Fantasy football has morphed into a billion-dollar industry over the last 15 years or so. No longer played by stat geeks pushing pencils and checking box scores by hand in newspapers, fantasy sports, particularly fantasy football, have exploded in popularity with the advent of internet-based leagues, real-time scoring and a myriad of other features. Many custom leagues strive for an NFL feel by having keepers, salary caps, etc., but each fantasy roster is still packed with all-pro players from around the league. In baseball, this makes sense. Look at the actual rosters fielded by the Yankees and Red Sox. Just like in fantasy football, in baseball you can buy players late in the season and use them to win a championship.
Actual football, however, does not have this same characteristic. Since football is much more of a team sport than baseball, few positions on the gridiron can be filled by plugging players into the lineup late in the season. Players need time to learn to work together. Kickers are the only position where a "plug-and-play" mentality would actually work on a football team. The next closest position would possibly be a shutdown corner, but then it would only work if the coach gave the new corner explicit instructions to disregard all defensive alignments and lock up on a specific receiver in man-to-man coverage on every play.
Aside from those select positions, every other player on the football field has very specific rules they have to follow when a play is called if their team hopes to be successful. Individual players can win you a game or two a season in the NFL. However, individual players that don’t play as part of the team will never be successful in the long run.
Football is further complicated by the fact that a player may be a superstar in one system and merely an average player in another. In baseball, a starting pitcher capable of throwing 7 shutout innings in Texas can do the same in Seattle, New York or Baltimore. He may not win the game, but his ability to pitch will not change. Different blocking schemes and different defensive alignments and coverages all make moving players from one NFL team to another somewhat of a gamble. Name a team that has won the Super Bowl by “buying” an NFL championship? You can’t. In fact, the opposite tends to happen. Just look at Exhibit A – the Washington Redskins.
Since the NFL is such a team sport, and fantasy football is anything but a team game, I wondered what would happen if real NFL games were decided by typical fantasy football scoring and rules. Will the dominate teams that challenge for the real Super Bowl by mixing and matching players to get the best possible outcome fair as well in a fantasy season where they get no points if their third string running back scores the TD or they only get points for the quarterback’s TD pass, but not for the fourth-string receiver left on their bench who caught it?
As an experiment, The Art of Creative Misfortune will run a fantasy football season based on the NFL schedule to figure out how the season would turn out if real football used fantasy football scoring. This preseason I have done sample fantasy matchups to give you a taste of what the results would look like. So far, with backup players, the fantasy results have mirrored the actual game results, but will that hold true once the rosters are finalized and the NFL regular season kicks off next week?
To make the first ever Creative Misfortune Fantasy Football season as “official” as possible, the season games will be based on the rules used by NFL.com’s default public fantasy leagues.
Roster Details - Every Friday (or Thursdays before Thursday night games), the Creative Misfortune Fantasy Starting Lineups will be set for each game. Based on the NFL rules, each starting lineup will consist of 1 QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs, 1 TE, 1 Kicker and 1 Defense. The lineup will be filled out each week based on the most productive fantasy players on the team for each position leading up to that week. Starting players will be replaced during the season, if need be, as they are replaced in real life by events such as injuries, coaching decisions, etc.
Note: Because coaches love to jerk around the fantasy football world and say players will play or won’t play or tag players with questionable injury designations when they have a pretty good idea about whether or not a player will play on Sunday, only players tagged as doubtful or out when the lineups are set will be benched.
Scoring Details – Scoring for each fantasy game will be determined by the NFL’s default fantasy scoring system, listed below.
Offensive Scoring
1 pt for every 25 yards passing
1 pt for every 10 yards rushing or receiving
4 pts for every passing TD
6 pts for every rushing or receiving TD
2 pts for a two-point conversion (passing, rushing or receiving)
-2 pts for an interception or lost fumble
Defensive Scoring
1 pt for every sack
2 pts for an interception, a fumble recovery or a safety
6 pts for a defensive TD (interception or fumble)
6 pts for a kickoff or punt return touchdown
A starting offensive player who returns a kick for a TD will not be given double points
10 pts if the defense allows 0 offensive points
7 pts if the defense allows 1-6 offensive points
4 pts if the defense allows 7-13 offensive points
1 pt if the defense allows 14-20 offensive points
0 pts if the defense allows 21-27 offensive points
-1 pt if the defense allows 28-34 offensive points
-4 pts if the defense allows 35+ offensive points
Kicking Scoring
1 pt for each PAT
3 pts for any field goal between 0-49 yards
5 pts for any field goal 50+ yards
Kickers will not lose any points for missing field goals
Season Schedule – The Creative Misfortune Fantasy Football regular season will last the first 12 weeks of the 2010 NFL schedule. Standings and game results will be updated every Tuesday. The playoffs begin Week 13 and go through Week 16.
Weeks 1-12: Regular Season Games
Week 13: Wild Card Playoff Games
Week 14: Divisional Playoff Games*
Week 15: Championship Playoff Games
Week 16: Creative Misfortune Fantasy Bowl I
Teams will qualify for the fantasy playoffs exactly the same way they qualify in the NFL (the four division champions and the two teams with the best record who did not win their division will qualify in each conference).
*To reflect the benefit gained by the top 2 seeds in each conference getting a bye week before they host Divisional Playoff games, the four teams who earn these bye weeks in the fantasy standings will play Week 13 to gain bonus points that will be added to their score in the Divisional Playoff round. For every 4 points they score in their Week 13 game, they will receive 1 bonus point in their Divisional round matchup.
For example, if Indianapolis earned the playoff bye and scored 80 fantasy points in Week 13, they would receive 20 bonus points (80/4) for their Divisional matchup. Conversely, if they had an off week and scored 22 fantasy points, they would only receive 5 bonus points (22/4, any fractional points rounded down).
Since there is no bye week between the Divisional games and the Championship Games, bonus points will only be a factor in the Divisional playoff games.
My hope is this will prove to be an interesting and entertaining experiment. While it is highly probable the fantasy playoff teams will match up with the actual NFL playoff teams this season, I believe we may see some fantasy surprises.
Tomorrow, ranking the AFC based on their projected fantasy football prowess and picking the AFC preseason Creative Misfortune Fantasy Bowl I favorite…
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