For better or worse, the CrabAppleLane Fantasy Football Cheat Sheet for 2011 is done. It's in a Microsoft Excel spread sheet and will print on one sheet of paper in landscape mode. Since a spreadsheet is mostly text, it compressed nicely into a relatively small ZIP file. The far column has dates that represent the last time I made any changes to that team's fantasy players. That column is not important to have at auction/draft. You can just delete that column or it will print on a second page. The cheat sheet does not include defenses, special teams, or kickers. In my league, defenses and special teams are combined. If you have the Ravens defense, you have their special teams. Placekicker and D/ST are the last two roster spots I fill and I tend to take whoever is left.
My cheat sheet attempts to identify the top options at each fantasy football scoring position for each team. I've identified what I think is the top QB, the two top RBs, two top WRs, and top TE on each team. I could be wrong about some of those positions and a lot of them were close. On some teams, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd wide receivers are so close that you could flip a coin. The players I see as studs are in larger print. As any fantasy football player knows, auctions and drafts are full of surprises and you have to be a bit flexible. For instance, how much money I spend at auction on RBs might be determined by how many good options are still available at WR. If I can save money at WR, I can spend more on RB.
I'll be tweaking the sheet, as needed, if I hear any news between now and Saturday, the 27th. That's the date of my one and only auction this season. I suggest you do the same.
Download: cheat11.zip
15 days until Saints v Packers
Keep an eye on Ryan Grant of the Packers.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/08/24/ryan-grant-in-danger-of-not-making-the-packers/
ESPN had him as the starter this morning and I had heard nothing about his camp troubles.
That's news to me about Grant. Thanks.
What's the general TD/performance points ratio in your league?
Ah, I see it's a team by team sheet. Very helpful too.
The New York Times has a piece in the Fifth Down Blog that has Grant listed as the starter. It's dated today. I wasn't going to pursue him unless I can get him dirt cheap. RBs coming off of major, season-ending knee injuries are usually two years from decent productivity after their surgery.
Points ratio? Is that a stat? Not sure what you mean by it. We have a traditional scoring system, except that we give a point for every 20 yards passing instead of every 25 and we give half of the score to the passer (3 points for a TD, 1 point for a two-point conversion). Some leagues give 4 or even 6 to the passer for a TD.
The league I'm in is pretty stingy on performance points, only awarding three for 300 yards passing or 100 yards rushing or receiving, not combined. DSTs get three for a shutout or three for no TD allowed. The upshot is that at least 80% of the value(rough guess) is based on scoring TDs or throwing them. A guy who gets a lot of yards but few TDs is a heartbreaker in our league but could be pretty good in others.
I've probably mentioned this but I have a few friends in a league that is "scoring only" and they have not changed since they began, which was right around when fantasy football got started in the early 80s. They play for a lot of money. Not only that, they have some truly obnoxious rules. Lineups are done by voicemail. If you leave a message saying "Take Adrian Peterson out and put my other running back in", there's a $25 "interpretation fee". To pickup a free agent, you have to go to their weekly meeting and bid real money for him. I'm surprised they don't have more fistfights.
Our league tries to balance between scoring and yardage.
FWIW, the Green Bay Gazette this morning has Grant making the team.
http://packersnews.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20110824/PKR01/110824173/Who-s-lock-Who-s-long-shot-Breaking-down-Packers-roster
I don't know if anyone is going to get a substantial number of carries for the Pack this season.
I couldn't be in that scoring only league that you describe. Too serious to be fun it seems to me.
I think we are a bit too stingy on performance points. Part of the reason people wanted to keep it simple was so it was easy to calculate scores. I'm sympathetic to that because one year I played in a league that was too complicated and it took at least 15 minutes with the morning paper to figure it out. Now that we are online and have a system that will calculate scores for us I think we should get a little more creative. It won't happen this year, but I'll plant the seed.
I came up with 10 scoring suggestions for my league a few years ago. I posted them and let the league vote on them. I told them we would adopt no more than three and they would require 75% (9 votes) to pass. We now give 1 point to the defense per turnover, 3 bonus points for holding their opponents under 200 total yards, and 5 bonus points for a shutout. Most of us wanted to get the defenses more involved in the scoring. All of the scoring suggestions for offense failed miserably.
Simple scoring systems are great but, like you said, websites do all of it now. Getting too complicated would turn people off. I don't think your scoring system is that much simpler than ours.