm screw up and accidentaly win, at least for the bragging rights, if nothing else. Am I getting this wrong somehow?
IMO, there can't be rules about setting your most competitive lineup because that's impossible to tell, just like trades. What I see as the best way to enforce not tanking is that you MUST set a full lineup and bench spots. The penalty for that can easily be done in multiple ways (like increasing one whole position in the draft order for each instance in which the owner had his roster not full after it being determined by MaxPF [say, last in MaxPF, #1 draft pick, but didn't have a full roster for 2 weeks = #3 pick]).
I saw people commenting about loopholes, like rostering 5th stringers or retired players, but I don't see how it's benefic for the guy tanking. He's tanking because he wants to improve in the future, dropping promising guys on his bench and roster FA or retired players (which aren't a problem at all, there are a lot of guys who come back from retirement/FA and end up being very useful) doesn't help him at all.
Will he start his comeback with Caleb Williams + Zavier Scott and Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint? Be my guest.
Max PF fixes most issues with tanking. Some things it doesn’t fix are:
-Teams with low MPF that lucked into a couple wins and are in the playoff race late in the year. Believe it or not there are people so obsessed with “rebuilding” that they want to lose on purpose for the better pick rather than try to make it to the playoffs.
-someone trades away every startable player of a certain position leaving them (intentionally) unable to start a full lineup.
-Yeah it can be tough to legislate a “best lineup” with a roster full of scrubs. But idc what system you use, if someone has a healthy cmc, josh allen, Tyreek hill, etc and they bench them, that is inexcusable and should not be allowed.
Like I said, max pf solves most problems, but imo you still need a competitive requirement for your league to keep everyone in the spirit of competition. Nobody likes someone who loses on purpose
Another issue, you might actually have a worse team than someone who beat you at achieving lower maxpf points. You legitimately earned a bad record because your team is bad, but you hung on to some bench guys that surprised you and raised your points(kinda to your point #2) and because of that someone with a better starting roster ends up with lower maxpf.
CMC in your lineup or on your bench doesn't make a difference to your MaxfPF but it does make a difference to your matchup.
A lot of leagues do reverse MaxPF draft order for non-playoff teams. But playoffs are still decided my matchup record.
So benching CMC doesnt impact on your MaxPF, but it could give you an extra loss and help you to not make the playoffs. However, this also (and more importantly in my eyes) gives an extra, undeserved win to another team. That team may now make the playoffs ahead of another team who wasnt gifted a win in the same way.
Someone said something in a similar post last year that really resonated with me: GM's can tank, coaches can't.
If you don't have a good team because you don't have good players, that's totally fine. You can sell of any stars in order to make your team worse and collect draft capital.
But just not starting guys on your roster that are clearly the better players? I think that is reason to fire your coach, because he's not putting his players in a position to succeed.
I think that's a good rule to live by. Borderline guys, sure. But sitting CMC for Eric Gray "because you can" is bullshit to me. Play your best roster.
8 team league
1st pick goes to the winner of the loser playoffs
2nd pick – loser playoff runner up
3rd pick – winner of 7th place game
4th pick – loser of 7th place game
5th pick – winner of 3rd place game
6th pick – loser of 3rd place game
7th pick – loser of final
8th pick – champion
Champ and runner up both also get an additional dollar added to the cap cost of every player they keep (in practice, teams typically retain around 12 players; there's an auction for veteran free agents after the draft).
No it does for sure, you're giving the 5th best team in the league the first pick and the worst team gets 4th. That's such a terrible system and I feel sorry for your league.
For one thing, there is very much no guarantee that the 5th best team wins the loser playoffs, nor that the first overall pick turns out to be the best player.
But regardless, we're going into our 15th season, we all have a good time, and every team in the league has won at least one championship in those 14 years - there are no perennial losers and no-one's ever won more than two titles in a row.
Yes. Every league has a rule that says you must always try and field your best team. Tanking is done by the GM in you, not the HC.
I would never ever play in a league where benching starters was allowed.
So this is how it works for my league. You can "tank" like this guy was trying to do but you cant straight up throw.
By that i mean you cant start Trey Lance over Dak so you get 0 points but still have a "full" line up.
We have it so you have to set a full line up of players who will be on the field at least 10% ish of the offensive snaps.
Ex. I could play AJ dillion over Healthy aaron jones in an attempt to miss playoffs becasue even tho AJ sucks hell still get a few carries and be on the field.
however if i benched healthy Aaron Jones for boston scott in attempt to miss playoffs then that would not be allowed and against the rules (his snap share last season was single digits for context.)
Switching to agaisnt league median would probably help with things like 3rd lowest max Pf making the playoffs as they’d have an extra weekly matchup against the average score of every team in the league.
As for intentionally benching people nothing can really be done without a written rule against it. Maybe vote on it this offseason & pin the bylaw so it’s there forever.
We actually have a "first pick" bracket that coincides with the championship one, solely to keep people from tanking or holding a fire..........................sale. Helps keep a competitive league competitive.
I only played one season as commish without using max points for before I realized policing what starting lineups are using is an impossible task. There is no black and white way of determining if people are playing their best lineup - they can always come up with BS reasons to play crap players. Go to reverse max points for and don’t look back is my advice.
Does it go against any written rules? No. Does it upset the competitive balance of the league? Yes. Once that happens our commissioner will step in and make changes as needed. I would say this is worthy of losing some draft position. Maybe drop him down from the 1.03 to the 1.05. I know not everyone feels the same way. But I wouldn't want to play in a league where a fringe playoff team can just bench a few guys and improve their draft by 3 or 4 spots.
I'm in a league that tries to counter this. I hate the rule, but I'm sharing it in the spirit of conversation.
Draft order for non-playoff teams is determined by most points scored (by starters) during the final 3 weeks of the regular season. This incentivizes everyone top to bottom to set their best lineups. Someone who is actively setting shitty lineups at the end of the season is going to end up with the worst pick of the non-playoff teams.
I exploited this rule last year by tanking earlier in the season (setting bad lineups). Then the final 3 weeks of the season, I put all my starters back in and ended up with the 2nd pick. The guy who got the 1st pick had an ever better roster than mine. So the managers with shitty rosters can't compete to score the most points and end up in a cycle of mid range picks. I hate the rule and am trying to get us to move to Reverse Max PF.
We have a rule that you have to put forth your best possible line up. You can trade away your assets and tank but your line up always has to have the be at least “arguably” the best line up you’re capable of setting.
In my league the first pick doesn’t go to the team that finished worst. We use the losers bracket tournament to decide who gets first pick. For the 3rd place, 5th place, and 7th place games, winner moves ahead of the loser in draft order.
I know someone that missed out on Bijan because he was pressured into setting his “best” lineup
Idk. Anyone can win or lose any week. Was it worth winning a random game with nothing to really win and losing the 1st overall pick?
I believe if people want to take the risk of intentionally tanking for the future, go for it. It’s high risk, high reward.
Also, just a game so I think having fun with it is the point. Some people want to build powerhouses and some want to constantly rebuild.
We have a system where basically (10 team league) the 4 teams that miss the playoffs play in a losers bracket, and the winner of the losers bracket gets 1st overall. This more or less prevents outright tanking at a certain point during the season.
We changed our rules that pick order is based off of lowest potential points rather than actual points scored. That way in order to tank, you have to get players off your roster. Also gives a more accurate stat of the truly bad teams imo.
We do have a rule against this. All positions must be filled with the best (reasonable) player available. Essentially, no scubs in and stars out. The application of this rule is as follows:
It is league members’ responsibility to notify the commissioner of any roster issues – injured player starting, stud on bench, empty starting spot, etc. – prior to the start of games. Upon notice, I will reach out to the manager to have them correct it, and if unsuccessful, fill the starting spot with the highest projected player on their team. Punishment for repeated offenses are as follows:
1. Verbal warning
2. Loss of 4th rounder
3. Loss of 3rd rounder
4. Removal from league
While technically anyone should be able to decide they don’t want to compete on a team by team basis, I tend to side with the gripes of every other member in the league who this affects (e.g. benching their stars causes someone else to make who otherwise wouldn’t have made it). Since we play dynasty and picks tend to swap hands a lot, it could make things tricky and upset everyone. This same scenario you mentioned happened in one of my leagues and they took it a step further and dropped some low-dynasty value players as well.
To combat this we augmented the maxPF rule. We decided to include first round playoff exits in the group of those who miss the playoffs for maxPF. Now, even the teams who lose in the first round can get the #1 overall pick in theory. It fights back against a team purposely tanking and makes it so they could try their hardest to tank and still only get the 8 pick. It also makes it so there’s 0 incentive to benching good players, since missing the playoffs wouldn’t reward you anything.
We award money to 1st, 2nd, & 3rd place, so anyone who wins 1 playoff games is in contention for the prize pool. Thats why we made the cutoff at 8.
Have implemented this in 3 leagues since we created it 2 years ago and it’s worked great. Can’t really find any reason why it would be bad except people complaining that they could miss the playoffs and still have a “bad pick”. But I argue that the overall least strength rosters should be getting the better picks, so if you want your roster to get a better pick, trade some of your studs away
We had this issue 20+ years ago and solved it by instituting a You must field a valid starting roster (u can put backups in as long as they’re active on game day except for QB’s who must be starting the game to be eligible) rule but more importantly we have a weighted lottery for the 6 non-playoff teams. We’ve never had an issue with tanking since
We use max points potential for 1-9, and 10,11,12 for the 3 money winners, works out great facilitates mid season trading, and encourages non-cheesy tanking, now if you want to sit players to manipulate playoffs seeds, well, we that Karma take care of that
I'm firmly in the camp of "GM can tank, Head Coach can't".
I get people saying it's not against specific rules, but it's definitely against the spirit of what is a *game*. I don't believe free wins should be handed out in this way, it really screws the competetive integrity of a league.
The rule in my league is that you have to field a team that plays every week. There are circumstances where someone is an extremely late scratch from a game and if a team is extremely injury riddled where it wouldn't make sense for their roster to drop a contributing player thats on bye or hurt to pick up a person on waivers that is healthy and will play, but that is up to our commish to determine if more could be done.
We haven't had any issues, but our commish has made it clear that penalty for breaking this rule is that your 1st round pick will be moved back 3 positions, so if you end up with 1 overall and do this, you will actually be drafting 1.04.
There's a good way to tank, and a bad way to tank. Not setting your lineup is the bad way. Starting terrible players that you roster is the right way to do it.
In my leagues, this is called an anti-tanking rule.
The reason this is not allowed is even though you’re ruining your own playoff chances, there is a possibility that you are guaranteeing them for someone else and knocking another person out that way. This would be considered throwing a game which is banned by my bylaws.
Joined a league where draft order was determined by the results of the consolation bracket. The team I took over was a crap team and finished 2nd to last in Max Points with the second worst record.
When draft order was posted I had the 6th pick because my team lipstick the first week to a team that almost made the playoffs. That team ended up winning the consolation bracket and got the first pick.
I was pissed and ended up leaving the league.
I (commissioner of 10 team, 4 playoff league) am proposing the top seed get to choose their first round matchup to prevent tanking in bad faith.
We also have a "bad faith play for the purpose of tanking" rule that is punishable at my discretion, but I have set the precedent of moving picks to the ends of rounds for first offense and we haven't had a second offense yet but it will be forfeiture of draft picks if it happens.
Yes I put a rule in my bylaws for this. Won’t matter for top six which I stated because of MPF, but for playoff teams if they intentionally don’t set their best lineup or throw for a better pick I stated they’ll lose their draft position by 1 spot
Not allowed in my leagues. I check lineups after the weekend to make sure that didnt happen (blatant benching of studs). Also MaxPF will still ensure their player points count against them leading to a higher ish pick
In a nutshell, we calculate total dynasty trade value (using an agreed upon chart) of starting rosters for each team to determine pick order. De-incentivizes tanking because it doesn’t actually help you get a higher pick.
As a quick illustration, this year we have a non playoff team with a higher PF and better W/L record getting a better pick than another non playoff team with both worse PF and W/L and is primarily due to the latter team having a higher value starting dynasty core: Chase, Burrow, Achane, KW3, DJ Moore
Add a game against the median in your league. It would then be virtually impossible for a team with a very low Max PF to make the playoffs and thus they would have no reason to not play their most competitive lineup.
Team in question asked if there was a rule. There was no rule. Therefore a rule was not broken. Now there is a rule because the league voted it in.
Do I have that right?
If so seems pretty straightforward. Wouldn’t change anything retroactively.
Yep, teams must set most reasonably competitive lineup every week of regular season. Failure to so results in FAAB and ultimately draft pick fines. If you want to tank, sell all your players and play whoever you have left.
We have a good faith rule where no matter what, you have to make a good faith starting lineup to win that week. Sometimes you can fudge stuff a bit, but by and large the amount of shaming and bullying that goes on for throwing games would far outweigh any benefits of being a dick.
Worst we’ve had is someone having to defend starting one guy over another in league chat, helps us not assume maliciousness when incompetence is often the case
The top 5 teams in our league determined by record automatically make the playoffs. Then the sixth spot is given to the team with the highest total score out of the remaining 7 teams. Now moving into the consolation bracket…the two worst teams by overall record get byes the first week. And then our draft order is determined by how you finish in the consolation bracket! Winner of consolation gets 1.01. Second place gets 1.02 and so on and so on.
turns out maxPF is not perfect... shocker!
you'll need to stay a bit on the ball with this. it's tricky, because sometimes people just forget there's a game on thursday and shouldn't be penalized for a funk up.
you need to be clear about everyone setting the best possible lineup (and hope everyone's honest), the issue is you'll have to check every lineup every week, which is not that time consuming, but it's annoying.
josh palmer over london could be a reasonable choice, olamide zaccheaus over lamb errr... not so much.
do not involve projections in any way.
first offense: warning, lineup adjustment at the commissioner discretion.
second offense: 2nd round pick decked, lineup adjustment.
third offense: booted from the league, no refunds.
i do not apply this to thursday games generally, unless it's something egregious.
Not a direct solution, but one way to potentially avoid this going forward is to add w-l vs the median (top 6 scoring teams each week get a w and bottom 6 get an l regardless of the head to head matchup)
Can argue that it’s less fun bc it takes away a lot of the randomness, but in this scenario the owner would have been less likely to compete for a playoff spot in the first place
Purposefully starting worse line ups is a form of collusion and highly frowned upon. My leagues - you should be trying to win every week, you cant be sitting players - it affects more than just yourself. Judgement calls are fine but sitting Kelce to play a random te3 bc youd rather have X team win is no beuno
Intentionally missing the playoffs is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard personally.
That said, ya it’s pretty lame to start a shitty roster on purpose and cost league mates a fair shot themselves. Pretty tough to make a rule against it though.
If your QBs are Mac Jones, Desmond Ridder, and Derrick Car
You have 1 true starting RB with KW3 and then are using rotational guys
Have no TE, and two stud WRs....
He had no chance. And he wanted a shot at a top QB, strategically it was the right move. He would've gotten blown out in the playoffs
To give you more perspective, he was averaging below 100 points, and the top 3 teams were averaging in the 150 range.
Did he have a shot, sure. But I think living to fight another year, and getting a better asset makes sense here.
Ya I hear ya, I can see it maybe.
Personally I’d try to trade my first for something that at least helps my playoff chances, but if it’s truly bleak af I suppose this could make sense
It’s weird for people to think they should be able to force their competitors to make the best decision for someone else.
However you want to award rookie draft picks is fine, but roster management is a dynasty strategy.
Roster rules should apply in the sense that you need to have a starting lineup set. Players on bye week or IL should not be played in the lineup.
Who I start is my decision & what factors I allow to play into that, is also my decision. Any other manager getting a say in my lineup is collusion in my eyes.
Most leagues use max points for to determine draft order. As far as benching players for playoff position, if there's no set rule against it then its fair game even though its bush league
Agreed. It's a tricky one because it's clearly tanking, but not so egregious and I kind of understand... 3 lowest in maxPF but making the playoffs is pretty unlucky.
Calling it unlucky to make the playoffs is insane. Some of you clearly aren't here to win.
[удалено]
I had it a couple years ago. By far the worst team in the league. Lowest MPF and lowest points for. However I had the lowest points against as well. For some for forsaken reason everyone had their awful weeks against me and I kept hanging around. Praying to miss the playoffs and get the 1.01 to draft tlaw, as I had been selling off players left and right to go and get my QB of the future, but couldn’t not win some weeks and didn’t want to be the dickhead that throws games by starting people who wouldn’t play. Snuck into the playoffs as the last seed. I won the whole league. My team went fucking nuclear 3 weeks in a row setting by FAR my 3 highest scores of the season and the clear favorite had an injury combined with a bad week. It’s my favorite championship I’ve had.
If you are tanking/rebuilding and you make the playoffs because you go out against heavily injured teams or teams that happen to score super low that week, you could make playoffs. That would be bad for a team needing to rebuild lol.
It could also fuck around and win a championship! Making the playoffs is the goal because once there anything can and does happen.
I took over one of the worst teams I've ever seen and then had the weirdest luck all year starting players that wouldn't even usually make my bench. I mean Robby Anderson was my WR1. It set me back a year falling ass backwards into 3rd place. It was almost worth it seeing the guy I took out in round 1 losing his goddamn mind in the chat though.
This is so stupid, you could sneak in and win.. making the playoffs is never bad
“But my forever rebuild. How can I keep it going with this championship?!?”
I don't think the third-worst team had much of a shot at winning anything. Just seems like a pure value burn and nothing more. The fifth- or sixth-worse team making it in would be lucky, but I'd say expected value here implies this team would be unlucky.
And I'd rather have pick #4 than #8 when I'm a middle of the road team.
Agree, he wouldn't have made it past the 1st round. His best weeks he was doing significantly less than the best teams worst weeks.
Ok so you then miss your draft spot from 1.6 to 1.8? Try to win!
in a 12 teams league i play in, a team with the 2nd worst points for won it all. odds are against you, but it can happen. regardless, if you make the playoff with a shit team, some of it is luck, but it also means that there are shittier teams than yours and you didn't deserve that 1.01 anyway.
Lucky or unlucky depending on how you look at it! lol
For my leagues the playoff teams can still get a good draft pick as long as they don't finish in the money. So if you finished 3rd lowrst maxpf and got knocked out 1st round, you'd still get the 3rd pick.
Most leagues use max points for only for non-playoff teams to determine draft order. Which is literally why OP specifically asked the question despite using the most common way to determine draft order.
They do use max PF. It wasn’t playoff positioning. He was about to make playoffs due to lucky match ups. He tanked to avoid being a playoff team and likely get a top 3 pick. He played by rules to the letter. And confirmed with commish before enacting said plan. Not bush league. Good strategy if he was willing to accept missing playoffs.
I don’t think it’s bush league at all. You’re using the rules the league goes by to do what is best for your team. If you don’t want it allowed, put it in the rules. Otherwise, you’re just acting in your team’s best interest
Bush league just means amateur. There's nothing wrong with doing it if your league allows it, but most committed dynasty players would say that not having rules against it is pretty amateurish.
Yeah trying to think if there is a reasonable rule that is easy to enforce to satisfy everyone.
My league had an issue with owners not setting lineups and leaving bench spots open. We made a rule that each instance of not setting a full lineup will add 10 points to your maxpf and I'm trying to lobby for a 5 point penalty be added for each empty roster slot. I'm the commissioner and I'm more than happy to track that headache
Why would you have a penalty for empty bench spots? If a player wants to drop some of their bench players in hopes of lowering their MaxPF, that doesn’t really hurt anyone other than them. If you make a rule that they have to have full rosters, then they’ll still do the same thing but just pick up useless players to fill those spots. That rule wouldn’t make any effective positive change.
You answered the question already. It skirts the rules to lower their maxPF.
But it doesn’t. Them dropping real players does, but they can do that either way. Your rule would do nothing to change that. Would there be any real difference to a team having an empty bench spot or Tim Tebow filling that spot?
Free agents/retired players count as an empty slot
Ok, then the last string WR or 3rd string QB then. There are tons of ways to fill spots just to fill spots. Also, not counting retired players is BS, since occasionally there’s a case for holding one that you think might return.
Roster all the scrub nobodies/IR players you want. Because even nobdies can have a 30 point week. But leaving bench spots open for the sake of lowering your maxPF lacks integrity.
Just do MAXPF the whole way through instead of arbitrarily deciding not to include playoff teams. It's really weird that that's the norm.
We instituted a weighted lottery for non-playoff teams and haven’t had a tanking issue since
Need to have something about “making your best effort to set the optimum competitive lineup” or something. Obv you don’t want to play lineup police, but it’s there if someone is blatantly sitting studs for depth guys.
Any playoff team can win a championship; you only need to get lucky three weeks in a row. If a team is potentially playoff-bound but decide their team is bad enough to pass up that shot, I’m fine with them benching studs and tanking out of contention.
Yeah I lean that way as well, but a few people were upset because if that team won they would've made the playoffs. To be fair, the team that benched had less than 1% chance of winning. He was ravaged by injuries, starting QBs getting benched (Ridder, Mac Jones) so I understand why he did what he did.
They have a right to be mad; I’d be mad too. And I’d also accept that that’s how the game goes sometimes. Totally frustrating for the other teams, but totally fair.
agree, we had no rules against it so I agree they made the right play. They other players see it that way as well, but reasonably they want to mitigate for future
yeah its tough; could add a median win/loss per week just to reduce the chances of having someone bottom 3 in Max PF in that spot again going forward.
I don’t see a reasonable way to avoid it. Shouldn’t happen often any way at least!
Yeah you can’t fault them for thinking of their team. Whoever is upset should have just won their own games so it didn’t matter what another team did.
Yes, we have a general rule that you have to set your best lineup and that tanking is a roster decision not a lineup decision. If someone does want to complain about not setting someone’s lineup properly, there’s a formal process if a player is projected 5 points more on the bench than in the lineup for the commissioner to review reasoning and then make a decision. Some people don’t like that, but “best lineup” is subjective so this adds some objective parameters to trigger a subjective review.
If found to be improperly line-up tanking, what do you do?
Don’t have the bylaws in front of me but I think commish basically tells them they need to make a change, and if they want to argue it still then it goes to a league vote minus the two parties and the commissioner. But usually it’s pretty obvious when someone is being underhanded, if you’re starting Xavier Hutchinson over Jaylen Waddle then something is amiss 99/100 times
projections are garbage though, i'd rather have the commissioner decide. better one person's subjectivity than doing anything with projections, imo.
At that point why not go by maxpf and avoid the manual work?
We do max PF for non-playoff teams, but this is about individual weeks and matchups, as max PF doesn’t solve the issue that OP is talking about where the week to week decision making changes who is eligible for playoffs and not Like if I’m barely squeaking by each win and have a low max PF but a good record, I’m incentivized to miss the playoffs if that means I’ll likely get a top 2 pick (we had that happen this year where the #5 team had the lowest max PF by far)
Yeah I was just talking about your league. Max PF can solve OPs issue too though if you just drop the completely arbitrary and goofy criteria of excluding playoff teams that most people choose to use though.
Personal preference I guess, our league doesn’t like the optics of playing in the championship and getting the 5th pick instead of the 9th
Yeah that's generally the reasoning. It's just silly if the end goal is to give the worst teams the highest picks.
Our only rules against tanking is you have to start a complete roster, no one injured or on a bye and don’t make it obvious lol Also our bottom 4 teams of the regular season go into an nba style draft lottery… last place gets extra chances to get 1.01 but it’s not guaranteed Think it goes last place gets 4 chances, 2nd to last gets 3, 3rd gets 2 and 4th gets 1 The rest of the teams then go in order of regular season finish… it’s a 12m
If I'm on the bubble to making the playoffs vs missing and potentially getting the 1.01, I would honestly look to do what OP said in your league. There's even more upside to just missing then making the playoffs for your dynasty team.
We had a similar issue in our league. The team with the lowest max pf needed one more win to make it to the playoffs. He ended up losing even though he made a reasonable effort to start his best players. What if you did Max PF for the regular season no matter what? The worst max pf team would get the #1 pick, and the 2nd worst team max pf wise would get the second pick and so on. The only caveat I would do is that whoever wins the title automatically gets slotted last in the draft order.
That's how it should be done, but people irrationally hate the idea of the champion potentially getting a decent pick.
This is what we do, max pf for all teams except champ and 2nd because this scenario happened two years ago. 1st pick vs 7th pick for the team who had to decide about tanking the final week.
Clever idea, I guess that really does make the worst teams get the best spots.... Thanks for sharing!
As long as you start a full roster, no IR no Out designation….
I wouldn't litigate against this, to be honest. It's a really, really stupid decision based on the randomness of the game, but if someone wants to give up their playoff spot for a chance at a slightly higher draft pick, I'm good with that. Let someone who doesn't have a loser mentality have a shot to win a chip.
TBH it wasn't, they were barely fielding a roster at the end of the season with benched and injured players and were averaging below 100 points, top few teams average 140+ They would've lost the matchup even if they didn't bench Chase and CeeDee, it's more a matter of CAN YOU They would've gotten demolished round 1 and between having the 6th draft choice, and the 3rd
Its not that he is giving himself losses that is the problem, its that he is handing out wins to folks, while others had to play his team when he was 'trying'
My league hasn’t had to implement any rules yet bc for the most part everyone has been pretty good about trying to win no matter what their record is. We have a group chat and if there’s ever something questionable with rosters it usually gets put on blast. Luckily we haven’t really had any egregious happen yet. Sure there have been a few times that you might raise an eyebrow but nobody is benching CMC.
Somehow “reverse Max PF for teams that miss the playoffs” became the standard, but really you should do “reverse max PF for teams that don’t cash.” If 3 teams cash, they get the last 3 slots, everybody else is reverse max PF. Doesn’t eliminate OPs problem but I suspect it mitigates it pretty well.
My league does reverse MaxPF for non-playoff teams to determine draft order. This should stop teams from benching their good players to intentionally lose matchups, but unfortunately, some people just don’t understand. We’re implementing a penalty system this year where that week’s highest point scoring player’s points get added to your MaxPF. So if you bench a RB (either a 3rd string guy when you have better options, an injured player, or an empty slot) and Breece Hall has a huge week with 30 points, then 30 points are added onto your MaxPF. Same goes for QB, WR, and TE. A blank flex would be the highest scorer for whichever positions your flex allows. These penalties are kept track of in a pinned message to avoid any confusion.
>My league does reverse MaxPF for non-playoff teams to determine draft order. This should stop teams from benching their good players to intentionally lose matchups, If you actually read the post, so does his lol
And if you actually read my comment then you’d see I was answering the question of “how do you guys handle this?” lol
Harry Mantilope still doesn't get the issue sadly.
What am I missing here?
The entire scenario. The worst team in the league in max pf can either tank the final week to secure top pick or win the final week and then get 7th pick at best. This is why max pf should be applied to all teams, not just non playoff teams.
Yeah and he guarantees the loss to not make the playoffs by benching players to get a high pick. I’m saying that in my league you receive a penalty added to your MaxPF if you do that. That way your pick isn’t as good.
It's a bit of a slippery slope because you want to ensure competitive line ups but still allow people to make calls on their lineups... which leads to inherit bias/judgement calls. My league has this in the charter "League members must set competitive weekly lineups. Competitive means a full lineup with players who can reasonably be assumed to see play (no backup players) and league members cannot sit obvious studs. League members are allowed to make match up calls and sit a player they think will have a bad week even if experts say otherwise. Similarly league members can elect to not start a position if they only have one player of that position and they are on bye, but this is only applicable if your worst bench player is not worth dropping for a flyer" But only because one year an owner got very cute sitting top players for duds to tank a matchup and change playoff seeding. We have never had to enact this rule thankfully (and the one time the guy did this we didn't have it in charter so it was allowed) and it would have to be VERY blatant for us to ever even discuss it.
Any money league I’m in has some type of rule book, all of them say you need to start a full lineup. Huge gray area on tanking rules though. Some leagues obvious tanking is against the rules (ie no starting a backup QB when you have a starter available), and other leagues almost encourage tanking. I’m team let the team owners decide how to manage their teams. Full lineup rule is fine, but I’m not going to tell someone else how to compete.
I think it's a real issue that no one wants to discuss. In my opinion it's poor game design to have someone essentially pay a trade back in the first round for their shot at the championship. One way I like to fix it is set draft order by max pf at the end of the regular season, so play off finish has no bearing on the final draft order. You could do a compromise where everyone except the eventual champ is determined by max pf and the champ gets 12th. There isn't a perfect solution to it but I feel it's a problem with how our leagues are set up that every year you have teams forced into the decision between a better draft pick or making the playoffs.
While draft order being determined by Max Points prevents this from doing anything to improve their draft position, I'd be concerned if they did this against someone whose win would alter playoff seeding. I'd be pretty pissed if I was looking at sneaking into the playoffs, knowing I needed someone to lose, only for their opponent to submit an objectively inferior lineup. I understand if your plan for a season is to get a better rookie pick. You should still do bare minimum in the league which includes recognizing leaguemate's DMs, trade requests, and most importantly setting a proper competitive lineup. I don't expect you to agonize over sit/starts on that last flex spot, but if you're not moving out bye/injured players or sitting studs for backups then you can find another league. Part of the contract when participating in a fantasy league, whether written or not, is respecting competitive integrity and setting your best lineup to the last matchup.
If you’re already using maxPF for draft order, I honestly don’t see anything wrong with what they did, as long as the people they started were actually active. People can say playoffs are a crapshoot and they’re not wrong, but playing the odds, someone whose team has the 3rd lowest PF probably doesn’t feel confident in their chances in the playoffs. As long as they actually set a lineup with active players so it wasn’t a true tank, I think they should be fine.
Tried a league with no max PF rule and we did not have detailed enough anti-tanking rules to try that. Wasn't an issue for 11 people in the league, but 1 guy would regularly leave empty roster spots, start a teams wr4 while benching their wr2 because of CB matchups, etc. It happened enough that he was clearly pushing the boundary of the rules (no one else in the league was doing anything remotely similar). It caused a bunch of arguments about vague rules even though reasonable people thought the rules were fine, and only 1 guy figured he was smarter than everyone. Turns out he was only an ass hole. Ended up getting 1st overall and kicked from the league after starting so many arguments and getting disrespectful Max PF is the only way
I generally love this sub because I think dynasty ff plauers are much more dialed in and it’s way less watered down than the regular ff sub. But one thing I can’t stand on here is the Max PF robots that just comment the same exact thing on any post related to tanking. Yes, max pf is a good way to decide draft order, but it does absolutely nothing to address in-season issues that tanking causes like giving away a free win to a borderline playoff team. Nobody wants to lose a shot at the playoffs because their rival got a free win against some tanker who benched CMC to tank. Any self-respecting league should have rules that every team must set their most competitive lineup every week. Blatant tanking like benching your best players to lose goes against the spirit of a competitive league.
I'm starting my first dynasty league this year, despite playing FF for 11 years now. The first time I heard about using MaxPF for determining draft order was here in this thread and I really like the idea. Although I don't get this part: > Nobody wants to lose a shot at the playoffs because their rival got a free win against some tanker who benched CMC to tank. If we're using MaxPF, CMC on your lineup or on your bench doesn't make a difference, right? So the owner should have no interest in putting him on his bench, because it will have no impact on his MaxPF, therefore he's encouraged to roster his best lineupm screw up and accidentaly win, at least for the bragging rights, if nothing else. Am I getting this wrong somehow? IMO, there can't be rules about setting your most competitive lineup because that's impossible to tell, just like trades. What I see as the best way to enforce not tanking is that you MUST set a full lineup and bench spots. The penalty for that can easily be done in multiple ways (like increasing one whole position in the draft order for each instance in which the owner had his roster not full after it being determined by MaxPF [say, last in MaxPF, #1 draft pick, but didn't have a full roster for 2 weeks = #3 pick]). I saw people commenting about loopholes, like rostering 5th stringers or retired players, but I don't see how it's benefic for the guy tanking. He's tanking because he wants to improve in the future, dropping promising guys on his bench and roster FA or retired players (which aren't a problem at all, there are a lot of guys who come back from retirement/FA and end up being very useful) doesn't help him at all. Will he start his comeback with Caleb Williams + Zavier Scott and Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint? Be my guest.
Max PF fixes most issues with tanking. Some things it doesn’t fix are: -Teams with low MPF that lucked into a couple wins and are in the playoff race late in the year. Believe it or not there are people so obsessed with “rebuilding” that they want to lose on purpose for the better pick rather than try to make it to the playoffs. -someone trades away every startable player of a certain position leaving them (intentionally) unable to start a full lineup. -Yeah it can be tough to legislate a “best lineup” with a roster full of scrubs. But idc what system you use, if someone has a healthy cmc, josh allen, Tyreek hill, etc and they bench them, that is inexcusable and should not be allowed. Like I said, max pf solves most problems, but imo you still need a competitive requirement for your league to keep everyone in the spirit of competition. Nobody likes someone who loses on purpose
Another issue, you might actually have a worse team than someone who beat you at achieving lower maxpf points. You legitimately earned a bad record because your team is bad, but you hung on to some bench guys that surprised you and raised your points(kinda to your point #2) and because of that someone with a better starting roster ends up with lower maxpf.
CMC in your lineup or on your bench doesn't make a difference to your MaxfPF but it does make a difference to your matchup. A lot of leagues do reverse MaxPF draft order for non-playoff teams. But playoffs are still decided my matchup record. So benching CMC doesnt impact on your MaxPF, but it could give you an extra loss and help you to not make the playoffs. However, this also (and more importantly in my eyes) gives an extra, undeserved win to another team. That team may now make the playoffs ahead of another team who wasnt gifted a win in the same way.
Someone said something in a similar post last year that really resonated with me: GM's can tank, coaches can't. If you don't have a good team because you don't have good players, that's totally fine. You can sell of any stars in order to make your team worse and collect draft capital. But just not starting guys on your roster that are clearly the better players? I think that is reason to fire your coach, because he's not putting his players in a position to succeed. I think that's a good rule to live by. Borderline guys, sure. But sitting CMC for Eric Gray "because you can" is bullshit to me. Play your best roster.
8 team league 1st pick goes to the winner of the loser playoffs 2nd pick – loser playoff runner up 3rd pick – winner of 7th place game 4th pick – loser of 7th place game 5th pick – winner of 3rd place game 6th pick – loser of 3rd place game 7th pick – loser of final 8th pick – champion Champ and runner up both also get an additional dollar added to the cap cost of every player they keep (in practice, teams typically retain around 12 players; there's an auction for veteran free agents after the draft).
This is terrible and just keeps the worst teams down.
You might think that, but it doesn't play out that way in practice.
No it does for sure, you're giving the 5th best team in the league the first pick and the worst team gets 4th. That's such a terrible system and I feel sorry for your league.
For one thing, there is very much no guarantee that the 5th best team wins the loser playoffs, nor that the first overall pick turns out to be the best player. But regardless, we're going into our 15th season, we all have a good time, and every team in the league has won at least one championship in those 14 years - there are no perennial losers and no-one's ever won more than two titles in a row.
No rule, but we do max pf for all teams that didn't win money instead of just non-playoff teams.
Use max PF
We do, that's not the question here.
Intentionally throwing games would be a problem, yes
Yes. Every league has a rule that says you must always try and field your best team. Tanking is done by the GM in you, not the HC. I would never ever play in a league where benching starters was allowed.
So this is how it works for my league. You can "tank" like this guy was trying to do but you cant straight up throw. By that i mean you cant start Trey Lance over Dak so you get 0 points but still have a "full" line up. We have it so you have to set a full line up of players who will be on the field at least 10% ish of the offensive snaps. Ex. I could play AJ dillion over Healthy aaron jones in an attempt to miss playoffs becasue even tho AJ sucks hell still get a few carries and be on the field. however if i benched healthy Aaron Jones for boston scott in attempt to miss playoffs then that would not be allowed and against the rules (his snap share last season was single digits for context.)
Just do max potential points. It’s a must for dynasty leagues.
Switching to agaisnt league median would probably help with things like 3rd lowest max Pf making the playoffs as they’d have an extra weekly matchup against the average score of every team in the league. As for intentionally benching people nothing can really be done without a written rule against it. Maybe vote on it this offseason & pin the bylaw so it’s there forever.
We actually have a "first pick" bracket that coincides with the championship one, solely to keep people from tanking or holding a fire..........................sale. Helps keep a competitive league competitive.
I only played one season as commish without using max points for before I realized policing what starting lineups are using is an impossible task. There is no black and white way of determining if people are playing their best lineup - they can always come up with BS reasons to play crap players. Go to reverse max points for and don’t look back is my advice.
Does it go against any written rules? No. Does it upset the competitive balance of the league? Yes. Once that happens our commissioner will step in and make changes as needed. I would say this is worthy of losing some draft position. Maybe drop him down from the 1.03 to the 1.05. I know not everyone feels the same way. But I wouldn't want to play in a league where a fringe playoff team can just bench a few guys and improve their draft by 3 or 4 spots.
We are not penalizing anyone this year, just to vote on new rules for the future to prevent incentivizing this behavior.
I'm in a league that tries to counter this. I hate the rule, but I'm sharing it in the spirit of conversation. Draft order for non-playoff teams is determined by most points scored (by starters) during the final 3 weeks of the regular season. This incentivizes everyone top to bottom to set their best lineups. Someone who is actively setting shitty lineups at the end of the season is going to end up with the worst pick of the non-playoff teams. I exploited this rule last year by tanking earlier in the season (setting bad lineups). Then the final 3 weeks of the season, I put all my starters back in and ended up with the 2nd pick. The guy who got the 1st pick had an ever better roster than mine. So the managers with shitty rosters can't compete to score the most points and end up in a cycle of mid range picks. I hate the rule and am trying to get us to move to Reverse Max PF.
I really like bestball leagues and this is one of the reasons.
We have a rule that you have to put forth your best possible line up. You can trade away your assets and tank but your line up always has to have the be at least “arguably” the best line up you’re capable of setting.
In my league the first pick doesn’t go to the team that finished worst. We use the losers bracket tournament to decide who gets first pick. For the 3rd place, 5th place, and 7th place games, winner moves ahead of the loser in draft order.
My league is now using points forced for the toilet bowl playoffs because this happened. You should be able to tank though it's a skill!
I know someone that missed out on Bijan because he was pressured into setting his “best” lineup Idk. Anyone can win or lose any week. Was it worth winning a random game with nothing to really win and losing the 1st overall pick? I believe if people want to take the risk of intentionally tanking for the future, go for it. It’s high risk, high reward. Also, just a game so I think having fun with it is the point. Some people want to build powerhouses and some want to constantly rebuild.
We have a system where basically (10 team league) the 4 teams that miss the playoffs play in a losers bracket, and the winner of the losers bracket gets 1st overall. This more or less prevents outright tanking at a certain point during the season.
We changed our rules that pick order is based off of lowest potential points rather than actual points scored. That way in order to tank, you have to get players off your roster. Also gives a more accurate stat of the truly bad teams imo.
We do have a rule against this. All positions must be filled with the best (reasonable) player available. Essentially, no scubs in and stars out. The application of this rule is as follows: It is league members’ responsibility to notify the commissioner of any roster issues – injured player starting, stud on bench, empty starting spot, etc. – prior to the start of games. Upon notice, I will reach out to the manager to have them correct it, and if unsuccessful, fill the starting spot with the highest projected player on their team. Punishment for repeated offenses are as follows: 1. Verbal warning 2. Loss of 4th rounder 3. Loss of 3rd rounder 4. Removal from league
While technically anyone should be able to decide they don’t want to compete on a team by team basis, I tend to side with the gripes of every other member in the league who this affects (e.g. benching their stars causes someone else to make who otherwise wouldn’t have made it). Since we play dynasty and picks tend to swap hands a lot, it could make things tricky and upset everyone. This same scenario you mentioned happened in one of my leagues and they took it a step further and dropped some low-dynasty value players as well. To combat this we augmented the maxPF rule. We decided to include first round playoff exits in the group of those who miss the playoffs for maxPF. Now, even the teams who lose in the first round can get the #1 overall pick in theory. It fights back against a team purposely tanking and makes it so they could try their hardest to tank and still only get the 8 pick. It also makes it so there’s 0 incentive to benching good players, since missing the playoffs wouldn’t reward you anything. We award money to 1st, 2nd, & 3rd place, so anyone who wins 1 playoff games is in contention for the prize pool. Thats why we made the cutoff at 8. Have implemented this in 3 leagues since we created it 2 years ago and it’s worked great. Can’t really find any reason why it would be bad except people complaining that they could miss the playoffs and still have a “bad pick”. But I argue that the overall least strength rosters should be getting the better picks, so if you want your roster to get a better pick, trade some of your studs away
We had this issue 20+ years ago and solved it by instituting a You must field a valid starting roster (u can put backups in as long as they’re active on game day except for QB’s who must be starting the game to be eligible) rule but more importantly we have a weighted lottery for the 6 non-playoff teams. We’ve never had an issue with tanking since
Yea dude that's cheating. It happened but those guys get kicked out eventually
Rules? No. But you will get obliterated on the message board. We do not endorse firesales or tanking.
We use max points potential for 1-9, and 10,11,12 for the 3 money winners, works out great facilitates mid season trading, and encourages non-cheesy tanking, now if you want to sit players to manipulate playoffs seeds, well, we that Karma take care of that
Nothing wrong with this; playing the long game.
Not yet but as a owner I’m planning to put one in place this season. We had 2 teams tank every game last season to get Caleb Williams. Kinda annoying
I'm firmly in the camp of "GM can tank, Head Coach can't". I get people saying it's not against specific rules, but it's definitely against the spirit of what is a *game*. I don't believe free wins should be handed out in this way, it really screws the competetive integrity of a league.
I encourage tanking in my leagues.
The rule in my league is that you have to field a team that plays every week. There are circumstances where someone is an extremely late scratch from a game and if a team is extremely injury riddled where it wouldn't make sense for their roster to drop a contributing player thats on bye or hurt to pick up a person on waivers that is healthy and will play, but that is up to our commish to determine if more could be done. We haven't had any issues, but our commish has made it clear that penalty for breaking this rule is that your 1st round pick will be moved back 3 positions, so if you end up with 1 overall and do this, you will actually be drafting 1.04. There's a good way to tank, and a bad way to tank. Not setting your lineup is the bad way. Starting terrible players that you roster is the right way to do it.
In my leagues, this is called an anti-tanking rule. The reason this is not allowed is even though you’re ruining your own playoff chances, there is a possibility that you are guaranteeing them for someone else and knocking another person out that way. This would be considered throwing a game which is banned by my bylaws.
Joined a league where draft order was determined by the results of the consolation bracket. The team I took over was a crap team and finished 2nd to last in Max Points with the second worst record. When draft order was posted I had the 6th pick because my team lipstick the first week to a team that almost made the playoffs. That team ended up winning the consolation bracket and got the first pick. I was pissed and ended up leaving the league.
I (commissioner of 10 team, 4 playoff league) am proposing the top seed get to choose their first round matchup to prevent tanking in bad faith. We also have a "bad faith play for the purpose of tanking" rule that is punishable at my discretion, but I have set the precedent of moving picks to the ends of rounds for first offense and we haven't had a second offense yet but it will be forfeiture of draft picks if it happens.
Yes I put a rule in my bylaws for this. Won’t matter for top six which I stated because of MPF, but for playoff teams if they intentionally don’t set their best lineup or throw for a better pick I stated they’ll lose their draft position by 1 spot
Not allowed in my leagues. I check lineups after the weekend to make sure that didnt happen (blatant benching of studs). Also MaxPF will still ensure their player points count against them leading to a higher ish pick
Median win loss should fix this for the most part without having to play roster police.
In a nutshell, we calculate total dynasty trade value (using an agreed upon chart) of starting rosters for each team to determine pick order. De-incentivizes tanking because it doesn’t actually help you get a higher pick. As a quick illustration, this year we have a non playoff team with a higher PF and better W/L record getting a better pick than another non playoff team with both worse PF and W/L and is primarily due to the latter team having a higher value starting dynasty core: Chase, Burrow, Achane, KW3, DJ Moore
We penalize future draft picks to prevent tanking
Yeah, it's called max pf
Who tries to miss the playoffs, that’s so stupid lol dude thinks he’s outsmarting the league but he’s really just outsmarting himself
Add a game against the median in your league. It would then be virtually impossible for a team with a very low Max PF to make the playoffs and thus they would have no reason to not play their most competitive lineup.
Team in question asked if there was a rule. There was no rule. Therefore a rule was not broken. Now there is a rule because the league voted it in. Do I have that right? If so seems pretty straightforward. Wouldn’t change anything retroactively.
I mean Best Ball solves this issue completely
Yep, teams must set most reasonably competitive lineup every week of regular season. Failure to so results in FAAB and ultimately draft pick fines. If you want to tank, sell all your players and play whoever you have left.
We have a good faith rule where no matter what, you have to make a good faith starting lineup to win that week. Sometimes you can fudge stuff a bit, but by and large the amount of shaming and bullying that goes on for throwing games would far outweigh any benefits of being a dick. Worst we’ve had is someone having to defend starting one guy over another in league chat, helps us not assume maliciousness when incompetence is often the case
The top 5 teams in our league determined by record automatically make the playoffs. Then the sixth spot is given to the team with the highest total score out of the remaining 7 teams. Now moving into the consolation bracket…the two worst teams by overall record get byes the first week. And then our draft order is determined by how you finish in the consolation bracket! Winner of consolation gets 1.01. Second place gets 1.02 and so on and so on.
turns out maxPF is not perfect... shocker! you'll need to stay a bit on the ball with this. it's tricky, because sometimes people just forget there's a game on thursday and shouldn't be penalized for a funk up. you need to be clear about everyone setting the best possible lineup (and hope everyone's honest), the issue is you'll have to check every lineup every week, which is not that time consuming, but it's annoying. josh palmer over london could be a reasonable choice, olamide zaccheaus over lamb errr... not so much. do not involve projections in any way. first offense: warning, lineup adjustment at the commissioner discretion. second offense: 2nd round pick decked, lineup adjustment. third offense: booted from the league, no refunds. i do not apply this to thursday games generally, unless it's something egregious.
Not a direct solution, but one way to potentially avoid this going forward is to add w-l vs the median (top 6 scoring teams each week get a w and bottom 6 get an l regardless of the head to head matchup) Can argue that it’s less fun bc it takes away a lot of the randomness, but in this scenario the owner would have been less likely to compete for a playoff spot in the first place
Purposefully starting worse line ups is a form of collusion and highly frowned upon. My leagues - you should be trying to win every week, you cant be sitting players - it affects more than just yourself. Judgement calls are fine but sitting Kelce to play a random te3 bc youd rather have X team win is no beuno
We do a draft lottery in my league, and i think it works well for situations like this. No guarantee that the worst team gets 1.01.
Intentionally missing the playoffs is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard personally. That said, ya it’s pretty lame to start a shitty roster on purpose and cost league mates a fair shot themselves. Pretty tough to make a rule against it though.
If your QBs are Mac Jones, Desmond Ridder, and Derrick Car You have 1 true starting RB with KW3 and then are using rotational guys Have no TE, and two stud WRs.... He had no chance. And he wanted a shot at a top QB, strategically it was the right move. He would've gotten blown out in the playoffs
I’m sure he “had no shot to make the playoffs” at the start of the season too 🤷♂️
To give you more perspective, he was averaging below 100 points, and the top 3 teams were averaging in the 150 range. Did he have a shot, sure. But I think living to fight another year, and getting a better asset makes sense here.
Ya I hear ya, I can see it maybe. Personally I’d try to trade my first for something that at least helps my playoff chances, but if it’s truly bleak af I suppose this could make sense
It’s weird for people to think they should be able to force their competitors to make the best decision for someone else. However you want to award rookie draft picks is fine, but roster management is a dynasty strategy. Roster rules should apply in the sense that you need to have a starting lineup set. Players on bye week or IL should not be played in the lineup. Who I start is my decision & what factors I allow to play into that, is also my decision. Any other manager getting a say in my lineup is collusion in my eyes.