Any leagues that do home field advantage in your playoffs?

[Life of Pablo]

In any way shape or form really. I'm curious because it's something I've always thought is an effective idea for dynasty leagues (maybe not redraft though), but I don't think I've ever come across any leagues that have it. So I'm curious, do any of you guys do this? Do you like it? Do you not do it but wish you did?

There's probably a few different ways you can give an advantage to the "home" team (AKA higher seed), but the way I'm thinking is literally just a small point boost to the home team. So the playoffs in my league are:

Week 14 - #1 and #2 get byes, #3 vs #6, #4 vs #5
Week 15 - #1 vs W 4/5, #2 vs W 3/6
Week 16 - Championship

So my idea would just be something simple like, 10-point advantages for #3 and #4 in Week 14, and 10-point advantages for #1 and #2 in Week 15. No advantage in Week 16. (Also, regardless of this,, I'm going to suggest to my league that we do playoff re-seeding, so that #3 gets to play #2 if they win Week 14, but #6 will always have to play #1 if they win instead.) While this might not be faithful to the traditional fantasy football format, it is analogous to the playoff format of the actual NFL, and many dynasty leagues (including my own) like to keep their league rules in the same style/spirit of the NFL whenever it can be easily implemented.

I guess my thought process behind the idea is, the best teams will generally make the playoffs no matter what, but playoff luck is such a crapshoot that it doesn't really matter whether you charge your way to the #3 seed at 9-4, or crawl on your knees to the #6 seed at 6-7. The 10-point advantage isn't enough to totally gut the lower seeds' chances, but it does take out some (not all, which is an important distinction to make) of that BS playoff luck that always happens.

During the season, teams should be fighting for as high a seed as possible (AKA as strong of a playoff advantage as possible) imo, not just getting into the playoffs and praying the fantasy gods bless them for 3 consecutive weeks. There's too many teams in my league that don't try to improve their win-now chances during the season, cause there's too much of a mindset of "as long as I can squeak into the playoffs, I have as good a chance as anyone". Also, with the way our rookie draft order is determined, it's actually more advantageous to be the #5 or #6 seed instead of the #3 or #4 seed, which I think is completely counterintuitive.

Anyway, this rant went longer than I expected, but I just needed to get my thoughts out there. I feel that something like this should be more widespread in leagues, but maybe I'm in the minority here and am taking too much of the "fun" out of it (I know the weaker teams in my league would very likely reject this idea immediately). So... what do you guys think?

[hockeyBjj]

10 seems too much, but 5 and re-seeding to better reward regular season performance wouldn't be a bad idea at all

[RB6]

I don't like this idea at all. I see absolutely no reason why teams should be gifted points.

[WhatWouldDitkaDo]

I don't like this idea at all. I see absolutely no reason why teams should be gifted points.

x2 Most leagues already award the tie-breaker to the higher seed, so that's "home field advantage" in and of itself.

[myndflyte]

I do not like this at all but if everyone agrees to it, I think 10 points is a lot.

[skip]

I don't like this idea at all. I see absolutely no reason why teams should be gifted points.

I agree. There is still plenty of week to week luck all season that can make a pretty big swing in a playoff berth. I wouldn't want this in any of my leagues.

[themburns]

I wouldn't play in a cash league that had those kinds of conditions in the playoffs. We do something in one league where the 3 seed in week 14 and the 1 seed in week 15 get their choice of lower seeded match up for the week, and to my estimation, it's a good balance between an advantage for regular season performance and the any given Sunday feel that a playoff game should have.

[moishetreats]

We do two things.

1) The highest-playing seed gets to pick his opponent (in some leagues, you cannot pick the #2 seed as your opponent).
2) The higher seed gets the tie-breaker.

[Defender]

If half your motivation is rookie pick related, then just rearrange the draft order to match the results of the playoffs, just like the NFL does.

[Blackout]

We used to give home advantage between 2011-2014. On 16 +5 points bonus given, only 6 wins for home teams. And when they won, it was by more than 5 points anyway. Useless.

And as there is everytime an exception that confirms the rule, it happened just once that a team won with it (206-205).

[M-Dub]

While HFA is definitely a real thing in the NFL that has an effect on the outcome of games, it’s difficult to find a way to realistically implement it in fantasy. It’s also not a phenomenon that’s exclusive to the playoffs, so if my league ever decided to explore some sort of point bonus for HFA, I think it should apply to regular season games as well.

If your main goal is to reduce fluky outcomes in the playoffs, you’re probably better off just going with two-week semifinals and finals, or even some sort of round-robin format. You’ll probably encounter resistance to that too, though, unless you have some really forward-thinking owners in your league. I continue to be amazed at how in love many fantasy players are with the fluky, “any given Sunday” aspects fantasy football, even as we strive to make this a more skill-based game.

[jordanzs]

We do two things.

1) The highest-playing seed gets to pick his opponent (in some leagues, you cannot pick the #2 seed as your opponent).
2) The higher seed gets the tie-breaker.

I'm in the process of converting my leagues to this format. And yes, the #1 seed won't be able to choose the #2 seed as their opponent.

It's a rule that everyone is voting in favor for.

[jordanzs]

I haven't crunched the full math on this, but I would be intrigued to see how a league with this scenario plays out:

Each week in the playoffs, your total weekly points are comprised of 2 components:

1) Your score for that week
2) Your average points-per-game from the regular season

So the teams that did good in the regular season would have a nice bonus kicker that follows them through their playoff runs, but they are still vulnerable to the unexpected chaos of playoff time.

Thoughts?

[drbuttermaker]

All three of my dynasty leagues and one of my re-draft leagues gives six points for HFA until the final week of the playoffs, which are "neutral site" games and only award a half-point to the higher seed.

I like it. HFA is a big deal in NFL playoff games.

[knotts4372]

home field advantage is an absolutely ridiculous concept in fantasy football