2018 NFL Roster-building contest
 

So, here's a new idea. Let's see if it turns into a fun game.

There's an online tool from Spotrac that lets you build an NFL roster based on actual cap hits this year, by the best information they have. That seems to set up a pretty fun little game, I'd say.

I will post a DRAFT scoring system for comment in the next post, and then we'll chat about it. After a day or so of potential refinements, we'll finalize the scoring, and open up the game for a window or time.

Scoring and setup, first draft:

Idea: I want this to mostly be about offensive skill players, the sort of guys we are all thinking about for fantasy football, etc. But I do like the idea of adding at least some defensive players, so I'm adding them in, but in a deliberately lessened way.

So, for now, my leaning is to make the roster open-ended, where the point is to MAXIMIZE PROFITS -- earn more dollars in scoring points than you spend in cap hits. I'm open to being talked off this ledge.

I also want the scoring to be pretty easy to calculate and manage, so we can each do an easy year-end tally-up.

YOUR TEAM EARNS:
$0.5M for each rushing, receiving, return, or defensive TD
$0.2M for each passing TD
$0.1M for each QB sack
$0.1M for each interception
$0.1M for each 10 tackles, rounded down

YOUR ROSTER:
As many players as you can jam into the roster-building tool, linked above.

YOUR SCORE:
Is the earnings by your players, minus the cap hits of your players.


Thoughts?

...and my first draft is pretty low-reward, meaning that the game would mostly be about really low-cap players. That might not be ideal, I'm not sure.

I'm looking at a guy like QB Watson, who seems like a super-cheap play to my intuition as his cap hit is only about $3.1m this year. But under my first draft, a good season from him with 35 passing TDs and 5 rushing TDs would be worth $9.5m... a profit, but not a monstrous one.

Whether to limit the number of slot seems like the big underlying question. If I can only have 2 QB, that's really different from being able to splash around with a number of minsal guys who might stumble into playing time here or there.

My instinct is that a roster limit would lead to more variety. Otherwise, it might just become a game of everyone cramming the same rookie deal skill guys onto our rosters.

We will all have 70 person rosters with 80% overlap of the Watson-type guys.

So, maybe a limit, but a deep enough one to let us field some wild oats here and there?

The default setup allows for 2 each of QB, RB, WR, and TE. Maybe we allow those 8 slots, plus another 4 wild card slots from any position?

And...maybe just dump the defensive players altogether? I am really not liking the idea of researching to find what minsal dude is going to walk into a WLB job and probably post 80 tackles and 3 sacks someplace.

I think you've devalued defensive players so far it would be better to strike them altogether.

By your numbers, my defensive guy who gets 10 sacks is equivalent to your WR who gets 2 TDs. Even if you give my guy 100 tackles and 10 sacks, he's only as good as a third string, 4 TD Patriots running back.

By that system, I wouldn't spend a penny on defense.

Okay, my next litmus test guy will be RB Jeremy Hill. He's having a good camp, has a shot to be a goal line guy, and if the scoring is TD-only, might have some value here. His cap number is about $1.3m... do we want a guy like that (let's say he's penciled in for 8 rushing TD) to be more or less valuable in this game than, say, Ezekiel Elliot and his $6m cap hit? Judgment call, I think.

If we made this a salcap game (just build a 12-man roster under $25m) that's one way to do that... but I'm fond of this open-ended idea, at least to a point.

Yes, I'm leaning toward striking them altogether. I like the idea of including them, but if we do so at anything even close to par with offensive players, this game will end up being mostly about deep research on defense, and I think that's less fun than deep-digging of fantasy fliers.

I like the idea, but I think the rookie scale messes it up too much, especially at QB. Watson & Dak Prescott are the obvious two picks (and maybe Pat Mahomes as a 3rd), then any star veteran QB is probably going to end up -10m or more, and even guys like Carson Wentz & Jared Goff put up negative value last season under this system. I thought maybe a graduated system where TD passes 1-10 for the season are worth .1, 11-20 worth .2, 21-30 .3 etc would value the elite players more, but there's just no getting around that massive salary cap disparity. RB isn't as bad since there's at least a path to profitability for Zeke, Saquan, etc (though probably not Le'Veon Bell... or Jerick McKinnon), but you still have 2 of the clear top 10 players and a slew of other RB1/2's (and a couple WR1/2's) out there for under a million.

If the goal is deep digging for some fantasy football fun, why not just use Yahoo or ESPN's ADP, then either saying "You can't take anyone in the top 100" or putting them into buckets and saying you can only take 2 in the top 25, 2 in 26-50, 3 in 51-100, 3 from 101-150, 3 from 151-200 & then like 5 from 200+?

i think if this is the path you want to go down, you have to make it a full 53 man roster with the full salary cap, otherwise you just end up with the same thing you have in a game like Gridiron Challenge on ESPN. Try to get a guy you like cheap early on, and go bare minimum/ matchup plays for K and D.

10 offensive players

Must use 20% (46.5M) of salary cap, no more than 30% (64.2M) - These cap numbers include the ~11M dead cap number you inherit when building a roster.

No more than 2 players per year of experience.

2 QB. 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 2 FLEX (halved points for FLEX players)

Backup QB points only count if starter is out and only count from the most recent quarter completed by starter (If he gets injured in the 2nd quarter, his first quarter stats are counted but the backup stats are counted for the 2nd through 4th quarters)

Pure points system like fantasy, but rotisserie style.

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Just my shot at what I could see as a workable way to make this interesting while also forcing players to be original with their roster picks. Might be too similar to fantasy ball or too complicated, but I think it would be an interesting way to do fantasy. Chose the cap numbers I did because they seemed like a reasonable amount to expect to be spent on those positions on a real life team.

What about a roster limit with minimum salary floor and a cap? If the floor is set high enough, players will have to augment rookie contracts with the best value players on bigger money contracts. It could introduce strategies like 10 rookies and 1 or 2 top dollar QB vs. 6 or 7 players with values in the $10/year range and using rookie contract QBs.

Thinking more about this, the big issue seems to be rookie contracts in general and rookie QBs in particular. They skew the numbers so much that it seems like the real game will be who best figures out how to maximize them.

Sorry, just short on time today to tend to this.