THE NO BOLLOX LEAGUE - XIV
Keeper Deadline Date:
August 10, 2018 (Friday)
Live Draft Date:
Sunday, Aug 12, 2018 at 1:00pm EDT / 6:00pm BST
(Snake style draft)
Full NBL settings can be viewed here: The NBL League Settings
Background
I first set this league up in 2005 as I wanted to play Americans at their own game and show British peeps could be just as good - if not better at their fantasy football.
I was also fed up with owners giving up or not playing out the season - hence the leagues name (born out of frustration). Over the years I have replaced owners that didn’t set line ups and modified my internal rules to create what has become a very competitive league.
The key element being a 50/50 make up of team coaches from the UK & USA (8 Americans & 8 Brits). It makes for a rather nice added rivalry as we all still compete to beat one another but as a side bar whoever wins the Super Bowl also wins a title for their respective nation.
NEW OR NOTABLE INTERNAL RULE CHANGES
Any sections boxed and bolded like this paragraph are to bring attention to new or amended internal rules for the forth coming season (as my league is developing year on year) and helps returning team coaches to quickly find what’s new or changed from the previous season.
PAST MAJOR CHANGES
From season 8 this league introduced IDP’s (Individual Defensive Players instead of the traditional block Defense) along with draft pick trading and keepers that kicked in from season 9. Keepers come from your finishing squads as they were the end of the previous season - so worth long term planing and taking note of the following keeper rules…
KEEPERS
Each owner/team will be allowed to keep up to a maximum of 2 players however only one from each side of the ball (Ofense/Defense). So in effect if keeping 2 players one has to be an IDP. You do not have to keep any players if you so wish, each owner has the choice each year - 0, 1 or 2 players. There will be a keeper deadline before the next years draft so it is each owners responsibility to look out for that deadline as no changes to selection(s) can be made after it.
Any one who does not follow the one from each side of the ball Keeper Rule and tries to keep 2 Offensive players or 2 IDP players will find they only have 1 keeper. The 2nd Keeper choice who ever it is will be over-ridden prior to the draft and be changed to ‘no keeper selected’.
Keepers will cost you the draft position they were drafted in the previous season (regardless of who drafted them). Only exception to this is when the same owner keeps the same player in consectuive seasons - then the player shifts up 1 round per year - unless he’s a first round pick - for obvious reasons. Any player kept that was undrafted the previous year will count as a last round selection.
You can find the previous seasons draft results within the league itself (here is a link): NBL 2017 Draft Results
DRAFT ORDER
For those teams that make the playoffs proper (teams finishing 1st-6th), there draft order will be a reverse of the previous years finishing positions as decided by NFL.com - so the previous years champion will still draft last in round 1 (*16th) and the team finishing 6th (*11th). [*excluding draft pick trading]
However I noticed in the dead rubber games some GM’s had a tendency to tank in order to get a more favourable draft position the following season. So to address that from the end of the 2014 season the following changes took affect regarding draft spots from the consolation play-off games.
If you were not in the running for the title (i.e. in the playoffs proper), there was nothing to play for except next years draft position - and the way it was, the worse you did in the dead games, the better your draft pick position the next year. This encouraged GM’s who were out of the playoffs not to try and win, actually often hoping to lose by starting their worst players (just to avoid falling foul of the strike rule, as there’s nothing else riding on those results).
So to correct that anomaly is why I introduced this rule change - making the so called dead rubber games un-dead. Each of these consolation games are now worth winning because your now playing for higher draft spot. As this part of the draft order involving the 10 non- championship playoff teams is inverted - to reward there post season wins, however pointless they may seem at the time.
So the 6 proper playoff teams will still keep their draft positions (16th - 11th).
However the rest (consolation playoff teams) will now go like this…
The team finishing 7th (i.e. best of the non-qualifiers) would have pick #1
The team finishing 8th (2nd best non-qualifier) would have pick #2
And so on, down to the team finishing 16th (worst non-qualifier) would have pick #10
I think this will be good for the league as now tanking for a better draft spot will not fly as the dead rubber games have something riding on them. I feel this should also help with the also ran GM’s trading away their better players with late round draft picks to the playoff bound GM’s who are willing to sell their next seasons chances on winning this year by agreeing to trades involving their bad players but with higher round draft picks from the following season - which is skewing the integrity of the league imho.
IDP Scoring Adjustments for 2018
It was talked about a lot last season how imbalanced IDP scores were and how any given week an IDP player could score you anything from just a few points to many tens of points and the spectrum was to much. For this reason I have adjusted the IDPs points down to the following ratios:
Tackle: 1 point
Assisted Tackles: 0.5 point (so as this league doesn’t do fractions need 2 to get a point)
Sack: 3 points
Defense Interception: 4 points
Forced Fumble: 2 points
Fumbles Recovery: 2 points
Touchdown (Interception return): 6 points
Touchdown (Fumble return): 6 points
Touchdown (Blocked kick): 6 points
Blocked Kick (punt, FG, PAT): 1 points
Safety: 2 points
Pass Defended: 0.5 point (so as this league doesn’t do fractions need 2 to get a point)
Standings Tiebreaker
Last season a poll was conducted during the post season to see what standings tie-breaker we should use going forwards as some GM’s did not like the default option of ‘Head to Head Record’ and this is the result of that poll:
So as per the result of that poll this year and going forward the tiebreaker used will be ‘Points For’.
STRIKES RULE
WEEKLY STRIKE COUNT 2018
WK1 - 1 strike (Tony Hamm)
WK2 - 2 strikes (Michael Kelley & *Karl Baumann) *LC Rescinded
WK3 - 2 strikes (Rich Leese x2)
WK4 - 3 strikes (Eric Pinney x2 & Bryce Baumann)
WK5 - 6 strikes (Karl Baumann x3, Ian Landers & Michael Kelley x2)
WK6 - 4 strikes (Bryce Baumann, Eric Pinney & Michael Kelley x2)
WK7 - 5 strikes (Bryce Baumann x5)
WK8 - 9 strikes (Bryce Baumann x6 & Karl Baumann x3)
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 - no strikes issued
WK16 - no strikes issued
WK17 - 1 strike (Jed Bradshaw)
