The FF50 Challenge Power Rankings, and why I’m not posting them

When I started the FF50 challenge, I was thinking I would perform weekly updates on the state of the 42 teams I was playing, finding a way to rank all of them. I decided against it, both because of time constraints and because I had no way to rank them that early in the season, especially given my draft strategy.

So why did I decide to do it now, as I posted on Monday? Because even without the power rankings and even with the number of teams downsized to 42 from my original intention of 50, I have never been able to set starting lineups or submit waiver claims for all teams without running out of time. I had said that I would abandon 0-4 teams after four weeks, but only four teams started the season 0-4, three of them towards the end of the order for me to set lineups and thus more likely to have malformed lineups, meaning I had next to no teams that were completely lost causes. (I may have better luck with the 1-5 checkpoint this week.) And if I’m going to leave some teams behind, I should be doing it with the teams with the least need for it anyway. So waiver claims will start moving from the bottom up, and lineup setting will occur from the top down. But I’m still not going to post the rankings, because this project is monopolizing too much of my time already, and putting together everything I’d want for a post would eat up way too much of my time. I may decide to post them in no-frills fashion later, though.

There were a few other things that I’ve noticed. For one, I often ended up with the same players on the same teams on the same site, and even when I didn’t, the running back/wide receiver balance was often out of whack in the same way on the same site. For example, nearly every single Yahoo team has Garrett Hartley on the roster, because Yahoo’s rankings absolutely buried him. Right now he’s only the 16th best kicker under Yahoo’s scoring system, but he’s remained high enough on most other week-to-week rankings I haven’t had reason to replace him, though that may change this week with him on bye. Also, most Yahoo teams ended up drafting entire benches of running backs with very few wide receivers, which may have something to do with Yahoo’s starting lineup of three wideouts, two running backs, and no flex. For another, there were some teams that, for one reason or another, were almost entirely autopicked instead of picked by me, and those teams have a strong tendency to be the strongest ones, especially after factoring out Fox teams. (I have eight Fox teams; every last one is in the top half, placing fourth or better in their 10-team league, with five in my top 12. The players there aren’t very good, is what I’m saying.)

This convinces me to make a few rule changes for drafts next year should I continue with this. For one, I had been considering limiting my options to the top 25 available players in ADP, but couldn’t find a universal list I was confident in; now I think I’m definitely going to limit myself to the top 25 ADP for that site (possibly top 20 for leagues with 10 or fewer teams). I’m also going to give a site’s native rankings an increased role in determining who I pick.

The median is right where you’d expect, in the middle of the pack for each league… but considering how much I’m dominating the Fox leagues, that just shows how far I have to go everywhere else.

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