Offseason Review

I’ve been waiting 4 long months to formally publish this – fuck Odell Beckham Jr.
Fuck him up his rookie ass.

I have to apologize. Apologize for letting the total disappointment of this season manipulate my responsibilities as league commissioner. Apologize for not giving the season its due coverage and not giving props to League Champion Money Manziel that each of our past champions received. Although, it was September before Genetic Black Jesus had seen anything from me in our first season. Either way, MM was sent his trophy and I will cover his season in detail in an upcoming post.

In defense of my sparse league coverage this year, I was selected for a highly-competitive executive program with the DoD which put me on the road and out of pocket for most of the entire fantasy season. From October to date, myself and approximately 60 other execs from across the globe got together and spent 1 to 2 weeks a month traveling to work with different agencies in DC, Massachusetts, Korea, Hawaii, California, Georgia, and most recently Texas. All secret squirrel shit, but just wanted everyone to know that I was out of pocket for my customary league analysis, season updates and general tomfoolery.

Back to OBJ. That motherfucker single-handedly won the fantasy football playoffs. More than 92% of fantasy football platforms reported their League Champions as having OBJ on their roster. If you were lucky enough to have picked him up off waivers when Victor Cruz went down, you essentially found Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. If only the rest of the league knew that there was nothing they could do about the absolute rampage of fantasy points he was about to lay down at the end of the season.

To put that in perspective, OBJ ended up ranked third all-time for rookie fantasy wide receivers. Pro-Football-Reference.com collects fantasy points using fractional scoring to provide a rankings reference. If we use their rookie wide receiver rankings, Beckham finishes third. His 204 fantasy points trail only Randy Moss’ 235.7 in 1998 and Bill Groman’s 221.4 in 1960. Other than Moss, to find the only receiver to score more fantasy points than him in a rookie campaign, you need to include AFL seasons back to 1960. OBJ’s season ranks third-best in the past 55 years. Fuck that guy.

Back to apologies. All this OBJ nonsense made me realize that I made a few fundamental mistakes this season that would have tilted the results in one or two team’s favors. We all remember the Bench Swap debacle in Week 6. Had we allowed the Bench Swap to have taken place the current league champion wouldn’t have even made the playoffs. The farthest OBJ would have been able to take Money Manziel was 7th place. Schoolya’gain knows this reality better than any one of us as she received the shit end of that deal. I have adjusted the Constitution to properly take in to consideration the period for stat corrections. We will continue to use Bench Swaps next season. Two teams are carrying over their Bench Swaps earned last season and I am still interested to see how that little, dark experiment plays out.

Apologies are in order for the way we conducted the waiver wire this season. I set it up to benefit the worst teams in the league, to be more democratic and balance out the overall strength of each team as the season progressed. Each week the lowest ranking team had first crack at free agents. This reset each week and the top ranking teams never got a shot at picking up anyone. This ended up adversely affecting the strength of those teams that drafted well, and worked hard throughout the season. Many of the teams in the league voiced frustration about this. Next season I will return the waiver wire to an even playing field. Each team will get an equal crack at free agents. Priority will simply be based on who picked last. That line will carry over from week to week.

Lastly, I am removing all of the bonuses. If your guy has a great game, he has a great game. There is no reason to rain bonus points on a guy when he breaks some irrelevant threshold. The point differential between a guy with 99 yards and a guy with 101 yards is unnecessary. You get what you get going forward. We won’t be breaking any league records this way, but there is nothing more fair than just applying the exact points that you earn. Let’s just call it another experiment and see how it works out. All that said, I will maintain the 1 point “score tuning” that NFL.com doesn’t account for – like Field Goals made over 50 and 60 yards. Check out the Scoring Sheet next season for details.

It wouldn’t be a new season without a few new changes. We’ll continue to fine tune, throw wrenches and talk shit. Stay tuned for some end of season stats, league trophies and a puff piece on our 2014 League Champion, Money Manziel.

-The Commish