Last Place Wisdom: Week 11 - Time to MQMA

So all of you looking to get a deep dive into my brain after I decided to trade away my favourite player and cornerstone of my team late last week, you may be disappointed as I’m not really in a mood to talk about it in much depth. I don’t believe my team is good enough to win this year, and I hate seeing a player as good as Brown not impacting the fantasy playoffs this year. Mike presented what I felt was a pretty good offer, and all things considered it just felt ok pulling the trigger. Now the big question on everyone’s mind might be am I kicking myself knowing that Brown may have swung my matchup with Mike and allowed me to hand him his first loss of the season, and my honest answer is no. The reasoning behind it is simple: I’ve made almost nothing but bad fantasy decisions for a full year now, and if this turns out to be a bad one this season I’m ok with it because almost nothing has gone right for me this year.

I could go into the long list of bad decisions I’ve made, but to do so just seems like pointless self-pity. I’m not dwelling on it, and am focusing on the future. Now that I’m actually holding a playoff position for the first time all season, could Brown have been the difference between winning and losing a championship this year? Maybe, but I think it’s just as likely (which is to say, not very) that Cohen swings enough games to win me a championship this year as Brown would have, so it’s not going to weigh on me. Perhaps the one regret I do have is that I didn’t decide to sell players off sooner, as pieces like Fitzgerald, Miller or Burton would have been available had anyone come calling.

Now, this Last Place Wisdom could have been a deep dive into playoff potential, but in favour of brevity I’m going to cover it in a paragraph. Stan and Aaron have the hardest schedules out of those still in the playoff hunt, Stan will need to win out to have a chance and hope everyone he’s chasing loses out. Aaron will probably need to get at least one win and hope I lose out. The winner of Steve and my matchup this week will probably be the favourite for the last spot; if Steve wins he makes the playoffs unless he loses and I win the last week of the season, or if Aaron wins out. If I win, Aaron will have to win out and hope I lose the last game, unless he can overcome the 60 point advantage I hold. In a crazy scenario, Aaron and I can still knock Travis out if we run the table and he loses out. Needless to say, it’s a big week for playoff positioning.

Mr Manager of the Week Award

The one LPW usual feature I’m going to rely on this week, I’m giving this as a joint award to John and Mike. They’re going all out for a title this year, and were the only two people who contacted me about acquiring Brown after I put it out there. Regardless of whether they win a championship or not, I’ve come to really appreciate bold moves in hopes of winning it all.

So rather than focus on the past, the mistakes I’ve made and the glory days of Antonio Brown and the Keith Glorious Basterds, I’m dedicating this post to looking ahead to next year, and how to improve TFLOEG. John started off the last podcast with a discussion about how fantasy football is just not as fun this year, building on a conversation he and I had. Now I think John came off a little too negative; I still think fantasy is incredibly fun and I’ve probably dedicated more time to it this year than I have for the past few. However, I think some aspects of it have gotten worse, but it’s not anything that can’t be improved with some strategic changes to how we play the game.

So it might not be the best time to write this after QBs almost single handedly won Andrew and I our matchups in week 11; but one of the biggest issues facing fantasy football in 2018 is the fact that the QB position no longer matters. This is not to say that good or bad QB performances can’t swing weeks one way or the other, as they clearly do as seen by the insane scores put up at the position this year. What I’m saying is that there is no advantage that comes from having a good QB versus having one that could merely be considered league average (outside of Patrick Mahomes, who hasn’t had his bye week yet but is a clear outlier at the position in terms of providing a competitive advantage each week). To borrow a phrase from Aaron, I crunched the numbers and came up with the average point advantage having a top performer at the position gains you per week versus having a replacement level player (Consider it PAR (Points Against Replacement) to borrow a baseball term)

Note –  Outliers from the Rams/Chiefs are excluded from my calculations because they haven’t had their bye weeks and throw off the calculations. Basically, I’m comparing the average points each week that having the #2 performer has at a position against the #24 performer at RB/WR, and the #12 performer at QB/TE (this is what I consider replacement level). In reality, with 2 flex positions the difference between the top performers at a position and the guys who are actually getting played most weeks (Approx 36 at receiver and running back) is even greater than indicated here.

	QB	RB	WR	TE
PAR	6.1	12.4	8.1	7.3
High	Drew Brees (299)	Alvin Kamara (235)	Michael Thomas (195)	Zach Ertz (149)
Low	DeShaun Watson (230)	Dion Lewis (98)	John Brown (105)	David Njoku (68)

What this shows is that having a high end QB starter as opposed to a low end guy is worth 83% of the comparable at TE, 75% at WR, and 50% at RB. Given this fact, it’s no wonder that nobody wanted to draft QBs on draft day, and why half the teams in the league are starting guys they basically picked up for free on the waiver wire. If you’re like me and are of the opinion that TEs really don’t matter either, it means that half of the positions in fantasy football aren’t worth thinking about too greatly (I refuse to even acknowledge IDP here).

This is not a recipe for fun and excitement when it comes to fantasy. RBs have long had outsized importance in the game, and there is no getting around that, however steps can be taken to reduce the weighing of importance. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the teams filling the bottom half of the standings have faced a disproportionate amount of missed time for RBs or started the season weak at the position (Fournette, Mixon, Freeman, Freeman, Bell, Lynch, Ajayi, Ingram, Thompson; to name the guys who have missed time for various reasons). Injuries are always going to determine who is in the league basement, but with QB not mattering, it removes one of the other possibilities for these teams to find a comparative advantage and make up for their losses. Just look at Andrew, the one team in the league that has a clear advantage at QB, and how he has been able to find success on the back of Mahomes despite having uncertainty at RB with Carson and Cook missing a number of games.

This blog has been politics free for a long time, which is a welcome state of affairs, but this image is too good not to bring back.

With the facts available for everyone to see at this point, it’s time to present my proposal: We need to Make QB Matter Again (MQMA). The way to accomplish this is fairly simple as well; the time has come to go back to a 2 QB league (technically a Superflex position if you want to be accurate).

TFLOEG had 2 QBs for one year in the past before we voted to switch away from the format. I don’t remember why we decided to change, maybe due to expansion, maybe due to people not liking it, but I think we may have just been too early in adopting the format. With more QBs playing well and throwing more than ever, drafting and starting QBs should be more interesting, but the opposite has happened. My case for the change is made below:

•         Spreading out the scoring possibilities and making a wider array of positions matter to the eventual outcome – I outlined how devalued QB is currently already, but what would it do to the position if we had 24 QBs starting every week instead of just 12.

	QB
PAR	12.3
High	Drew Brees (299)
Low	Joe Flacco (163)

·          

·          

·          

        QB would go from the least important position to have a solid option at to the 2^nd most. It might          be easy for everyone to get one QB they can trust, but it would reward those teams who can find          that second solid option, instead of having to rely on a guy like Flacco each week.

• Balancing the draft – teams would be compelled to take QBs in earlier rounds and actually be rewarded for it. It would mean another thing to think about on draft day, rather than drafting a guy and forgetting about the position for the rest of the evening. Instead of knowing that I have QB as my pocket player and will not be touching that position at all, you’ll have to spend all evening worrying “Is he going to draft 4 QBs and try and corner the market on the position?” instead.
• Shaking up the Keepers – I can probably predict 95% of next year’s keepers already, simply because it has come down to finding the best 4 or 5 WRs/RBs on your roster and locking them up. The only interesting part is when you have 2 players with a similar value and have to decide between them, and it’s gotten a little stale (I still prefer a keeper system than a redraft). But instead of having 59 of 60 potential keepers be WR or RB (Maybe Andrew would keep Mahomes; if I was him I would still have a tough time doing this), MQMA would throw open the potential keeper options. It would put better players back into the draft, and force teams to make tough decisions. It would shake things up in a way we haven’t seen since the last expansion, and breathe new life into the league. I can’t stress enough how much I truly believe this.        
• It would make waivers more fun – In my opinions, waivers haven’t been as interesting this year. Given how good TFLOEG managers are, and how deep our benches are, most players that one would consider sleepers have been stashed since the start of the season. There have only been a handful of difference makers picked up off waivers this year, and I no longer get as excited about watching the process on Wednesday mornings. If we switched to 2 QBs, every starting QB in the league would be rostered, and it would put 10-12 “stashed” players back into the Free Agent pool. We might actually get real bidding wars if stashed players couldn’t be held so easily.

Now I personally don’t see any downsides in switching to this option, but if you have any potential concerns or suggestions, please raise them in Slack so we can discuss it further. I can see a potential issue that could result whenever QBs put up 50 point weeks in that it can wildly swing weeks in too great a fashion and make every other position irrelevant. To address this, I also think it’s time to move away from 6 point passing TDs and switch back to 4, which I think was a mistake to switch in the first place. To accomplish this, I propose switching the IDP position to a Superflex, and not changing roster sizes at all. If people choose to keep IDP, or if people would rather change one of the existing 2 flex positions to Superflex instead, I would be ok with it and am wanting to hear your cases.

This will be a proposal raised at next year’s manager meeting, but in order for everyone to have a chance to get on board and potentially prepare your teams and mental state for the change, I wanted to raise the issue now. Join me, and let’s Make QB Matter Again!

On the Next Last Place Wisdom

•          I go negative on the “Keep QB Irrelevant Still” opposition that arises due to my proposal
•         “Lock them up! Lock them up!”
•         I slip into deep depression as I watch Antonio Brown win Mike more games that otherwise I would have won.