Thinking Out Loud While In Freefall

That's what I get for running my mouth keyboard. From a record-setting Week Five performance the Flyers fell to Earth (hard) and scored about half as many points this week in losing to the Holes. The next time I break the scoring record, and bygawd there will be a 'next time', I'll just keep my mouth shut.

Elsewhere...The Giants pulled out the big bats this week and at 5-1 continue to dominate the Barenholtz... The Kuhlmann continues to be the most competitive division with the Sticks and Pirates tied at the top. The Bliz have slipped a bit from their early season Power Ranking lead but McCaffrey will be back soon to set things right...and what the hell happened to the 0-3 Legends? Well at the moment they are breathing again at 3-3 and are the highest-scoring team among clubs not leading their division. 

If the playoffs started now...Flyers, Sticks, and Giants are in as division champs...the Pirates and Nats get spots based on record...the sixth spot would go to the Bombers since they are 1-0 among games involving them, the Legends (1-1) and the Blizzard (0-1) Note...the Bliz and Bombers play this week. The Legends would get the seventh spot since they have outscored two of the wildcard teams (actually they've outscored all three!)...

I'm a numbers nerd despite the fact I sucked at math in school and I'm endlessly fascinated by the Power Rankings chart found on the site's 'Numbers' tab. For example..Flyers are ranked #1 in the standard PR Points but drop way off the pace when looking at the Alt PR column...we also see that the 4-2 Nats would be 0-6 of the rest of us were better at picking lineups...the Giants have a 92% lineup efficiency rate but does that mean a smart owner of a thin bench?... it took until this past week for every team to have hit the 100 point level in a game. Last season we were there in Week Two. I  have no idea what that means in terms of our season...we have one team (the Giants) with over 700 points scored through six weeks. Last year we had two (the Flyers and Nats) but only one of those two made the playoffs. Hint: It wasn't the Flyers. 

The League Site... I'm gonna leave well enough alone for now as everything seems to be working fine. I've taken out some modules that I figure were redundant or were not being used and maybe that helped. I'm using a different browser and the site loads fairly quickly and the modules seem to work as intended. Contact me with any problems you see. 

A few clarifications... #1) MFL doesn't change player positions during the season as a matter of policy. I agree with them allowing leagues to make those decisions for themselves. 

Cordarrelle Patterson is listed as a receiver but he clearly is serving as an RB for the Falcons. With our flexible lineup requirements, I don't see a point in manually making the position change. 

#2) I'm going to add some guidelines for how we handle add/drop errors to our rules. I haven't decided on a formal policy but in the meantime, my suggestion (request) is that if you f'ed up and want to rescind a drop the first thing to do is post on the chat and then contact me.

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I've had a couple of ideas pop into my (normally empty) head recently. They involve how the league functions and I'll discuss them here and ask for feedback. These certainly are not critical issues and neither would go into effect this year.

The first is our required lineup structure. All of us know that these days quality running backs are at a premium. It's just part of how the game has evolved. More and more RBs now a) share carries, b) get tweaked (at the moment I'm typing this 12 of the Top 25 backs have injury designations), and c) are more like wideouts on many teams. Guys running for 100+ yards is something that occurs less frequently than it used to. 

My thought was to give owners a little more flexibility in picking a lineup. We could change the 2/3 RB 3/4 REC setup to 1/3/RB 3/5 REC. In other words, you'd be able to start 1 running back and 5 receivers in addition to the options you have now. As I said, it was just a thought and I'm always open to feedback. This is one of those issues I'd put to a vote before implementing.

The other possible change comes in the area of free-agent pickups. It occurred to me last Thursday when I claimed a player who'd been dropped just a few minutes prior. I just happened to check my email and saw a player was dropped who I thought was better than the last guy on my bench. So I nabbed him. But was that fair? What about guys who are working or otherwise can't be checking for drops at random times during open waivers?

EDIT...I wrote the five-paragraph missive below last week but I've come to realize that I'm looking probably for an answer to a problem that doesn't exist. Nobody has ever abused the system or complained about how it is currently set up. Everyone's thoughts are, as usual, welcomed.

MFL gives us several options. None of them are perfect for our situation but several may improve things. Keep in mind one thing...I want to keep it as easy as possible, for me especially, so a couple of options are just not gonna fly. 

We could simply have dropped players 'locked' for a day. A player dropped on Thursday at 2 p.m. would unlock and be available at 2 p.m. on Friday. Outside of not changing anything, this is the easiest solution. It gives everyone a chance to see who has been dropped before some vulture swoops in. What it doesn't do is solve the issue of working stiffs possibly not being able to get to the league at that time. And it makes for the possibility of a 'fast finger race' at the time the player becomes available. Then again, how many players of any real value get dropped in open waivers? And ANY specific 'unlock time' would create a 'race to the button' situation. 

There are options to unlock dropped players all at once on a given day and time. We could have all dropped guys unlock at noon on Saturday, for example. Or we could have them NOT unlock at all and make them available through the next round of blind bidding along with the rest of the free-agent players. I don't like that last option much because the newly minted FA could be a desperate owner's savior for that coming weekend. I'm not in favor of tying anyone's hands by making players unavailable.

One suggestion I heard was a second waiver session during the week with a set cost ($10) and priority being based on records (W/L, Points, whatever). The problem is that MFL won't let me set up two different types of priority waivers. You either have blind bidding (as we do) OR 'rolling priority' waivers i.e. based on record waivers where you go to the end of the line with a claim. You can't run both in the same league. 

OTOH...it's possible (likely?) that I'm searching for a solution to a nonexistent problem! We've had the current system in place for a number of years and I've never heard one complaint. Leaving well enough alone may very well be my best bet.