Dynasty commishs will know the problem. If you establish the draft order by season ranking, owners will be tempted to tank as soon as they are out of the playoff race.
Awarding the 1st overall pick via the consolation playoffs keeps the season interesting through week 16 for all owners. But the consolation playoff winner is rarely the weakest team in the league, that would need the 1.1. the most. Plus, some owners may still try a little tanking in weeks 11-13, to make it to the consolation round if they feel they donât have a shot in the playoffs.
Question: did any dynasty commish here ever try to establish the draft order via the Dynasty Power Ranking in FantasyProâs âMy Playbookâ section?
I am thinking about suggesting this to my leagueâs owners. It would eliminate any reason for tanking, plus you canât cheat the system. The only chance to deliberately gain a higher draft rank is by dropping valuable players. Which is no problem, as the other owners will be happy to find them on the waiver wire.
To keep the consolation playoffs interesting, Iâd consider awarding $100 extra FAAB to the consolation winner. They can use them throughout the season, or spend $201 for a guaranteed pick in the first waiver round, and still have $99 for the rest of the season.
There is no best way to deal with this. However, I am honestly willing to live with the âtankingâ problem. If you are losing, and going to lose, why not aim for the trenches? Sell off your best players, gather draft picks, and come back strong next year? That is the point of dynasty, right? Setting yourself up for the next season is good strategy.
Selling off players to load up with draft picks for next year isnât tanking. Thatâs a legitimate dynasty strategy. Most leagues have trading deadlines to avoid any funny business before the playoffs start. Everything that happens before that deadline is fair game.
Tanking is when you donât start your best available players, and conveniently forget injured or bye week players in your starting lineup. And thatâs most certainly not the point of dynasty, as far as I am concerned.
Using the FantasyPros dynasty ranking to determine the draft order is a very intruguing idea, as it will eliminate tanking entirely. Iâm just not sure if I can sell it to the team owners. Not all of them use FantasyProsâŚ
Tanking games happens in the NFL. Remember when Jalen Hurts got benched at the end of the season? I suspect teams do more to tank games than we realize, probably with predictable playcalling.
True. The Jags kept Minshew benched after his thumb injury as they were afraid he could actually win more games for them.
Still doesnât mean Iâd like to see that in my dynasty league
On the long run, itâs bad for dynasty leagues if they run out of balance. Making sure that the 1.1 goes to the team that needs it the most is a good way to avoid that. Thatâs why Iâm intrigued by using the FantasyPros league ranking, as it seems pretty incorruptible to me.
Was just wondering if any commishs or dynasty owners already have first hand experience with it.
Thatâs how we handle it in my 12-team dynasty league as well. But this year is a perfect example for the problem with that approach.
Our 1.1 in the 2021 draft went to the team that was #4 in our power ranking, with only a small distance to the #1-3 spots. The team was a contender for the 2020 title. But the owner had some bad luck with injuries, and was playing in the strongest division. So he ended up with the #7 seed and had to play the consolation round.
Which he dominated and thus won the 1.1.
This season, all his studs that were injured last year are back. He was still the #4 team in the power ranking before the draft. And left the draft room with Najee Harris in tow.
The weakest team by far only had the 1.3 pick, and only thanks to an extremely lucky win in week 14. Otherwise, it would have been the 1.5.
I donât see how that owner can turn that team around, if they constantly end up with the 1.5 pick because they are too bad to win a game in the consolation round. My concern is that the owner will at some point lose interest and abandon the team, and then the entire league would have a problem.
