REAL TEAM ALLEGIANCE League - Year 5

REAL TEAM ALLEGIANCE

Keeper Deadline Date: Friday, Aug 25, 2017
Live Draft Date: Monday, Aug 28, 2017 at 6:00pm EDT / 11:00pm BST
(Auction style draft)

Full RTA settings can be viewed here: RTA League Settings

Bold & Boxed text always means new for this season (to aide returning GM’s to quickly find internal rule changes or new rules).

This league is my smallest ever league - just 10 teams and as all my leagues are will be hosted on NFL.com.

I like each and every league I play in to have a different feel and strategy etc. making them unique and very differnt in how they work. I have plagiarised some rules I have seen mentioned in other peoples custom leagues on other NFL forums over time - they do say that plagiarism is the best form of flattery so if you see any rule you had first being used in this league then all I can say is thank you for the idea.

As the league name suggests my #1 golden rule will be all team names and logo’s within this league will be of real current NFL teams. In theory you will be coach of your beloved team and there can only be one of any team in the league.

Further more it will be a league requirement that you must start 2 players (one Offensive and one Defensive) from your real team every game week - including post season - with the exception of your teams Bye week.

This league is a long term dynasty league so you have the option to select up to 22 keepers from your finishing team the previous season (subject to the internal cap restrictions - see next).

CAP / DRAFT BUDGET

The draft money per team default is 200 and your player rooster is 22 players so to make things simple for all and for me to administer it this is how it works - keepers cost you money from your draft allowance budget as follows:

Any RTA player kept will cost 5 from your draft budget allowance.
All other keepers will cost you 10 from your draft budget allowance.

This is a very simple thing for me to work out annually and leaves all of you to now work out which players on your roster from last year you want to pay that price for or if you should let them go back into the draft and take your chances finding better value there.

To allow me to adjust the team draft budgets accordingly I have had to make the keeper lock date a few days prior to our draft date.

So August 24th is the deadline for Selecting Keepers - I am not sure how NFL.com works whether it locks at the start or end of a day so hence picking a date 2 days before our draft date so I would air on the side of caution if I was you and make sure you are happy with your chosen keepers before the 24th August.

This league uses an auction style draft (and not the usual snake style draft):

NFL.com Auction Draft (help)

New from 2017 the draft is now a Custom Linear nomination order… in a revrerse of last years final league standings.

Waivers will be done by a blind bid system known on NFL.com as the Waiver Acquisition Budget or WAB for short.

Waiver Acquisition Budget (WAB) - Each team is allotted a seasonal budget. This seasonal budget is the amount of points that each team has at their disposal to bid on available players. The team with the highest bid wins that player and is charged the amount of WAB points that they bid to obtain the player. If you bid on a player, but lose to a higher bid, you do not forfeit the amount of points that you bid. All of the WAB points that you bid will be returned to your seasonal budget. In the event of a tie, the team with higher waiver priority will win the bid. For more information, visit Waiver Acquisition Budget (WAB):

WAB custom rules

PLAYER POACHING (Introduced from year 2 onwards)

As this league is a maximum keeper league I wanted a way where GM’s could still get hold of their favourite players and change the look of teams season to season. I wanted to have something really different to any other league I am in and so came up with this idea - ‘Player Poaching’.

In a new twist for this RTA league every week of the regular season (not play-offs) the winner of each game can select one of their starting players from that game and swap him for a starting player from the team they beat - within the following criteria:

  1. Only starting players on each team can be swapped.

  2. The players swapped must be of the same position so QB for QB or LB for LB (not LB for TE etc.).

  3. RTA players are exempted - so any players in the team of the real team represented are protected. So for instance in my case I am GM of the Detroit Lions so any Detroit Lions players in my starting line up can not be poached even if I lose.

  4. Game winners must post on the leagues message board (aka wall) before midnight Wednesday (going into Thursday) UK time their swap (so everyone can see it). If it breaks any of the above rules it will not be actioned. Assuming it is bona-fide it will be actioned between midnight Wednesday and Thursday morning.

  5. Should any team fail to start the required number of RTA players on any given week (except the teams real bye week) then they forgo their chance to poach a player that week should they win!

The Player Poaching rule if everyone buys into it and takes advantage of it throws up new strategies on who you start and sit against other teams as the season unfolds. It will also offer a very new dynamic to get to grips with long term as well as allow for greater roster movement throughout the season in this dynasty league.

Lastly if a match is a TIE then no poaching occurs.

STRIKES RULE XXX

A three strikes and out policy is in effect in the RTA. The reason for this is I want a competitive but fun league. The bane of most leagues (as any one who has played for a while knows) is flakey owners that give up when they are not doing well or don’t pay enough attention with regard to setting valid line-ups a few weeks in when the initial interest has wained or they have decided their team sucks.

As the RTA is my smallest ever league (10 teams) I will have no truck with owners who show the league this kind of disrespect.

Strikes are usually only given if you do not win your match up (i.e. loose or tie). In that event then for each player in your starting line up on a BYE, or who was listed as INACTIVE, on INJURED RESERVE or OUT etc. for a game at least one day prior to the actual gameday of said player a strike will be issued. Also a strike will be given for a player who you start that has been CUT as he can not play in a game while he is not with any team and this again is find outable before game day. To check any of your players status’ just click on their name when on your team page and it brings up information about them - if you click the arrows to go back and forth it gives you previous updates and at the top of each update there is a date when that information was published. I use these same updates myself when checking on players that appear not to have played in owners starting line ups and this is how I make a judgement on whether or not a strike is justified. Lastly strikes will also be awarded for each empty spot in your starting line up to - so be careful when picking up free agents off the waiver wire as they don’t automatically slot in to your starting line up even if that was the player you cuts spot.

Also strikes will be awarded for not starting your minimum required Real Team Allegiance players on any weeks other than your real teams Bye week. These Strikes are awarded regardless of whether you win your match or not and is the only way you can pick up strikes when winning your match up (as it’s a fundamental part of this custom league). You will pick up 1 strike per minimum RTA player not started (1 offensive & 1 defensive).

Also I recognise everyone can make a mistake or have PC issues etc., so that is why it takes 3 Strikes to lose your spot for folllowing season and 6+ Strikes to be struck out immediately. Strikes also carry over to the following season but with each season one strike is deducted if you weren’t banned so if you only earned 1 or 2 strikes in a season and came back the next season your strike tally would be back to 1 (if you had 2) or none (if you had 1). So just like points on a driving license if you have not triggered a ban you can get them slowly removed for good behaviour (or in this case not messing up in starting a valid team each week).

Later on in a separate post within this thread will be a list of any Struck Out GM’s if that happens as a reminder to me who is no longer welcome in this RTA league and why they were struck out of the RTA (# of strikes picked up - 6+ to be permantly banned).

Settings History - In this leagues inaugural season some rules I had the original GM’s vote on and so due to the polls results (below) this league is an IDP and fractional scoring league.

  1. Would you prefer this league to have IDP’s (Individual Defensive Players) or a block team Defence?

Poll result: A Block team DEFENCE - 33% / IDP’s - 67%

  1. Should we use fractional points scoring or rounding up/down to whole number scores?

Poll result: Fractional points - 100% / Rounded up/down - 0%


New Adjustment on the IDP scoring settings this year - seeing as the NFL introduced a rule that the defence could score off a turnover on a PAT or two-point conversion back in 2015 by returning it the other way for a touchdown - worth two points - I have added this scenario into our scoring settings from this season (2017) also.

WEEKLY STRIKE COUNT 2017

WK1 - 1 strike (Miami Dolphins / Ray Burton)
WK2 - 1 strike (New England Patriots / Robert Cincotta)
WK3 - 1 strike (New England Patriots / Robert Cincotta)
WK4 - no strikes issued
WK5 - 1 strike (Pittsburgh Steelers / Andrew Bourke)
WK6 - no strikes issued
WK7 - 1 strike (Chicago Bears / Douglas Hay)
WK8 - no strikes issued
WK9 - no strikes issued
WK10 - no strikes issued
WK11 - no strikes issued
WK12 - no strikes issued
WK13 - no strikes issued
WK14 - no strikes issued
WK15 - 1 strike (Arizona Cardinals / Carl Fisher)
WK16 - no strikes issued
WK17 - 1 strike (Oakland Raiders / Martin Broadhead)

RTA - Regular Season Standings 2013


RTA - Play-Off Tree 2013


RTA Super Bowl I - 2013


RTA - Super Bowl I Recap - 2013


RTA Final Standings 2013


RTA - Regular Season Standings 2014


RTA - Play-Off Tree 2014


RTA Super Bowl II - 2014


RTA - Super Bowl II Recap - 2014


RTA Final Standings 2014


RTA - Regular Season Standings 2015


RTA - Play-Off Tree 2015


RTA Super Bowl III - 2015


RTA - Super Bowl III Recap - 2015


RTA Final Standings 2015


RTA - Regular Season Standings 2016


RTA - Play-Off Tree 2016


RTA Super Bowl IV - 2016


RTA - Super Bowl IV Recap - 2016

No Recap for S/B IV (2016) as NFL.com never put it up despite repeated requests


RTA Final Standings 2016

Good luck with the league

1 Like

Thanks Kawakiri - your back on the waiting list for the Steelers man.

Houston we have a problem…

Okay people I just adjusted our budgets to pay for the keepers under the rules and hit a snag - apparently there is a minimum of 40 credits that teams have to have - see message I got hit with below (screen shot) when I tried to submit our correct budgets. Oakland’s GM kept so many players they only was supposed to have 10 credits left - so to make it work have had to top him up to the minimum 40 credits required - so to make it the same balance of spending power for all am increasing everyone else’s budgets by 30 credits to.

New rules to be introduced next season 2018.

Surplus draft budget rule

It became abundantly clear to me in the 2017 live draft if you don’t keep any players and you don’t attend the live draft in an auction draft you end up with a far worse team on paper than your rivals - you also end up with a lot of your draft budget unspent - wasted - as currently you just lose it. I was thinking to try and off set this to some degree adding unspent draft funds to players WAB budgets so that if your frugal in or weren’t at the live draft then any unspent draft funds will be added to your Waiver Acquisition Budget - giving you extra WAB power to bid on players during the season to try and increase your teams strength that way.

Unspent WAB points

I have also decided to convert any unspent WAB points and add them to a teams Auction draft amount the following season. This will only start a fresh end of next season but along with that will come a new rule where by if you can’t afford to pay for all the players you wish to keep then the last ones listed in your keeper list will be over-ridden and put back in to the draft. This is because the system makes me set each teams Auction budget at a minimum of 40 WAB to enter the draft room. Until now I just upped every ones draft budgets to compensate for this if someone didn’t have enough left after I deducted for all their keepers (so to still be left with the 40 WAB minimum system demands to enter the draft). However from now on each teams income is just the $200 draft budget start of each new season + whatever WAB they carry over from the previous season - I will no longer make that manual adjustment. So this should also be factored in to your dynasty keeper choices and maybe how much you might like to save from your WAB budget to carry over from one season to the next season (to cover the salary cap of all your keepers).

Week 5 Strikes (x1)

Sad to report the Pittsburgh Steelers (Andrew Bourke) picks up 1 strike this week for starting RB - Paul Perkins - (NYG) who was ruled out before his teams actual game day.

Published: Oct 6 at 11:21am by Rotowire.com

Will sit out Week 5
Perkins (ribs) has been ruled out for Sunday’s game against the Chargers, Art Stapleton of The Bergen Record reports.

Analysis: Perkins was able to practice on a limited basis Wednesday after injuring his ribs last week, but he was unable to make any further progress in his recovery after that, and will be relegated to the sideline for Week 5. With Perkins out, the trio of Shane Vereen, Wayne Gallman and Orleans Darkwa all figure to see action in the Giants’ backfield, though head coach Ben McAdoo hasn’t revealed any plans for how he plans to divide up the snap count among the three. It’s presumed that Vereen will handle most of the passing-down work, while Gallman and Darkwa will absorb the bulk of the carries out of the backfield.

Week 7 Strikes (x1)

Chicago Bears (Douglas Hay) picks up 1 strike this week for not starting an RTA player on Offense.

X Didn’t start an RTA player on Offense.

Week 15 Strikes (x1)

Arizona Cardinals (Carl Fisher) picks up 1 strike this week for not starting a TE.

TE --empty– - did not start anyone. (x1)

There were a lot of inactive players that were hinted on in the week leading up to NFL Week 17 but as most were not officially ruled out until the Sunday (game day) no stikes are awarded for starting those players but for future reference many players were rumoured to be out especially those 1st string starters in teams going to the playoffs with nothing to play for in Week 17 so really worth checking the game day inactive lists or pay attention to the rumour mill leading up to the final regular season game day to have a better handle on actually starting players that will play this week.

Week 17 Strikes (x1)

OAKLAND RAIDERS (Martin Broadhead) picks up 1 strike this week for the following reason:

Started TE - Evan Engram - (NYG), OUT:

Published: Fri, Dec 29 at 12:34pm by Rotowire.com

Ruled out for finale
Engram (ribs) has been ruled out for Sunday’s game against the Redskins, Art Stapleton of The Bergen Record reports.

Analysis: Although he avoided any fractures in his ribs, Engram was held out of practice all week and seemingly never stood much chance to play in the season finale. Rhett Ellison and Jerell Adams will take over at tight end this weekend, while Engram finishes his campaign with one of the better stat lines by a rookie tight end in recent memory, though he needed 115 targets to get to 64 catches for 722 yards and six scores. While clearly locked in as a big part of the Giants’ future, Engram will have a tough time wrangling 7.7 targets per game next season unless the team deals with another onslaught of injuries to its receiving corps. His projected 2018 value is difficult to gauge, as the Giants will enter the offseason without a clear starting quarterback for the first time since 2004.


Final Screen Grabs for 2017 season: