Dynasty League Football Forum

You have got to be kidding me. This is atrocious for anyone who had him as a DT in a required league. How the hell is this even happening?!

They are converting to a 3-4 D from 4-3. Unfortunately Donald is not a Nose Tackle. Tough break. Confusing switch for them from a football perspective too IMO. All their guys seem better made for a 4-3...

Sam Monson had a great article on this a few months ago:

https://www.profootballfocus.com/pro-wh ... on-donald/

Terrible, especially in balanced leagues where Donald was worth a ton

Well our league does have a rule in place for the Positions to be reviewed by the commissioner upon request of the team owner. I am the commish, but in this case I will be asking for a review of this case to the co-commissioner. If this is a similar situation to Derek Wolf as the article suggests it is then it should be changed. Basic thought, if Donald is still rushing the interior pockets of the line he should get that DT designation. Obviously nickel package he will be when Quinn is bumped up on the line in those passing situations. We will see but this 4-3 to 3-4 crap has affected us in this DT required league.

Granted he was a great leg up at DT, but in my leagues his points don't take much of a hit, and imo DE is more important in a start 2 (vs. 1 DT) in any event. I guess the question is whether his production takes a hit in the new scheme. If so, then it makes it that much worse.

JJDubya wrote: ↑Wed May 17, 2017 11:50 am Granted he was a great leg up at DT, but in my leagues his points don't take much of a hit, and imo DE is more important in a start 2 (vs. 1 DT) in any event. I guess the question is whether his production takes a hit in the new scheme. If so, then it makes it that much worse.

If we had a 2DE starting requirement I wouldn't be so upset about it. as of right now we only have 1 DE Starting requirement. I've been pushing for our league to go to a 3 DL requirement no positonal requirements there. We are running into this 4-3 to 3-4 problem every season. frustrates alot of guys.

PNWHawkfan wrote: ↑Wed May 17, 2017 8:19 am Well our league does have a rule in place for the Positions to be reviewed by the commissioner upon request of the team owner. I am the commish, but in this case I will be asking for a review of this case to the co-commissioner. If this is a similar situation to Derek Wolf as the article suggests it is then it should be changed. Basic thought, if Donald is still rushing the interior pockets of the line he should get that DT designation. Obviously nickel package he will be when Quinn is bumped up on the line in those passing situations. We will see but this 4-3 to 3-4 crap has affected us in this DT required league.

I'm not sure if that move would be very popular with the other owners in your league... I definitely feel for you as I can see in your sig that you've been hurt twice by the Rams formation change, having both Quinn and Donald on your team. If you've invested in these guys and paid the price for them as DT and DE it sucks to see them be re-designated as DE and LB. But as long as we don't come up with a better way to handle IDP position designations this is our reality. Donald will be a 3-4 DE so I don't really see how you could keep him as a DT. It would open up a huge can of worms with all the other owners who have 3-4 DEs who primarily play inside.

How defensive linemen line up is not at all as crystal clear as some might think it is. We bunch together 0, 1 and 3-techs as DTs, which obviously gives a big advantage to the 3-techs. Or to put it another way; if a 3-tech is lucky enough to land in a 4-3 we call him a DT and he has great positional advantage, but if he lands in a 3-4 we call him a DE and he is at a positional disadvantage. So basically the formation preference of his defensive coordinator is going to decide how valuable he will be for IDP.

We bunch together the rest of defensive linemen as DEs which viewed broadly should give an advantage to the 4-3 DEs. However, if you study how players line up you'll see that there is a lot of variation. JJ Watt is a 3-4 DE which should make him a 5-tech (or 4-tech or 4i), but in the last few years he mostly lines up outside the tackle and even plays a fair amount in 9-tech which is usually where sub-package 4-3 speed rushers and 3-4 outside linebackers line up. So while JJ Watt is a 3-4 DE he predominantly plays more like a 4-3 DE which helps to explain why he is so much more productive than most other 3-4 DEs. He still kicks inside as an inside rusher from 3-tech, and he'll line up in 4I, 4 and 5-tech, but he spends most of his snaps outside.

In my opinion 3-tech DTs should never have been compared to 3-4 and 4-3 nose tackles to begin with. Being able to play Aaron Donald at DT was always a little bit of a cheat code. It would be more accurate and fair if they were divided as:

Nose tackles - 0 and 1 techs.
Inside rushers - 3-tech DTs and 3-4 DEs who primarily play 3-tech (and the few remaining true 4-tech and 5-techs).
Outside rushers - 4-3 DEs, rush OLBs and 3-4 DEs who primarily rushes from outside the tackle.

Alternatively edge linebackers could be it's own position group.

Which "position" someone plays can be a bit misleading, the role and usage is what we should be looking at. The position will change for 3-techs and 9 techs depending on team, but the way they are used on the field doesn't typically change all that much and in my opinion that's what we should ideally have for IDP; a system where players don't change IDP position even if they change team or defensive coordinator.

Is it realistic for the IDP world to make a huge change in how we handle designations for defensive linemen? Probably not. And this new system would be very challenging to introduce in existing leagues. Right now I would be more than happy if we could just manage to separate the edge linebackers from inside linebackers, as that is the biggest problem we have today in terms of position induced value drops.

I never thought it was so much variation between DT and DE, and I never considered AD as a cheat code because in my mind the dude is not built like a premier DE edge rusher. He is shorter and stouter, however I knew he was special when the Rams grabbed him as I could see he popped off the film with his beautiful ability to jump the snaps and work his way inside. I always thought of DT as two types, your run gap stoppers ala Micheal brockers or your middle rushers ala Donald. If your rushing inside pockets your a DT, if your containing the outside and playing the tackles outside your a DE. Maybe it would be best to just go to a DL requirement and take away the confusion at this point.

PNWHawkfan wrote: ↑Wed May 17, 2017 7:11 pm I never thought it was so much variation between DT and DE, and I never considered AD as a cheat code because in my mind the dude is not built like a premier DE edge rusher. He is shorter and stouter, however I knew he was special when the Rams grabbed him as I could see he popped off the film with his beautiful ability to jump the snaps and work his way inside. I always thought of DT as two types, your run gap stoppers ala Micheal brockers or your middle rushers ala Donald. If your rushing inside pockets your a DT, if your containing the outside and playing the tackles outside your a DE. Maybe it would be best to just go to a DL requirement and take away the confusion at this point.

Calais Campbell is a good example. Most people think of him as a prototypical 5-tech 3-4 DE who goes head up against the tackle to contain the run. Physically he looks like a completely different type of player than Aaron Donald and Geno Atkins. In reality he lined up at 4I, 4 or 5-tech on only 7% of plays in Arizona. He lined up outside on about 8% of plays, and the remaining time was spent inside with almost 60% at 3-tech. In comparison players like Aaron Donald and Gerald McCoy play 3-tech on around 65% of plays. Campbell even lined up at nose tackle on about 11% of plays. Now, you don't move a player like that to nose tackle to defend the run; it would be a clear passing situation where they put their speed package on the field, but still.

You're right that there are two DT types, run defenders and inside rushers, but inside rushers turn into DEs on 3-4 teams even if they more or less line up the same way in a 4-3 and a 3-4. Since defenses are going hybrid and spend the majority of time in sub-packages the difference between a 3-4 and 4-3 is pretty marginal these days, and the IDP position designation becomes rather arbitrary.

Simply using DL might sound like a good idea for your league since you're starting relatively few players on the IDP side. But the obvious effect of that is that DTs become less valuable and NTs will for sure lose all value, if they even had any value to begin with. This is completely fine with a lot of leagues that doesn't have any interest in DTs and want a less complicated IDP format, I mean; there's not exactly a majority out there that cares about nose tackles. I'm fascinated by players like Brandon Williams and Snacks Harrison, and I like my IDP leagues to value those players, but it's not for everyone.

What you might want to think about is that a lot of 4-3 DEs have more clear outside rusher roles. Quite many of them basically play close to 100% outside, so when you put a guy like Geno Atkins who plays 70% 3-tech up against an outside rusher your format is going to drive value towards the outside rushers. And you're still going to have to deal with outside rushers who move back and forth from LB to DE, so it's not like you would get rid of the 3-4/4-3 frustration that owners in your league is struggling with.

What are some good DT's I should be looking at moving forward?

All the more reasons to value defenders less. DTs kicking out losing value, DEs moving to OLB......your top asset can turn to nothing very quickly.

Space Cowboy wrote: ↑Thu May 18, 2017 9:22 am All the more reasons to value defenders less. DTs kicking out losing value, DEs moving to OLB......your top asset can turn to nothing very quickly.

Or just all the more reason to stay on top of things. We knew Donald would be moving to DE for the last few months. We knew Mack would be going back to OLB. We knew guys like Hughes & Ogbah would be DEs...

Just gotta stay flipping when guys have peak value and there is concern of them moving positions, and vice versa.

Andrew Billings DT Cinn. Anyone have him on thier Radar? I just did some research on him. Has alot of Aaron Donald in him. He is a bigger guy and is basicly all upside right now. He has the upper body strength to dominate the interior of the line and get after QB's as well as stuff the run at the line. Cincy has him penciled in as the Starter next to Atkins so they are very high on him.

Thoughts?

PNWHawkfan wrote: ↑Sat Jun 03, 2017 10:37 am Andrew Billings DT Cinn. Anyone have him on thier Radar? I just did some research on him. Has alot of Aaron Donald in him. He is a bigger guy and is basicly all upside right now. He has the upper body strength to dominate the interior of the line and get after QB's as well as stuff the run at the line. Cincy has him penciled in as the Starter next to Atkins so they are very high on him.

Thoughts?

It's so freaking rare that a DT is a stud IDP unless you're in a DT-required league. A stud DT is usually no more than a low end DE in most statistical cases