A Football Life, 2018 Offseason

The fifth season of the AFL is in the books. We had a very exciting season, at least for 10 of the league’s 12 members. Adam and Sean found themselves out of playoff contention fairly early in the season as they started the season a combined 0-8 before their head-to-head matchup. They both finished the season with just two wins, a record low in the league, including the seasons in which we played just 13 games.

Every other team was alive in the playoff chance when the final round of divisional games began in week 12. Danny finished with a record of 12-2 to clinch his first division title, and in fact his first playoff appearance, since his 2014 championship season. After securing his first winning season in the league in 2016, but ultimately missing the playoffs, Will returned with a vengeance, leading the league in breakdown and winning his division with a 10-4 mark.

Cory and Andrew battled through the end of the season for the AFL West division title. Andrew pulled it out after Cory had led the way all season, but Cory still managed to secure the wild card thanks to a few lucky weeks in the middle of the season keeping him afloat.

In the end, the best two teams in the league made it to the title game where Danny put up the second highest title game score ever, the 11th highest score overall in league history, to take his third title in five seasons of the league. Danny’s 155.3 points came from a balanced effort by his players. Only the 32.2-point effort of Dion Lewis was a top-20 performance as his position for the season, but every other player in Danny’s starting lineup scored double digits.

Before we look at how this season stacks up against other seasons in our league’s history, here are some of this season’s top performers.

2017 season-long individual performers

Russell Wilson, who was on William’s roster, was the top fantasy quarterback in the AFL in 2017 and was one of just two players to score at least 300 fantasy points while in starting lineups. He led all players with 318.9 points in 13 games played and in fact was the leader in points per game among qualifying players with 24.5.

Le’Veon Bell played for Andrew this season and was second among all players in fantasy points with 311.6 in his 14 starts. His 22.3 points per game was second among qualifying running backs only to Ezekiel Elliott, who averaged 22.5 points in his eight starts for Viroj.

Our leading scorer at wide receiver was DeAndre Hopkins, who helped Danny to his AFL title with 261.8 points in his 15 starts, an average of 17.5 points per game. At the wide receiver position, only Antonio Brown had a higher mark as he gave Cory 18.4 points per game in 13 starts.

Danny also had the leading scorer at tight end for the season as Travis Kelce scored 192.1 points in his 15 games, a new single-season record at the position. His 12.8 points per game average was topped at the position only by Andrew’s starting tight end, Rob Gronkowski, who averaged 14.8 points per game in his 12 starts.

Coincidentally, the top four tight ends and the top five wide receivers were all on playoff teams.

On a per-season basis, I look only at the top 10 quarterbacks and tight ends and the top 20 running backs and wide receivers in terms of what goes into the record books. However, on the whole, 29 different quarterbacks, 32 different tight ends, 68 different wide receivers, and 69 different running backs made starts on owners’ rosters over the course of the season (playoff weeks are only included for the teams in the wild card and championship games).

Three players made the leaderboards at their position for the season while making appearances in at least two owners’ starting lineups. At the running back position, it was C.J. Anderson, who was drafted by Sean but was later traded to Brandon, where he actually performed better and finished the season 16th at the position. DeMarco Murray was involved in that trade, and like Anderson he also performed better while on Brandon’s roster. He finished just outside the top 20 at the position.

At wide receiver, it was two players also involved in the same trade between two teams. Tyreek Hill started the season with Eric and finished with Adam. He was the 6th highest scorer at the position with 172.1 points in 13 starts. To get Hill, Adam traded Brandin Cooks to Eric, and it wound up being a good deal for Adam, even though he still finished with just two victories. Cooks finished 17th at the position with 124.9 points in 12 starts, almost three fewer points per game than Hill.

2017 single-game individual performers

The top single-game performances at each position all occurred for different owners. The highest single-game score for a quarterback was Alex Smith for Andrew with his 38.2-point performance in week 13. Brandon got 44.8 points from Kareem Hunt all the way back in week 1 and that stood all season as the highest single-game performance for a running back.

The highest point total from any player this season, just barely beating Hunt, was 44.9 points from Julio Jones in week 12, a performance that finally justified Danny’s 2nd overall draft selection last year. At tight end, the highest performance actually came from a player who did not make the top-10 list at the position for season-long points. Jack Doyle gave Anthony a 24.1-point outing in week 8.

Historical context

Looking back over team point totals through league history, we’ve had a fascinating journey. During the first two years of our league, when we had just one starting running back spot and we played just 13 weeks during the season, the cumulative point totals of the league’s 12 teams were very similar with average winning and losing scores differing by about a quarter of a point and the average per team per week scores differing by only a tenth of a point.

In 2015, under the same roster rules but with a 14th week added to the regular season, the cumulative point total, of course, increased, but the average per team per week score was roughly half a point lower than it had been during the previous two seasons.

For those first three seasons, the average winning score was roughly 109 points and the average losing score was just less than 84 points. The overall average single-game score was 96.5 points.

In 2016 we added a ninth starting spot to the roster by including the standard second running back. We also changed our PPR setting to half a point per reception, up from 0.4 points per reception. As expected, these changes led to a huge increase in team scoring. The average winning score was 122.3 points, the average losing score was 99.2 points, and the overall team average score was 110.8.

We can’t really compare 2016 to the previous three seasons, which is unfortunate because we really have no way of knowing if scoring was up or was roughly the same. It is, however, doubtful that scoring was low in 2016 because we saw a significant decrease in scoring this season.

With a total of 18,112.2 points scored this season we saw decreases in average winning score (119.1), average losing score (96.5), and the average per team per week score (107.8).

Our highest scoring week this season was week 11 when our 12 teams combined for 1,427.1 points, roughly 27 points shy of the highest scoring week in 2016. Our second highest scoring week this season ranks just 9th overall, behind seven different weeks from the 2016 season.

Will was this season’s leading score with a total of 1,658.9 points, which ranks third all-time behind Eric’s incredible 1,824.6 points and Anthony’s 1,682.7 points from the 2016 season. The 2016 efforts of Andrew and Will both ranked higher than this year’s second highest point total.

This season saw two single-game team performances that rank in the top 10, with Will putting up 168.0 points in the final week of the regular season to take the 3rd spot and Eric leading the way in week 11 with 156.1 points to take the 10th spot. There are six performances from 2016 on this list.

Russell Wilson was mentioned earlier as being the highest scoring quarterback in the league this season. He ranks fifth on the single-season individual scoring leaderboard at the quarterback position. In fact, the top five on this list each come from a different player and from a different season. In all, seven of this year’s quarterback’s made the top 40 on this list.

At running back, Le’Veon Bell clocks in at 5th on the running back list and is joined by 12 other running backs from this season in the top 40.

DeAndre Hopkins is the new record-holder for points scored in a season (while in the starting lineup) at the wide receiver position with 261.8 points in his 15 starts. Seven other wide receivers from this year made the top 40.

Danny’s other leading receiver, Travis Kelce, followed suit by setting a new record for points scored in a season at the tight end position with 192.1 points. He was one of seven tight ends to make the top 40 at the position.

FAAB success

This was our league’s second year using a Free Agent Acquisition Budget (FAAB) as a replacement for allowing waiver pickups in reverse order of standings. Our biggest waster of the season was Eric, who bid $169 more than he needed for his four waiver acquisitions, wasting 84.5% of his $200 budget (all of which he spent this season).

Sean wasted just $16 of his budget (or 8%), but to do so he only spent $17 all season.

Our most inefficient bidders were Adam and Andrew Perez. All $30 that Adam spent on his five waiver wire pickups was unnecessary as nobody else bid even a dollar on those players. Andrew put up $136 on eight players over the course of the season. Of those eight players only one was bid on by another owner and it was just a $1 bid, so $135, or 99.3%, of what Andrew put up was unnecessary.

Our most efficient bidder was William, who bid $60 over the course of the season and overbid by only $20, meaning he only wasted 33.3% of his bid total.

That full summary is below:

Defensive streaming success

Defenses and kickers have never been positions I’ve particularly cared for in fantasy football. I didn’t bother looking at kickers this year, but I did check to see which owners did the best job of streaming defenses.

Evan earned the most points over the course of the season, earning 237 points from the position while using just two teams, the Ravens eight times and the Jaguars six times. He drafted the Ravens and added the Jaguars in late September.

Our worst defensive streamer was Adam, who got just 105 points out of the position. He started with the Vikings for the first two weeks of the season, switched to the Bucs for two weeks, used the Titans for two weeks, and ran with the Bengals for the final eight weeks of the season.

The full defensive streaming summary is below:

Offseason Plans

Last year we did not hold a rules meeting. Eric and I felt good about the league as it stood and neither of us were getting vibes from other league members that things needed to be changed.

We are both still happy with the league format, but we have come up with some ideas for how to improve certain aspects, in particular how keepers work. As such, we will host an offseason rules meeting, most likely either in January or February. We will stream on Google Hangout or some other forum by which league members can join the dicussion.

If you’d like to get a quick head start on looking over some of the ideas we have for those changes, you can check them out at the following YouTube link.

Thanks again everyone on another fantastic season. We have lost one member for next season and will hopefully have that 12th spot filled before our division draft.