Playoff Pain & Alternative Playoff Structures

[Orenthal Shames]

I think people sometimes try too hard to remove luck out of fantasy football when the entire premise is largely based on luck.

Exactly.

It sucks losing to the dreaded Jameis Winston-Breshad Perriman stack, but that's fantasy football. If you play it long enough, you'll always have crazy stories of how you won or lost. If the best paper team won every season, it wouldn't be the big industry it's become. The allure is that anyone can play and anyone can win.

^This

I've played in all-play leagues and while they were probably the best at reducing luck, they were also the most boring.

To each their own.

[Lotto4Life]

I've played in all-play leagues and while they were probably the best at reducing luck, they were also the most boring.

Agree.

[Dibbles]

Great stuff here, many thanks for feedback everyone.

[Straycatz2]

Someone quit mid-season (week 8 maybe?) because he hated his team so we had to scramble and find another person to take over the team. The buyin already paid for by previous owner.

This team has a really good chance at winning 3rd place and almost made it into the championship. I would have loved it if he actually won it all so I could laugh at the guy that quit mid season.

The uncertainty by far makes it more interesting.

[dmac37]

I think victory points with doubleheaders each week does the best job of combining H2H and points scored.
Possible 8 points each week- 2 points per win, 4 victory points for top 4 scoring teams and 2 victory points for next 4 teams in points scored. We still do top 6 teams in victory points go to the playoffs with the top 2 getting a bye with H2H each week.

I would prefer the playoffs to still give the top 2 teams a bye but round 1 the top 2 scoring teams advance then week 15 & 16 champ and runner up are decided by combined total points for the 2 weeks.

I do not subscribe to the theory that FF should emulate real NFL football.

[captain howdy]

My God people.

You win. You lose.


Sometimes you're lucky. Sometimes they are.


Life isn't fair and neither is fantasy football.

All you can do is put yourself in the best possible position to succeed and let these world class athletes fight your battle.

[M-Dub]

Here’s the thing: the sport of football (be it NFL, college, high school on down) didn’t just settle on this one-and-done “any given Sunday” playoff model because it’s the fairest or most logical method of crowning a champion. It’s completely out of necessity. Football is too brutal a game to play more than once a week for 5-6 months. There’s a reason baseball, basketball and hockey play longer regular seasons with 5x or 10x as many games. There’s a reason they play 7-game series to crown a champion.

Fantasy football isn’t bound by the same physical constraints as real life football. This desire to mimic the structure of real football is misguided. If your only goal is to gamble and talk sh-t with your buddies, then by all means, play a 13-game regular season and a standard playoff bracket. But if you actually want to compete at a higher level and see sustained success rewarded more frequently, there are tons of ways to tweak this game to make it less fluky and more skill based. The only limits are your imagination and your willingness to track some basic stuff offline that most platforms aren’t capable of officially tracking.

[WhatWouldDitkaDo]

My God people. You win. You lose.

Sometimes you're lucky. Sometimes they are. Life isn't fair and neither is fantasy football.

I will co-sign on this 100%