THE NO BOLLOX LEAGUE - XX
Keeper Deadline Date:
29 August 2024 (Thursday) 3:00 am (03:00) US ET / 8:00 am (08:00) UK Time
Live Draft Date:
1 September 2024 (Sunday) 5:00 pm (17:00) US ET / 10:00 pm (22:00) UK Time
(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 league’s 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.
TEAM NAMES
As part of that USA v UK aspect of the league it is a league rule to display - USA or - UK after your team name (as part of your team name) to show what side of the pond you represent.
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 forthcoming season (as my league is developing year on year) and helps returning team GMs 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 planning 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 (Offense/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.
Anyone 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 whoever 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 player was also a keeper in the previous season (thus now becoming a keeper in consecutive seasons) - in this scenario the player shifts up one round (regardless of which team kept them the previous season) - unless he was a first-round pick/keeper - for obvious reasons. Any player kept that was undrafted the previous year will count as a last round selection.
You can find last seasons draft results within the league itself (here is a link):
NBL 2023 Draft Results
Due to a misinterpretation of the rules regarding keepers that happened in the 2022 draft I feel I needed to try and make the Keeper rules more precise and offer clarification on how I apply them. If you are ever in doubt about how a rule will work or be applied please contact me - the best way is to message me on Discord but other ways are available.
My keeper rule was originally thought up to put some strategy and skill in to finding or lucking out with rookie gems or players that fell way below normal ADP (Average Draft Position) due to injury or suspension etc., the year you drafted them (or someone else did) so that you could then keep them at great value for season after season with them just raising by 1 round a year if you continuously kept them (and now just if they are a keeper in back to back consecutive seasons).
It is not about free agents you pick up during the season but completely undrafted players - so just those players that went undrafted in the previous seasons draft will count as last round selections under the keeper rule. All other players no matter if you drafted them or picked them up later in the season off the waiver wire or traded for them, it matters not. In those circumstances their actual draft spot in the previous draft determines their rank (the draft round they will be awarded against if being selected as a keeper). The rule is this way because it is something that is tangible and previous seasons draft results can always be accessed on NFL.com via the history section - for previous seasons. So I am able to go back through every round and see when a player was drafted, in what round or if they were not drafted at all.
Another caveat is if you have traded away your original draft picks during the previous season (or prior to this seasons draft) and no longer have your original draft pick for the round a keeper you selected is due against then the keeper will go against the next highest pick you have going up from where your ORIGINAL PICK should be. If you don’t have a higher draft pick then you can not keep that player and I will override said player selection to ‘no keeper selected’ after the keeper deadline. So people need to be aware of this when draft pick trading and planning their keepers for the following season. Just having a pick in the correct round might not necessarily be good enough as it needs to be a higher one from your original pick in that round (not lower) if you don’t have your original pick anymore.
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 a higher draft spot. As this part of the draft order involving the 10 non-championship playoff teams is inverted - to reward their 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 occurred in 2019 to keep the NBL a whole point scoring league (Non Fractional)
It was talked about a lot in the 2017 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 for the 2019 season onward I adjusted the IDPs points down but unfortunately NFL.com did not round down so the half point given for Assisted Tackles made this league end up with fractional scores - which I did not want as the NBL has always been a non fractional scoring league. So for this reason I have had to adjust the Assisted Tackles category up to a full point (from half a point) to insure that does not happen.
So the NBL’s IDP scoring is as follows:
STANDINGS TIEBREAKER
In the 2017 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 the following is the result of that poll which is why we use ‘Points For’ as the Tiebreaker from 2018 onwards:
STRIKES RULE
Starting in the 2020 season strikes will also be issued for not being seen to vote in an official poll posted within the league on NFL.com . It’s been the hardest thing for me as a commissioner to get people to engage with me on rules and proposals to do with the league like having a trade deadline, expansion etc., so now it’s mandatory to partake in polls and to be seen to have voted.
I am not sure how you do this on the phone app but to do this via the standard internet using a browser - which can also be done on a smart phone - you scroll down the leagues home page to the message board and to the right of this you will see the latest poll. To the bottom right of this poll box you will see a link that says ‘More Polls >’ click this and it will open the poll with its message board below it. Here (you may need to scroll down) you sometimes will find more information about the poll and is also the place you type “Voted” to show you have voted after you have done so in that particular poll. To the top right of the poll you will see an arrow < and that will let you navigate back to see older polls and where you should check you have voted in each one and posted below each one to say you have Voted as if you have not voted or forgotten to post you have voted and not everyone has voted then anyone I can’t be sure did vote will pick up a Strike after 28 days of the Poll being posted. I hate having to do this but for many seasons people have just not been engaging enough to help me shape the league by voting in polls so felt I had to do this so I can weed out and replace non committed GM’s with ones who buy into the ethos behind this custom keeper league.
There is no Trade Deadline in the NBL
This is because during the 2020 season a poll was made for this and the result was the majority did not want any trade deadline:
