Overview of FAB and FA

The FAB and initial Free Agency period has ended and it's now time to evaluate how well the preseason went.

The FAB started out somewhat painfully for me. I was fairly reserved in my bids and attempted to steer away from the "top end" talent in the first couple of waves. This resulted in a total of seven signings on the initial two waves which is equal to the lowest number of players I inked to contracts in each of the following waves. The slow start resulted in the loss of four players purely due to GM Rating. Some may question that the GM Rating made the difference but when you have the exact same offer to a player than was accepted for contract terms and you injected two of those players into the FAB, there is only one thing to point your finger at. There was a contract price value difference of 0.06 on three players and 0.03 and the last...that's one slim margin. When all was said and done though, I had thirty-one players on my roster at the end of the FAB and plenty of money to spend on Free Agents.

The Free Agency period was fast and furious but really lacked any feel of urgency. I easily signed virtually anyone I introduced into bidding during FA and have fleshed-out my roster with enough depth to field any offensive or defensive alignment.

I've seen that some people are not fond of the new GM Rating modifiers. I personally like the idea of your rating being adjusted at the time of signing but I still would prefer that points not be awarded when you make your original offer. With the legacy-based nature of GDR, I believe that a 100 rating should not be achievable in a single season. As things currently stand it is possible to earn 4 points per signed player. With careful bidding a GM could reach a rating in the 90's by the end of the second wave without many problems. For some reason this doesn't feel right to me.

GM ratings

I concur with Gunslingers. The new GM setup is well intentioned but more punitive than appropriate. Many owners are willing to snipe/overbid for players they absolutely want during the FAB and this methodology (while completely legit) tends to punish the other owners who are more reserved during the FAB.

I feel I was lucky because I could check in enough during the FAB to keep building and maintaining my manager rating. I am in the high 90s continually, but it is a frustrating process of staying there. I completely understand why the new negative values were assigned but that doesn't mean they work well in practice.

It should be revisited next season for sure.

West Hartford Murder

GM Changes Kicked My Tail.

I don't know if I am alone in this or not, but the changes to how points are awarded during FAB to the GM hit me hard.  I think they probably need to be refined a little.  Let me explain. For every player you put a bid in and do not sign it is -1 point to your GM rating. I read the rule changes, but they did not sink in until about 1/2 through the first day of signings and by that time I had already lost about 6 or 7 points. My GM rating looks worse than a stock market chart during a bear market.  My GM rating reached a high of about 75 after day 2 signings, but then plummeted to a low of 42 during the next day.  I was taking drastic measures to sign anyone I could.  Let me give you a little picture of how bad it got on day 3 of signings. I lost 15 players by less than 4 points. 13 of those were by less than 3 points and 6 were less than 2 points.  I lost 2 player by a combined .o8 of a point.  I felt like I could not catch a break at all, and I didn't. I think of the 5 days, I signed only 1 player that was in a yellow status.  Sucks being me.

That is where I think it should be refined. I lost points on very competitive offers. So here is my FAB over view on losing points:  

• 33 by less than 4 pts
  
• 27 by less than 3 pts
  
• 13 by less than 2 pts
  
• 3 by less than 1 pt
  

That is a total lost of 33 points for having very competitive offers.

I have will have to work extremely hard to be competitive this year, and I am up to the challenge.  Not that I want any player to get hurt, but I am looking for some WRs to be injured or to get benched so I can pick up the next guy in line.  

Defense! Defense! Does it matter in the FAB?

Hmm, I had anticipated posting this before now but that little fantasy sports interrupt called "work" intervened and disrupted my schedule. Oh well, what I have to say about defense is still pertinent. Does it pay to draft defensive players in the FAB? Actually, my premise is reinforced and borne out through the post-FAB process that has been taking place the past couple of days. And my premise is this: don't waste a lot of time and precious FAB resources on defensive players! I know that lots of people will disagree with me on this one and don't misunderstand, I'm not suggesting you don't want to place the likes of a Brian Urlacher into the FAB; although good luck signing him for anywhere near a reasonable sum. But don't get overly worried if you come out of the FAB with only a handful of defensive players. Here's what has transpired in the Champ's League post-FAB process: plenty of blue chip defensive LBs, DBs and DLs have been placed on the Free Agent market to round out even 16 team rosters! And, don't forget this factor, with the exception of a few season-to-season standouts the cast of stud defenders changes more significantly from season to season than do the offensive studs. Last year I ended up with at least half of my defenders by season's end being pickups off the FA market rather than the guys I had drafted. And I thought I had drafted a stand-out batch of defenders. I got hit with injuries, suspensions and worse in my defender ranks last year and, out of necessity, saw a huge number of in-season FA signings. And those defenders were just as beneficial to my team defense points total as I had expected to get out of the original guys I FAB-ed.

So, my theory is this, hold back a small portion of FAB money to add to your post-FAB $10 million and then go after those post-FAB Free Agents that make the most sense to round out your team. My experience has been that the post-FAB activity is much less intensive for these guys and you don't end up with nearly the inflated signing dollars that you see in the FAB. Try to lock down at least one of the stud players at each defensive position in the FAB and then look to the post-FAB to round out the defense...there will be plenty of decent players still available.

FAB tip

Here's a suggestion that may prove useful to those of you who have not yet commenced your FAB. Don't bother drafting a FB. At least, don't spend anymore than .5 million. They bring very little to the table aside from filling a formation spot on offense.

I had an FB my first season who panned out for me (Anderson when he was with Denver). I soon realized that almost all the FBs were pretty much worthless. So, last season I neglected then AND I pretty much skipped out on TEs. I tried to rely on the formations that don't bother with either of the positions.

My West Hartford Murder team has two TEs and I'm working on more WRs. But, I've dropped any notion of using a FB.

I see some of the competition disagrees though.

Sir Ralph

League of Champions

I feel pretty lucky to be in the league this season. I do follow football pretty seriously and have a good track record (2 football leagues, 2 championships) but the fact remains that a lot of luck goes into winning it all.

I see some owners have decided to unveil their hidden draft approaches. I think most of us probably spend an inordinate amount of time studying football and the FAB so I tend to doubt there are many secrets left.

I try to work my drafts under very tight spending constraints. I don't ever buy the perceived best players -too expensive for me. I try to not spend more than 8 million on any one player. I almost always use my PBs for RBs and maybe a QB. Those are the only positions I'll spend lavishly on. Well, my version of lavishly.

I think I like the blackout feature, though I noticed it doesn't prevent sniping from happening for guys that are involved in negotiations. This is a feature that still requires fine tuning. Here's a thought: Why not have a program (I'm not the guy to do this.) that randomly locks out any final bids (aka snipes) sometime in the final hour? So for example, Player A is down to his final hour before he makes his "decision" about which offer is best for him. When this marker is met, a program runs which randomly sets a point at which no other bids adjustments are allowed. It could be on the hour, with 10 minutes left, etc. Or, maybe he makes a decision sometime randomly in that hour? I know some will hate this idea but it will force people to commit a little sooner.

I've digressed some from my strategies approach. Another play which I like is to throw out many bids. I think it is very important to get to 100 as a manger. On occasion one will get caught with a player and contract that wasn't desired but they're usually easily dropped onto the WW. It's easy for me because I budget my funds. Losing 2-3 million in a FAB is fine. Here's how I choose to look at it. If I could pay 2-3 million at the start of the FAB to know who has the best bid out there and at what amount, I would gladly do it.

I think I am doing well with this FAB, though my head is muddled by the other FAB I am in and a HUGE dynasty league I'm running for which we've had an online auction running for 21 days with 5 more to go! I like my defense a great deal and think I've gotten a few hidden gems. I spent some to get a decent WR in Evans and landed my QB (McNabb) and RBs in Henry, Jordan, and Carnell Williams who can only get better than last season.

Right now I'm duking it out with everyone else for all of the talent in the FA pool. But with 28.5 million at my disposal, I feel good about getting depth. And for me, depth is everything. I know some want the studs over the depth but it's too thin a margin of error for someone as conservative as I.

I'm looking forward to how this league unfolds. I'm not much of a trash talker. I prefer recognizes when someone else has done a good job with his squad. I'll leave the talk for the field.

Good luck fellas and I mean it,
Sir Ralph

GDR Ratings...how important in the FAB?

Well, here we are on the eve of the third day of the Champ's League FAB and, lo and behold, I find myself with a GDR owner rating of 100. In past years I have aspired to boost that rating to the high mark as quickly as possible and, oftentimes, I've fallen short of doing so. This year I totally forgot about worrying my rating and I'm there with still better than half of the FAB to go. So, just how important is this rating business anyway?

Certainly there is no question that the higher the rating = the more FAB "insider" info you have. But does that really matter?

For instance, with a 100 rating at this point I know exactly where my offers stand against everyone else's. Right now I am sitting on top, with a green rating, on several players and I know I'm in the catbird seat to sign those players on day 3 of the signings. But, frankly, I knew that already with a much lower rating because those players went green the moment I made offers to them. Where the 100 rating really helps me out is on the players that are showing yellow and I can now look at those and see that I am in line to sign two of them but my offers are only second-best on three others. Conceivably I could use my 100 rating to boost my offers just enough to move into first place consideration for those other players. If I wanted to do so, that is. And that's really the advantage of sitting at 100 rating. As it happens, after reviewing my roster and my needs and the remaining available players on my draft sheet, I've decided not to boost any of those three into top contention. There is always the possibility that the top team may drop their bids for one or another and I could still end up signing one or more of those players where I am just a tad shy of being first in line - although that rarely happens this early in the draft. It's more of a final day chance that people will start rescinding offers so I'm not going to worry much about those three players at this point. I have greater needs at this point and I'm beginning now to become very selective in my FAB approach. Because I have attained the coveted 100 rating I can afford to be selective.

So, does the GDR rating really matter?

It is another tool, and a very valuable one, in achieving my overall goals of a successful FAB. However, I don't think an owner should become so obsessed by achieving the high rating that they overlook the real need - drafting a balanced lineup.

I've seen guys go out in the FAB and intentionally blast their way to the top in the rating and then fail to maintain that rating long enough to do them any good because they have burned through their financial resources and/or they lose the top rating just as quickly as they achieved it by placing too many high bids too early in the FAB.

And so, my message is this, maintain your balanced approach. Don't worry about the Rating and it will happen on its own in a reasonable amount of time. Stick to your plan and keep those draft sheets close by. Don't panic early in the FAB, but maintain your consistency.

In wrap-up, here's where I stand entering the third day of signings: I have 9 players on my roster. My intention was to draft deep at QB and HB, pick up a couple of stellar players (though not the studs), and some depth with players I expect will see significant service before the year is over as injuries start to take their toll. I've achieved that goal. My depth at those two key positions is where I want it to be. I had hoped for a couple of WRs by now...frontline guys...and I've missed out so far on those signings. However, now with the 100 rating, I'm able to specifically target the remaining WRs that I really want to sign and go after them so I'm in a pretty good position. It's time today to start looking at those defensive positions that can make or break a GDR team over the long season.

In my next post I'll talk about a strategy for finding the defensive gems that can mean the difference between a championship and a close-second.

Day 1 of signings begins

Well, okay, the first day of the FAB is in the books with initial wave of offerings and now we turn attention to signings. This is where the FAB always becomes very interesting. Did you get off to a good start with initial offers and are you in the running for those stud players that everyone covets. Or do you care? Personally, I find that one of the better strategies is to lay back on initial offers, throw some lower tier players on the market, maybe grab an early steal and maybe even throw a junk player or two on the market at minimum salary so as not to eat away at my available resources. From looking over the list of initial offerings yesterday it appears that a few of my competitors in the Champs League follow a similar strategy.

So just how liberal do you become with your dollars when going after the studs in the intervening signing (I like to call it the "courting" hours) period? In my first year playing GDR I thought I just HAD to sign some studs and I got way over limit in my spending early on. I have since become a very conservative FAB-er. No arguing with the value of the studs but I have learned that there are always a few owners who are willing to way outspend to get these guys and then, inevitably, by the final day or two of the FAB they are struggling to have the financial resources to round out their teams. From my perspective the FAB is all about finding a happy balance in between outrageous overspending and too conservative underspending. Call it the balance between the Yankees and the Royals. It pays to do your research, have your draft sheets in order, and use them throughout the FAB.

So what about the Day 1 signings anyway? Well, last night after all the 1st day intros were OTM, I spent an hour or so perusing the list and increasing a few initial offers, recalculating my available resources (remember, GDR will keep a running tally of how much money you have OTM but that doesn't really reflect reality as some of your first offers were so low that you don't really have that money in circulation), deciding who I want to add to my early offers and figuring out where to go in Day 2 initial offers. Remember that you want to strike a balance. Don't panic because you see a bunch of the studs going off the board and you don't have offers in. If you really think you absolutely have to have a stud or two, put in your offers overnight (remember to try and hit within the first half of the time on the market if you are concerned about keeping your Manager rating on the increase - personally, I don't worry about the rating as I think it is over-rated. More on that in a future post.), and get ready for day 2...it's a long FAB and panic time hasn't yet set in!

Team Names, FAB Strategy, and Some History

I hate naming fantasy teams. I put way too much thought into it, and I'm usually not happy with the end result. My Champion's League team is named Addai Another Day - I both hate it and love it.

Reasons for the hate:
1. I'm not really an Addai fan, a Colts fan, or a 007 fan
2. I won't go out of my way to pick up Addai in the FAB
3. I really don't like puns (or Berman-isms)

Reasons to like it:
1. I didn't go with my first instinct, which would have resulted something like: Vick's Kennel
2. It doesn't sound like a desperate attempt to pretend my fantasy team is a real team
3. It sounds like a bad headline written by an alcoholic sports editor who gave up caring for his job ten years ago and is praying for the day that his bosses give him an early retirement package (this could have easily gone in the "hate" list).

Here's my FAB strategy. It's very simple, and I'll be happy to share it with all of you:
stick to the plan

Unless you got to the Champion's League through blind luck or because your fellow owners in 2006 developed a methamphetamine addiction in week 3 of the season, I'm going to assume that you won your league because you had a plan, did a decent job of sticking to that plan in the FAB, then saw the season develop in a way that coincided with your plan.

Maybe your plan was to pay premium dollars for elite talent. Maybe you built a team based on depth and upside. You may have focused on defense. Or perhaps you're the guy that signed Carson Palmer for 2 years @ $21.5M per (oops, that guy didn't win).

Regardless, what separates the champion from the also-ran (in addition to luck and injuries) is sticking to the plan (whatever the plan is) during the FAB. When it's FAB Day 3, and you're worried about having enough players for a game of poker (never mind a full roster), your fellow owners are spending money like my Uncle Marty at the Foxy Lady, and your highest rated RB still available is retired...that's when it gets hard - real hard - to stick to the plan.

I'll stick to my plan this year, unless my inner-Uncle Marty takes over and I end up spending $60M on three players (including Tiki Barber and Drew Bledsoe) and waking up the morning after the FAB with all my money spent and no defensive players.


Some history on me:
I last played fantasy football in 1996. In 1995, I was busy at work and couldn't make the draft that year, so I asked my friend DJ to take care of it for me. He had a once-in-a-lifetime, never to be repeated, un-freaking-believable draft. I didn't make one transaction that year, and won the league in a rout.

In 1996, I drafted my own team, and I didn't come close to a championship, so I "retired" from fantasy football while I still had a little dignity and focused my energies on fantasy baseball and non-fantasy activities (you know, involving women and stuff).

I made my comeback in 2006, winning a strong league, and now I'm back again...praying that 2007 will end better than 1996 did.

Good luck!

Quiet ?!?

I realize that the FAB and season have yet to start but things seem a bit too quiet!

I honestly believed that a Championship league would bring forth a mass of boasts and well-founded bravaado from those accustomed to being on top. Instead we have two GMs worried about stepping into the unfamiliar waters of sixteen team leagues and an admitted imposter to our ranks being the only one to even hint at planning on kickin' butt. Is anyone else shocked at this turn of events?

I doubt that any of the GMs want to divulge their battleplan for the upcoming season or FAB strategies, so perhaps we can get some discussion on previous experiences or even team names...

If you were to check on the GM Card for SmoovJello you would see that the Dixie Devils stole the championship in the inaugural season of the Semi-Tough League. Rising from the ranks of the Hose Manning Division, the Devils took the crown with wins over the Charleston Hestons and Fightin' Basselopes in the playoffs. Due to limitations of GDR to only display active leagues though, you would be unable to see that this is not the first championship that Dixie has claimed. In 2005 the Dixie Devils managed to impale the Leaside Lobsters on the preverbial fork on their way to the GameDay Geeks title. This 16 team league folded after a single season with many an owner completely baffled by the intricacies of offensive and defensive schemes. Can the South rise again and hold the Championship aloft once more?

With a new challenge at hand in the Championship Leagues, I decided that a new team name should be created. Since a desire to instill fear in your opponent is essential in the psychological aspect of the game, the works of sci-fi/horror writer H.P. Lovecraft were scoured for inspiration. From the depths of his imagination great Cthulhu has risen from R'lyeh to serve as an appropriate iconic figure. Can a Cadre of his followers succeed in invoking abject fear or will I have to pray for the same luck that brought me here the past two years? My guess would be that I need to hope my luck holds out.

What's everyone else's story?

Cthulhu Cadre

I'm an imposter!

That's right, I'm an imposter. Well, not exactly. I'm who I am, but unlike the bulk of you I am not a GDR champion. So how am I in the Champion's League? Well, I'm a GDR moderator and GDR posted that they needed some extra bodies to round out this league. So here I am. While I've played GDR football and baseball since 2005, I've not yet claimed my first football championship - in GDR. However, if it counts for anything, I was my ESPN champion last season. (I know...not the same thing.)

Anyway, as long as I'm here I intend to bust my buns to kick a little butt before this thing is over. I take my fantasy sports seriously, so you don't have to worry that I won't give all you champs a decent run for your money and, who knows, maybe I can even get this GDR football thing figured out this season and put some swagger behind my blabber.

Getting down to the business at hand, I am thinking this 16 team league is gonna make this especially challenging. I can't even imagine who'll be left to put on the market by the team my number comes up! The biggest league I've ever been in for football has been 10 teams, so this should be really interesting to see how it all plays out in the FAB. Those mid-round signings are going to be especially important and I concur with the earlier post here that the type of offense you run could really make a difference in who you end up signing. The challenge of GDR is always that it takes more than the average bit of thinking and you can't go into the FAB or the season unprepared. I've got my SportingNews draft kit at hand and I'm reading it front to back at every opportunity.

This is gonna be a lot of fun!

FAB anxiety

I agree, it is going to be tough to find quality backups at QB (and RB) in particular. I think it is going to put a bigger premium on deciding what type of offense you want to run and try and fill your roster in around it. In the past I have tried to be a little more flexible and let the FAB bargains help determine what I might do on offense and defense; I'm not sure that will work as well here.

There are always a million defenders out there that will get some stats each week and you can usually pick up some of these guys pretty cheap. People often pay a lot for some of the "big names" but many of the lesser known guys are great for this league and can be had near the minimum salary range.

Having an FAB with a start date of next week will also add some challenges as we won't really know how the battles for roster spots are going to shake out, What happens to Michael Vick? Who QB's in Cleveland? Who's the main RB for Buffalo? I'm exhausted already and we haven't even gotten started yet.

Jeff (Banshee Mules, Unitas)

Eyes wide open

16? 16! I have never been in a league with 16 teams before. The biggest? 12. And now jumping into a league with 16 teams, 16 champion teams I might add. My head is spinning.

Let's do some quick math.... 16 teams and everyone needs at least 2 quarterbacks, that makes what? 32 quarterback. I hate to break this to you, but there are not 32 fantasy starters in the NFL. I don't even want to think about the RBs or WRs right now; let alone DLs or DBs.

11 1/2 days and counting until the FAB. I am hoping, this being my 3rd year with Gameday Ritual, that my experience in the FAB will pay off.

Champion's League Posting Guidelines

In an effort to make the best use of the Labels feature, and therefore make it easier to explore and search the Champion's League blog, we ask that you 'tag' each of your blog entries with a minimum of a league and team name Label. In the interest of keeping things standard, please use the following tags for the leagues.

Unitas Conference: unitas
Deacon Jones Conference: jones

In addition, please add a separate Label (comma separated) with your team name in it. Please be consistent in the team name you use so that if a reader views by the team name Label, they will see all your entries for the season. So, for example, Kurushio in the Unitas Conference would Label the post as: unitas, kurushio.

Please treat this only as a minimum standard - if you'd like to use other labels (cool, WTF, strategy, winning streak, etc.) - please feel free to do so. But hopefully with a minimum of effort, we can make it easy for readers to interact with the Champion's League blog. Note that we will use the Label 'admin' for anything as dry as an announcement, or the like.

Also note that the spell check feature on Blogger is pretty solid (see button in the editing box window), so if you're not such a hot speller (like me!) then that's a good button to press before posting.

Football Champion's Leagues Founded

We've founded our first two gamedayritual Football Champion's Leagues, named after Johnny Unitas, the great Quarterback, and Deacon Jones the “Secretary of Defense” himself.

The Unitas Conference Namesake:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Unitas
FAB Starts: Monday, August 13th

The Deacon Jones Conference Namesake:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacon_Jones
FAB Starts: Monday, August 20th

These leagues are identical 16-Team 4-Division leagues, and both have the previously announced rule-set which you can find here:

http://footballchampions.gamedayritual.com/2007/07/champions-league-rule-set.html

We've distributed invites to the Champion's League GM's and will be getting them setup to post in this blog in the near future.

Let the games begin!