Sports Injuries: NFL Upside down & Changing expectations - Part two

Sports Injuries: NFL Upside down & Changing expectations - Part two
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (11-8-13)

[Part one - When stars fall]



DAN:
I was all ready to call this a coincidence, this rash of high profile NFL injuries in 2013. Then Aaron Rodgers went down on Monday Night Football. Sure, there are a ton of injuries every year in the NFL, but adding Rodgers' name to this season's list has pushed things off a cliff. Wow! Everything is working out for the underdog teams this season. I'm calling it now: Chiefs vs. Jets in the AFC Championship and Lions vs. Panthers in the NFC. Now THAT would be something.

Anyways, on the injury front itself, I think all of the injuries do mean something. But it has little to do with the game being played. There was a time when injuries were glorified, exciting and fun to watch. I'd say as recently as the late nineties when Madden football let you "knock a guy's head off", we as fans loved this stuff. A home plate collision in baseball was wonderful. It was the peak of in game excitement. In the NBA, two men crashing to the court brought cheers to the crowd. None of this is true any more. We don't want our stars, let alone any player, getting injured. No one should ever fall to the court, home plate collisions are feared, and anytime there's a big hit or a quarterback sack in the NFL, we are left holding our breath to see if the man can stand back up under his own free will. Sports fans have changed and now, left with nearly the same sport to watch, we don't enjoy things like we once did. Fantasy sports is just a small part of this change. Our society has moved dramatically away from violence and aggressive behavior being tolerated. We still enjoy it, when we know its fake. But sports are real life and no one wants to see anyone get hurt.

You mentioned putting numbers to the injuries. Can you please do this? If I start a Kickstarter fund to raise 2K bucks, is that enough to fund you over a month's worth of work? I SO want this information. ESPN has been keeping injury reports for some time now, so you can correlate that to team success based upon when stars fall. And then jump to the next season and see what transpired. This would revolutionize sports betting for the upcoming season. You'd know exactly which teams, that presumably sucked like the Red Sox did the year before, were bound to have a great year simply based on lack of injury. I actually see a board game in this information's future as well. You can draft a team of stars and then "injure" players on your opponent's team. Using real life wins and losses, you can reshape history!

Getting a bit further off topic, why are there no fun sports based board games? The closest we ever got were those silly trivia games that are impossible to play with a non sports fan. Fantasy sports is pick up a play. Can't we get a monopoly style game where everyone is an NFL General Manager or something. Come on Matel.


TODD:
I thought you laughed and mocked me for my Carolina Panthers NFC pick back in our 2013 predictions. Now who looks stupid?

You are right about the wussification of the American public though. 'JACKED UP' used to be a weekly segment on NFL studio shows, where commentators gleefully cheered at players receiving concussions. (Not literally but essentially.) There used to be a button in Madden video games called the 'hit stick' which was used to jack people up. I actually cannot confirm whether this still exists, as I have not bought an edition of Madden in a long while, but I feel like it probably does not. And now, every time anyone sees a big hit, you are exactly right, the first reaction is in concern for the decapitated and whether or not the play deserved to be penalized.

Very few, if any hits are ever celebrated nowadays. It seems awkward to do so. So I will patiently await my $2,000 grant to research the injury epidemic and make everyone aware of my findings in the near future. Until then, we will be forced to watch a Monday Night Football game between the legendary Packers and Bears where the starting quarterback battle is between Seneca Wallace and Josh McCown.

Also, this is 2013. What's a board game?


DAN:
I've come around on the Panthers. I always believed Cam Newton had it in him, but Carolina is playing defense and former contenders are dropping like flies. Also, its now 2013 and I'm all about Thursday Night and Sunday Night Football. What's this Monday Night Football you speak of? Kidding, kidding.

Board games are contraptions made of card board, processed trees, that consume hours of your life. They require you to have at least three to five friends or subservient family members and always lead to argument and unnecessary bragging. They are analogous to the play ground in middle school, yet everyone starts on even ground and the smart / lucky person wins. Strength is removed from the equation.

To wrap things up on the sports injury front, there is only one thing I know for certain. All of the major professional sports are getting safer and we are going to still feel, year after year, that there are a TON of injuries to our favorite players. This is the deal. The players make it when they continue to play a sport past their early twenties when their bodies no longer recover the same way. And we the fans make this deal when we decide to devote heart and soul, sweat and tears, to our team's success during the season.

Unless sports become a virtual endeavor with no actual, physical competition, there will be injuries and lots of them. From a fantasy sports perspective, this frickin sucks. Its bad enough to lose a fantasy football matchup by a fraction of a point (I've lost two weeks this year by 0.2 points). But when your star player is injured, or worse, they are playing through a minor injury that simply hampers his or her production, your team is pretty much screwed. They have spray on band aids now. I want spray on bone and ligament healing. Thank you science.

[If you missed Part one - When stars fall]

Fantasy Football: Evolution & Naming your fantasy team - Part two

Fantasy Football: Evolution & Naming your fantasy team - Part two
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (8-23-13)

[Part one - Is a two QB league evil?]



TODD:
You are spot on about wide receivers in fantasy football, but I don't know why this upsets you. Wide receiver has a few studs, the best of the best. Calvin Johnson, A.J. Green are clear; perhaps Brandon Marshall and Dez Bryant could be on that level. There are just a few of them though. After that, there are about 30 interchangeable guys. You were exaggerating to make your point but your lofty number might be pretty accurate. Demaryius Thomas, ESPN's 6th rated wide receiver this season, is costing about $24 more than their 36th rated wide receiver, Mike Williams, and I just don't see it. Sure Thomas has a bigger upside I guess, but Williams scores touchdowns and is a pretty consistent performer. I'd much rather have Williams and the extra dough to spend on a running back. To me, this is just one more instance of separating the smart fantasy owners from the followers. Thomas and Andre Johnson and Larry Fitzgerald are all going to be taken for big money but the receivers going $15-20 cheaper might accumulate 85% of their stats for a fraction of the cost.

It will be interesting to see if the same thing happens at quarterback in normal leagues. The top guys are veeeerry expensive. The bottom guys who are capable of being pretty damn good (Eli Manning, Phillip Rivers, Jay Cutler, Josh Freeman) are going for a buck or going undrafted completely. In a one QB league, it seems plausible that an owner could grab two or even three of those dirt cheap signal callers and play match-ups to a title.

But if fantasy is becoming too offensive heavy for you, which seems like an odd complaint but whatever, they do have IDP leagues. Individual Defensive Player leagues are detailed and confusing. The best performers, as you hinted at, are linebackers and defensive backs. Tackles do usually count, as do interceptions and sacks, etc. But some of the more popular defense-men aren't the best fantasy performers which leaves preparation and success in such a league on quite a learning curve. Also, the scoring settings will be of utmost importance. If certain actions are worth too much, suddenly Eric Weddle or Sean Lee become more valuable than the top offensive guys. It may be worth a try one of these years but, if we're not careful, we may be left on the inexperienced/noobie side of a competitive league.


DAN:
To those in one QB only leagues, don't listen to Todd. You're crazy if you take three average quarterbacks and try to play the matchups all season long instead of say, taking Tom Brady. That's like not paying as much as humanly possible for LeBron James in NBA fantasy basketball. Its crazy talk. When you can only start one QB you absolutely need a stud. Grab one of those top five guys and you are almost guaranteed an extra ten points a week over a less expensive counterpart. I'm not sure the list is any deeper than five quarterbacks who I'd pay big money for. Miss one of them and definitely grab Eli Manning and Jay Cutler for fifteen bucks combined if you can.

My main complaint about the evolution of fantasy football is not that its offensive heavy, its that all the emphasis has fallen to the quarterbacks in the last five years. When I first started playing fantasy football I felt like I was picking all my favorite players to be on my team. And no, I wasn't losing. The QB, Running Back and Wide Receiver positions felt balanced, with a skew towards the running backs as the killer commodity. With all the NFL rule changes favoring the passing game, and a ton of new QBs being good to great runners themselves, two things happened. First, the running back position in fantasy football got killed. Its not the stud it once was and there are less stars to go around. You end up drafting players you don't yet know. The second thing, which we already touched on, is that the Wide Receiver position is watered down to where the top two guys on every team are more or less even.

I know I'm exaggerating, but the reason I LOVED fantasy football in the beginning was because I could nearly draft a team full of players I knew and adored. I still love fantasy football, but its become more and more like fantasy baseball where you have to play the numbers and ignore the name of the player. That's all well and good, but something got lost along the way. I like to know what the players on my fantasy team actually look like. I want to know I'll care about them again next season, or at least hear how well they have continued to perform. One and done seasons by players is common on a fantasy baseball roster, but has crept itself into fantasy football now too.

On the fun side of things, one of my little joys in life is picking team name's for fantasy football etc. Yet I'm thoroughly confused, as I seem to be alone in this. I think I'm one of maybe two in our leagues who actually changes up their team names. You have the exact same team name for every fantasy sport you play and have always had this team name, never once changed it. And you are not alone by any means. Come on man! 

My rule of thumb for a fantasy team name, if I win it all (or even finish top three if its a killer name) then the name can stay another season. The reigning champ (or close to it) has to defend his or her crown. Otherwise, the name has to go. A loser name has no place around here.

I realize I opened two doors for you. You'll probably point out how you always win, not an exaggeration, and therefore keep your team name. You'll also mention how its absurd for me to be a New York Jets fan and then make the statement about ditching a loser team name.

Go on. I'm ready.


TODD:
Yeah, I am glad you realized this blatant setup. I don't change my fantasy team name because I don't ever finish lower than third.

Even if that was not the case though, I like to keep my team name consistent, to build the brand if you will. However, as league commissioner, I do enjoy changing the league name a bit every season. The names used to be rather clever; recently I've been finding classic or obscure deceased players to name the season after. It is kind of fun in its own right. Nevertheless, my personal team name needs to remain the same so opponents know who they're dealing with!

Let's revisit fantasy football once the season has gotten underway. We don't want to give too much away now, before we've even drafted.

[If you missed Part one - Is a two QB league evil?]

Image credit: here

Fantasy Football: Is a two QB league evil? - Part one

Fantasy Football: Is a two QB league evil? - Part one
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (8-19-13)



TODD:
There is something inherently evil about fantasy football leagues in which owners are allowed to start two quarterbacks. This sounds ludicrous to people who do not play fantasy sports. In fact, this may sound rather stupid to others as well. But the evil exists in the logic behind the action. You see, in leagues that allow players to start two quarterbacks, it is a death sentence to not do so. Quarterbacks score so many more points each week than other positions. Even starting a "bad" QB is preferred to starting a solid running back or wide receiver. The numbers back this up.

Last season, Ben Roethlisberger was the 19th highest scoring quarterback (depending on league scoring settings of course). In other words, in a normal league, he started for pretty much nobody. Big Ben was also the 24th highest scoring PLAYER, meaning there were only five non-quarterbacks in the entire NFL who scored more fantasy points than him. They were the five best running backs from a season ago. Roethlisberger, as a bench quarterback and oftentimes a free agent, scored more points than every wide receiver in football; more than Calvin Johnson. He was better than all tight ends and all but the top five guys at RB. He was better than Ray Rice and C.J. Spiller, etc.

So we start with a league that 'allows' two quarterbacks to be started. This is a careful, yet important distinction between leagues that 'require' teams to start two quarterbacks. The decision comes in the form of a flex position and that position generates the evil. Because what it does is create an uneven playing field between owners and an unhealthy value on the QB position. Suddenly, Andy Dalton or Josh Freeman are more valuable than Marques Colston or David Wilson. In normal leagues, the Daltons and Freemans would not even be rostered, let alone started. They are outside the top 12-15 quarterbacks. Thus, they serve no purpose other than bye week filler. Except in these evil leagues where they become vital.

The comparison between Dalton and Colston isn't even apt. Colston is a second tier wide receiver. He is going to be a starter in most every league, as a wide receiver. The teams that are able to start three receivers better than him and thus have the Saints big man as a flex filler are few and far between. The same goes for players like Wilson, borderline number two running backs who may have to battle for carries in real life.

These guys become less important than the bottom feeder QBs but are still starters. The dreaded flex position becomes a battle between Dalton, scoring 12-15 points per week, and a flex RB or WR like, say, Brandon LaFell. This man will score 7 points if you're lucky. Weeks where he does not get in the endzone, owners will be fortunate to scrounge together 55 yards from these fellows. And now you see the problem.

Here's the bottom line: if you play in a league where a second quarterback is allowed to be started, and you do not have a second quarterback to start, you're essentially down 10 points before your matchup even begins. Good luck.

We both play in a fantasy football league that employs this. Full disclosure: I am commissioner and created this evil environment. I can't say that I'm proud of myself. It haunts me. It is my fault people have to consider drafting Sam Bradford over the likes of Hakeem Nicks. I live with this weighing over my conscience.

I guess my question to you is, am I a bad person?


DAN:
I'm not sure your question has anything to do with the fantasy football league you created. Zing!

You're commissioner of this so called "evil" league, so if it bothers you so much to this day, why did you ever build the league this way? Personally, as someone who has played in such a league for several years now, I'm a little shocked you dare to call it evil and I know exactly why you created your league in this way.

Having a flex position in fantasy football is awesome. You can start anyone you like, but more importantly, it exposes the inexperienced or disinterested player. You wanted to create a competitive league of players who are informed and actually like football. This flex position shows you, as commissioner, who falls short of those expectations. It only took one week of my first season playing with a flex roster spot to realize I'd be an idiot not to play two quarterbacks. Unless you somehow end up with three of the top five running backs in the league, then you're going quarterback all the way for the flex.

I'm going one step further. Its pretty moronic not to have three quarterbacks on your roster. You need a bonafide backup at all times to fill the QB and flex position. But evil? Hell no. I actually enjoy how the flex position gives someone like Mark Sanchez value. Mark freaking Sanchez had fantasy value in his first two years as a pro! He had none last season, but before then he did. With a ten team league we're talking the top 20 quarterbacks being on roster. That's 20 of the 32 quarterbacks in the league collecting points every week. If we add in the three per team wrinkle, that's 30 of 32 quarterbacks being employed by the members of our league. I love this! When in all of sports would you ever find yourself rooting for Ryan Tannehill, sorry Dolphins fans (no I'm not)? You wouldn't unless you had to add him to your team for the points.

I'm actually more fed up with the Wide Receiver position in fantasy football. When I started playing fantasy, the WR position was a money spot. You could rake it in, clean up, with the right guy on your team. Now its like there are three top guys and then 30 who all put up ten points a week. What's the point? Its annoying and disappointing and its the quarterbacks' fault. They are all spreading the ball around so damn much that no one is dominant week in and week out any more.

I think ultimately, fantasy football has always been offensive heavy. But with the watering down of the WR position, the ineptitude of the kicker slot and the top heavy need for quarterbacks, can we get the defense more involved? Why hasn't this been sufficiently worked out so that its fun? Linebackers and Safetys/Cover Corners accumulate statistics week after week. I'm not suggesting we count tackles, but would that be so bad? We count yards after all.


TODD:
You got me. Guilty. I did this on purpose to set the noobies back. If someone doesn't start two quarterbacks, it essentially becomes a white flag to the rest of us that they aren't going to be winning this league anytime soon.

And by the way, I kind of like Ryan Tannehill this season. I am happy to hear I won't be competing with you when his name comes up for bid as a third quarterback.

As for wide receivers, you are exactly right but I don't know why this upsets you.

[Part two - Evolution & Naming your fantasy team]

Image credit: here

NFL Kickoff: The fantasy kicker & Barry Sanders - Part three

NFL Kickoff: The fantasy kicker & Barry Sanders - Part three
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (8-12-13)

[Part one - Off season questions Real & Hilarious]
[Part two - Tebow vs. Hernandez]



TODD:
The kicker in fantasy football is irrelevant and should be removed. The stats back this up. Made field goal percentage is so balanced and so steady, everyone always comes back to the mean. You can go through and look up who the projected top fantasy kicker was each season and how rarely that same man finishes the year as the best. So what's the point of using them in fantasy football? It is simply a random chance as to whether you will select the guy who has the good year, the average year or the bad year. There is no skill in this and literally no research you can do to improve your chances of selecting the former.

I am actually in a league that previously did not employ kickers as a position and, just this season, decided to re-institute them, for reasons unbeknownst to me. I guess I can take solace in the fact that someone will overdraft one of these men, and it will work to my benefit. But other than that, what's even the point?


DAN:
I'm with you on the kicker being a relatively flat position in fantasy football. The man himself is irrelevant. Only his team matters. How do you go about selecting a kicker? Pick a team that meets one of two criteria: 1) Scores a ton of points 2) Has a terrible red zone offense and can't get in the end zone. Done and done!

I don't think you remove it from the fantasy conversation however. Its a wildcard position that is not much different than team defense. You are looking for consistency with the potential for a big week. A five field goal day can win or lose you a week in fantasy football and that's what makes it both wildly fun and unbelievably frustrating to play. Fantasy Football is 50% smarts 40% luck and 10% paying attention to injury. Everyone knows this and removing the kicker does not decrease the luck factor nor improve the need for smarts. It just excludes a rather important facet of the actual game of football. It would be like taking saves out of fantasy baseball. Although a poor analogy, its basically removing a fundamental and critical part of the actual sport from our fantasy pastime. No.

I don't know if you could tell, but I was working really hard to avoid reaching your next question. (If Barry Sanders came out of retirement, could he start at running back for the New York Jets?) Let me first lay two things out on the table. One, I don't appreciate being smacked in the face like that. Two, Barry Sanders was an unbelievable talent and top five all time at the running back position. If this was three or even five years after he retired, I would be tempted to answer yes. And that is NOT a knock on the Jets' current crop of running backs. Sanders retired with several solid years left in his tank and would have still been a force on the field a few years after he hung up his cleats. Now? No gosh darn way.

The New York Jets are not poor at running back. They have a solid offensive line full of veteran talent that has made the likes of Shonn Greene look good for the last couple seasons. He has his moments, that is all. I loved what I saw out of Bilal Powell last season and as the starter, watch out. He is going to surprise people. Chris Ivory is no slouch either and will provide the one, two punch that Rex Ryan loves to employ. And don't sleep on Joe McKnight either. He's too small to be the full time starter, but his big play potential is huge. Moral of the story, I'm glad to see Shonn Greene move on and am clamoring for our next Curtis Martin. I know you love Barry Sanders, but let him enjoy his retirement.


TODD:
You have your perceived percentages askew. Fantasy football is more like 40% smarts and 60% luck. Isn't paying attention to anything part of smarts? And wouldn't anything having to do with injuries be classified as luck? Unless of course we're talking about drafting Darren McFadden as your number one running back. That injury is on its way; there's no luck about it.

Removing the kicker position would absolutely decrease the luck factor. The baseball closer is a pretty good analogy but not perfect for one reason. Closers are rotated in and out so frequently that the skill involved is about finding saves, not about finding a year-long closer. Kickers are not normally replaced no matter how average or below average they are performing. As an aside, it would be kind of fun to try a fantasy baseball league without the saves stat. We could still use relief pitcher spots, but owners would be trying to find the best RPs in the league, regardless of whether their real-life manager tabs them as their team's closer. The MLB All-Star game seems to be going that way for some, uninteresting reason. The American League was filled with middle relievers who were performing better than closers elsewhere. It was not fun to wait for them to come into the game but it was fun to see the better pitcher rewarded over the guy with more saves.

Now back to the gridiron, and back to the AFC East, where your beloved New York Jets do have a running back problem whether you care to admit it or not. The NFL is a multi-back league for sure. Unless you have one of the top six or so guys, your team needs more than one reliable runner each and every week. Joe McKnight is a nice wild card; I will give you that. And I like Chris Ivory as well, assuming he is a team's second option at RB. But Bilal Powell? His best game last year came against the Jacksonville Jaguars and he barely cleared four yards per carry. The Jets have no number one guy. To venture back to a baseball analogy, they are like a pitching staff with no ace. They have a number two guy and two number three guys. Sure, it may get them some wins but they shouldn't feel confident with that group.

Barry Sanders, on the other hand, is only 45 years old and...okay, that question was just posed to make fun of the Jets. You got me. A few years after he retired, he could have certainly come back into the league. We all knew this at the time. But now it has been an astonishing 15 years since he last played. 15 years! Can you believe that? It seems like just yesterday he was juking, jumping and jiving through defenses.

[If you missed Part one - Off season questions Real & Hilarious]

[If you missed Part two - Tebow vs. Hernandez]

[Part four - A QB decathlon, rookies & the NY Giants]

NFL Kickoff: Off season questions 'Tebow vs Hernandez' - Part two

NFL Kickoff: Off season questions 'Tebow vs. Hernandez' - Part two
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (8-9-13)

[Part one - Questions both Real and Hilarious]



TODD:
Besides going global and dealing with what to call itself, the NFL is also interested in expanding the schedule, playing 18 games. There has even been discussion about playoff expansion. This is ludicrous but if it makes more money, it cannot be ruled out. Which brings us past saturation and back to safety concerns. More games and more high-leverage games means more injuries. I agree though that the game is infinitely safer than even a decade ago. And the equipment is continually being improved upon each and every season. I suppose eventually we will reach a point where the injuries have been curtailed enough to be worth the destructive excitement the sport brings. We are not quite at that point yet though.

I'm not even going to touch that "appeasing the women" comment. Let's just move on to my other NFL questions.


DAN:
Give the foreign fans some credit. They'll call it American Football, or simply the NFL. When you talk about soccer internationally, you usually reference the league, not the sport. The real solution however is for everyone to actually pronounce Futbol as its written and use the accent when they say it. Then its easy to hear the difference. Football. Futbol.

Before I dive into your "Fan" questions, the real off season topics of inquiry, you better promise to answer them yourself. I'm sure I'll have followup questions, ahem, the New York Giants defense, but no cop outs. I need answers!

You asked:
(1) From a pure popularity standpoint, as in most interest by the most people, which New England story was actually bigger news, Aaron Hernandez or Tim Tebow?

I wish I could tell you it was Tim Tebow, but from both a New England fans standpoint and from a national standpoint the Hernandez story is infinitely bigger. Initially, when the Hernandez story first broke, it looked like maybe, just maybe, things were getting blown out of proportion. There were a few days when murder was not part of the discussion and him simply missing six games or the season was all this was. At that point in time, Tebow vs. Hernandez was a conversation. Once murder joined the party this was no longer a far fight between news stories. Murder captures headlines and ends careers. It has certainly ended Hernandez's and now the Patriots have a gaping hole in their lineup.

For most teams the loss of a tight end hurts, but is fixable. Take the New York Jets for example. They "lost" Dustin Keller in free agency and promptly signed a veteran replacement in Kellen Winslow. Savy team decision. But the Patriots, their tight ends have been another teams wide receivers of late. Tom Brady's offense thrives on the short game and throwing over the middle to large targets. Now Hernandez is gone, Gronk is out indefinitely it seems, and the Jets already stole the veteran talent in Winslow whom the Patriots would have gotten in years past. This is trouble.

I now have to talk Tim Tebow for a moment or three. This signing should be bigger news, should be more fun and crazy. I enjoyed over a year and a half of Tebow talk when he was on the Jets. Should they have given him an opportunity to start? Yeah, of course. The team sucked last season and had nothing to lose. Hell, I don't think he would have done anything remotely close to the "Butt Fumble" and would have added much needed excitement to a turnover plagued season. But good riddance! He was a distraction and proved less than an asset since the Jets were not going to play him. Having such a huge personality on the team is great if you use him and is annoying if you don't.

Watch out Patriots. No, there won't be chants for Tebow if Tom Brady has a bad game. I'm not sure he's ever put up more than a poor half of football in his professional life. But there WILL be chants for Tim Tebow. Tebow the tight end, with Hernandez and Gronk out. Tebow the wide receiver or Tebow the running back, with question marks across the line of scrimmage at both positions. Tebow the number two quarterback, if and when he falls to third on their depth chart. The Patriots are blowing out the Dolphins with six minutes to go in the game? Put in Tim Tebow you'll here. I say, please oh please play him! Let him ride the bench to your own peril.


TODD:
Having people actually pronounce things as they are supposed to be said seems like wide eyed naivete, but go ahead and dream.

As for the Patriots off season, obviously the Aaron Hernandez story grew to be a huge deal; perhaps the biggest in NFL history based on the facts. This is an active player who has been accused of murder. O.J. Simpson is the only comparable event and, although he was much more famous than Hernandez ever was, he was already retired when his murder charges were brought on. This is an ACTIVE player...just insane. It dwarfs anything related to Tebow. My question, as the days passed, became more and more one-sided.

But even without the Hernandez story gaining steam as details were unearthed, I actually think New England was partly responsible for Tebow-mania not taking off. They kept him under wraps rather than pushing him to the forefront like a certain New York squad. Did they even hold a press conference when he was signed? Nope. Whereas the Jets did everything but buy advertising time on Fox Sports New York when they brought Tim to their team. Just different mindsets for different franchises. I wouldn't be surprised if Tebow barely plays at all, at any position, for New England, tight end deficiency or not. This just does not seem like the type of franchise that would throw him out there for the sake of it, especially a player like him who (reportedly/apparently) has so much trouble learning plays and responsibilities.

And now with news that Jake Ballard may not even make the final roster because of lingering injury concerns, New England might forget about using the tight end position at all. I had high hopes for Ballard becoming the Patriots' main guy at the spot and having himself a pretty solid season, if unspectacular compared to the likes of Hernandez and Gronkowski. But with that, yet another option that may not come to fruition for the Pats, it may be time to play more running backs and wide receivers. I don't know where else they would turn.

Let's move on though before this becomes an all AFC East blog entry. My next question was in regards to using kickers in fantasy football. Sensible players and experts are aware that, essentially, every kicker is the same. Their point production is perfectly unpredictable from one season to the next. A kicker with a career high in successful kicks has no better chance at repeating that outcome than one who struggled the previous season, assuming the latter still holds a job of course. The stats back this up.

[If you missed Part one - Off season questions Real and Hilarious]

[Part three - The fantasy kicker & Barry Sanders]
[Part four - A QB decathlon, rookies & the NY Giants]

NFL Kickoff: Off season questions Real & Hilarious - Part one

NFL Kickoff: Off season questions Real & Hilarious - Part one
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (8-5-13)



TODD:
The NFL is perfecting its takeover of the entire calendar year. We start with training camp and preseason in August through to the regular season and playoffs. The Super Bowl is played in February. From there comes free agency, player movement and draft talk through April-May. After that is finalization of rosters, more player movement and preseason news through the summer. Parts of this takeover are more fun (the NFC West royalty) than others (the Aaron Hernandez story). But either way, the National Football League now lasts 12 months a year.

With that preamble out of the way, let's dive into a myriad of questions that currently surround the league.

First, and possibly most importantly, with concussion research and player safety in the front of everyone's mind, is it realistic that this league eventually folds, AKA no longer exists, like some people have opined? Perhaps not in the next decade, but in our lifetime is there ever not going to be an NFL?

On a smaller scale, we can get into who will win the Super Bowl, what happens to the Patriots offense, who's the surprise team of the year and the biggest disappointment, etc. But those aren't the questions people are clambering for. Not yet at least. Here's what fans are really wondering:

(1) From a pure popularity standpoint, as in most interest by the most people, which New England story was actually bigger news, Aaron Hernandez or Tim Tebow?

(2) Is this finally the year fantasy football leagues realize using a kicker as a scoring position is almost entirely irrelevant and luck-based?

(3) If Barry Sanders came out of retirement today, could he be the starting running back for the New York Jets?

(4) If Russell Wilson, Andrew Luck, Colin Kaepernick and Robert Griffin III played 2 on 2 in a decathalon-type event, what would the teams be, which side would win, who would America be rooting for, and would they all be immediately inducted into the respective Halls of Fame of each sport they participated in?

(4b) How much does it suck for all current and future first year starting quarterbacks?

(5) Do the New York Giants actually eschew the linebacker position entirely this season and go with an unconventional 5-0-6 alignment? ...Huh, oh, no one is actually wondering this other than me?


DAN:
Whoa, whoa, whoa, someone just exploded a four part NFL debate in my face! I see six valid questions and one that is complete horse manure.

A thought on your preamble, the NFL is definitely expanding itself across all twelve months of the calendar and there is no better time for this to happen. Its popularity couldn't be higher and the potential for making money is still growing. Yet I worry for the league, and not because of the concussion issue which I'll get to in a minute. I worry because too much of a good thing is a cliche for a reason. If you eat too much ice cream you get a brain freeze and swear off it for a week. If you drink too much you puke, wake up with a hang over and wish you never knew what alcohol was. My point, we as Americans are reaching a saturation point with football. Its not just the NFL, but college football in conjunction with the NFL is inescapable.

There will be a breaking point, a moment in time where each fan says "Enough!" I can't take anymore football and need a break. Sports were built this way to start out. You had an off season with few to no stories to tell, so by the time training camp came around you were clamoring for some football or baseball or what not. Expanding to twelve uninterrupted months of football news and notes and crap involving the legal system is dangerous territory. ESPN and the like need things to talk about, I get it, and the NFL can still make more money. I get that too. But I worry, will enough be enough or will it never be enough?

How about that first question. The league is not going to fold. That's completely unrealistic. Sports are a part of American culture and football is at the forefront. It has been our entire lives. Our father's generation had baseball in the lead and our kid's generation might have the NBA, if trends continue. But the major sports are staying put in our society. No one is shutting down or boycotting the NFL and the game will get safer. Hell, its infinitely safer then when I played in high school. Rules alone, not to mention equipment, make it harder to get seriously injured. Plus, more importantly, there is something about men that makes them want to inflict pain on one another. I'm not saying we want to injure other men, just bruise them and push them around a bit. It's why boxing gyms are so popular, even if the sport has leveled off. Its also why MMA has blown up. The NFL is like Mixed Martial Arts with a full body suit and too many rules to count. Plus, hold onto this ball. Men love this! We aren't letting it go, just allowing it to change to appease the women of the world.

I'd like to issue a half apology in advance for being semi-sexist. Just covering my bases.


TODD:
The saturation point seems far off with the way things are transpiring, but certain actions are on the horizon that may expedite this process. Expanding the league into other countries, which already happens once a year, is going to get kicked up a notch. Multiple games will be played overseas. There may even be a franchise located in a country outside of North America. So not only will American football be a full-year sport in America but in other parts of the world as well.

On a side note, if the NFL expands past Europe and into Latin speaking countries, I'm not quite sure what they will call it. Futbol is already taken and we know first hand how confusing it is when soccer fans call soccer futbol here in the states.

[Part two - Off season questions 'Tebow vs. Hernandez']
[Part three - The fantasy kicker & Barry Sanders] 
[Part four - A QB decathlon, rookies & the NY Giants]

NFL Free Agency Fallout: How Insane was that? - Part One

NFL Free Agency Fallout: How Insane was that? - Part One

by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (3-25-13)

DAN:

March Madness is in full swing, but the real drama in March is NFL Free Agency! Its time to talk free agency fallout, and this year its like the sky is literally falling on some teams, while others are floating up to heaven.

Free Agency began on March 12th. I want your instant reaction to the insanity that took place over those first 48 hours. The initial bombing raid, if you will, that has left the NFL in complete shock and recovery mode two weeks later.

TODD:

That was quite a flurry, wasn't it? The NFL is definitely better than any of the other sports at drumming up interest around free agency movement since so many quality players get cut every year. This is directly related to the fact that contracts are not all guaranteed and teams often bring back their own players on new deals, but still. We never get to see anything like this in basketball or baseball where teams cannot afford to release players underperforming their deals.

A funny thing that developed though is who made news in those first few days. A lot of good players switched teams, but not all of them were headline worthy according to...somebody. The big names were all at skill positions, offensive players. I don't know why I expected anything less, but I had to actually do some hunting to learn about the other quality players moving around.

Who we did hear about were the wide receivers and the running backs, and there was a lot of movement in those two departments. It is certainly fun to learn who moved where, for fantasy purposes mostly. But I am not sure these moves have as much football weight as some of the other positions. Other than perhaps Reggie Bush, Wes Welker or the top guys at each spot, the rest are just names we know but impacts we will probably forget.

Instead, the real meat of free agency happens between the tackles on offense and on the other side of the ball. Jake Long signed with the Rams, providing aid to a seriously depleted unit; Will Beaty and Phil Loadholt returned to their respective teams, while Jermon Bushrod and Gosder Cherilus did not. On the defensive side, Adrian Wilson went to the Patriots; Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie went to the Broncos; Connor Barwin moved to the Eagles while Cullen Jenkins moved to the Giants. These moves (along with many others) should have headlined free agency ahead of Shonn Greene or Rashard Mendenhall news.

There are a ton of players who still remain unsigned, but taking a quick scope of things overall, it seems like the Patriots made out pretty well...like always. They lost Danny Woodhead but upgraded that spot to Leon Washington. They lost Wes Welker but stood firm by adding Danny Amendola. Patrick Chung left the defensive backfield but the Pats filled that hole with the addition of Wilson while also bringing back Kyle Arrington and Aqib Talib.

On the other hand, the Baltimore Ravens managed to lose player after player from their Super Bowl squad, and haven't really done much to replace them. Ray Lewis and Anquan Boldin are gone. It appears as though Ed Reed is too. Cary Williams, Paul Kruger, Dannell Ellerbe and Ma'ake Kemoeatu all left as unrestricted free agents while Bernard Pollard and Dennis Pitta may too move on through different means.

But, on the plus side, they made Joe Flacco the highest paid player in the history of the sport. So there's always that ($$$).

DAN:

The NFL is definitely great television, no matter if games are being played or not. I must insert a caveat however, I'm SICK and TIRED of hearing EVERY SINGLE ESPN correspondent's opinion on the EXACT same story. I mean seriously, what the hell? You mean to tell me that the guys from Numbers Never Lie, Sportscenter, First Take, Mike and Mike and NFL Live all want to discuss how Revis Island may get traded? Or how Wes Welker is now a Bronco? Come on ESPN, if I learned anything out of this flurry of NFL news its that you're their bitch. I love the updates, but find something else to talk about. I can't listen to the same story and opinion all day long. I'm going to turn the channel.

But enough about ESPN. The NFL is what's really in upheaval, or at least that's what they want you to think. Besides the unparalleled gutting of the Baltimore Ravens, not much has changed. I'll address the Ravens first. They were old. They muscled out a Super Bowl championship and now they're getting younger. Flacco aside, he's now doomed to go down as the worst signing in Raven's history, they aren't paying for old guys and will slide gracefully into a rebuilding year.

Otherwise, like you noted, many MANY players have switched teams. The Broncos are better with Welker, the Seahawks are better with Percy Harvin and the 49ers are still very very good. The Patriots have also remained atop the AFC. What's changed? The teams that were good last year have made moves to keep them that way. Teams that were bad, like the Jets, are actually making the smart decision to get younger and dump as many of the players that made up their crappy team as possible.

I will call out the Dolphins as the lone exception here. Much like the Redskins in years past, they have managed to vastly improve their team on paper. I call BS. This is still a slightly above average team fighting for its life in a division with Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. They'll be lucky to win nine games next year.

[Final Fallout - NFL Free Agency Part Two]

The Future of Fantasy Continued

The Future of Fantasy Continued
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (1-25-13)

[Part One from Monday]

TODD:

I think FCS (Fantasy Championship Series) is already taken but I am a huge fan of unnecessary acronyms. How about FYF, pronounced like fife, the flute-like instrument.  Full-Year Fantasy.

In answer to your FYF question, you would not have to choose between starting Adrian Peterson and LeBron James. My version of FYF works like this:
- Each sport has a starting lineup and the weeks themselves are irrelevant
- Scoring isn't points based so whatever each player accumulates goes towards a team's total

Do it any other way and owners could skew their rosters depending on the month to win the most weeks, without ever having the best teams. So in your example, if Peterson was starting at running back and LeBron was starting at power forward, you would gain points for whatever stats they gathered. The problems begin when trying to decide how many points each action is worth. Whats the basketball equivalent of rushing for 100 yards and a touchdown or vice versa?

I can see why you think FYF is too big of a hurdle to climb. It would be a huge undertaking to work out all the bugs and problems associated with it, too big for us to do this week.  But SOMEONE will eventually figure it out.  After years of failure, Full-Year Fantasy will be THE. NEXT. BIG. THING.

Your addendum to fantasy football is interesting and it already exists in a way. There are leagues that play fantasy football through the real-life playoffs. Teams can protect some of their players and the rest go in a pool to be redrafted. The key is to select players who not only will perform well, but who also have the best chance of sticking around for multiple rounds of the playoffs. For example, even though Adrian Peterson is a stud, he only lasted one game this post season and his team was the underdog going in. Peterson might not have even been worthy of a top three running back pick because of those parameters.

The week eight injury supplemental draft sounds like a similar plan, only more infuriating. I actually kind of hate it. So someone who drafts amazingly and ends up with the deepest team in the league through sheer will and commitment ends up getting punished in week eight? Am I understanding this correctly?  I'm not quite on board with this idea. Read: this idea is stupid.

DAN:

You completely missed the point of a supplemental draft and its really nothing like a redraft for the playoffs. The injury draft isn't intended to punish the top team who drafted great and through sheer will has the deepest team in the league. That WOULD be stupid. It's intent is to combat the major issue I see with fantasy sports in general. No one wants to trade!

Every person wants to give up their crappy players for someone's good ones. Its taken me a long time to 'figure out' what level of quality is necessary to garner interest from an opposing team for a trade. I'm proud to say I've gotten trades approved in every fantasy sport. However, many have been with you because you actually understand this level of quality and enjoy trading. Most people are boring and think if they stand pat then their roster will eventually come through. Those people lose.

The idea here is to create a midseason. Perhaps its even a buy week so everyone can dial in and reassess their team to see if they have dead weight and what their needs are. Instead of just putting two players into a draft pool, every player is weighed on a one to ten scale of performance. You have to put seven points into the draft for example. And if you select a six or seven in the midseason draft, it comes with caveats assuming no other team got anyone higher than five. If you're in last place, I think you sacrifice five points the following week to grab a top tier player. This allows for a potential mulligan for those teams that go unlucky drafting. Trying to put some skill back into the game is a good thing.

As for FYF, naming a sports competition after a girly musical instrument is dangerous ground. And I completely disagree with the notion of NOT deciding between All Day Adrian Peterson and The King Lebron James. That's the fun part!

FYF works because you HAVE to make that call. And stacking your team wouldn't be possible with the proper position slot restrictions. I love the idea of weighing a 100 yard game versus a 10 assist game. The fact that you are smashing all sports into one is the appeal to me. I'm not saying it will be easy, we agree on that, but its the whole point.

TODD:

There is definitely tons of room for improvement in the fantasy sports landscape. We haven't solved anything here, but perhaps we got the ball rolling. FYF needs a lot of work and since neither of us are the man to do it, we'll play the waiting game.

I have to poke further at this mid season injury draft in fantasy football.  I understand your reasoning; I'm just not sure it is worthy of a game tweak. Part of the fun of fantasy sports is finding out the personalities of the other owners: who will wheel and deal, who is overly attached to certain players; who is an idiot. This goes right along with finding a trade partner. Forcing the dealing with a convoluted mid-season system seems shortsighted.

The same goes for overcoming injuries. It's almost all luck with injuries in fantasy football and finding replacements and jumbling rosters with a mid season draft because a handful of stars get hurt every season does not fix that problem. If your first round pick gets put on IR, I'm not sure an unprotected, middle tier fill-in during week nine is going to make much of a difference.

You didn't completely waste your time though. The point ranking system has real potential. I feel like it might be perfect for the off-season of a keeper league: you get to keep a certain amount of "player points" in whatever combination you want. Knock yourself out and keep one twenty-five point guy (or whatever) or keep three solid starters at eight points a piece. I like that; that has major potential. Of course, it would be hell trying to get everyone to agree on each player's point value. Once that's done, by a governing body or what not, this system has a slight edge over keeping players based on auction pricing alone.  A player evaluation would be more in line with their past season performance rather than their dollar amounts from the previous March, which is often arbitrary a year later.

Fantasy!

[If you missed Part One from Monday]

The Future of Fantasy

 
The Future of Fantasy
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (1-21-13)

DAN:

Bill Simmons has a huge love/hate relationship with fantasy football, but really he's just addicted to the game and hates to lose. We've both agreed that there is a ton of luck involved in fantasy football as opposed to fantasy baseball, but fantasy sports are fantasy sports. You have to get lucky in your draft to do well and you have to hope other people are stupid.

This being said, where do you see fantasy sports going in the next five to ten years? If Simmons had his way, the entire sport of football would revolve around fantasy alone to improve his gambling opportunities. He would probably require Vegas to be involved too. For me, I love the small advancements over the last decade, like free up to the minute stats rather than having to pay for the feature, and projections, analysis, etc. It makes the game more interactive and fun.  Where do we go from here?

TODD:

I agree that the small advancements to fantasy sports have been superb. Step by step, fantasy sports are becoming more popular, more mainstream and, overall, just better. Other than a few more, small improvements, there is really only one place for this to go: Full-Year Fantasy.

I have written about this before and tried to come up with a system myself once upon a time, to no avail, but the product is coming, somehow, someway. Full-year fantasy would be one fantasy league that combines multiple sports and runs through multiple seasons. Depending on which sports you and your friends follow and want to play would determine which to include.

All the players from all those sports would be drafted and accumulate stats in their respective seasons. As the calendar year progressed, each subsequent season would run into the next and only at the very end of the year would a champion be crowned. It is really a fantastic bit of fake management; just imagine being able to trade Adrian Peterson for LeBron James. The possibilities are endless.

Of course, the reason this has not been widely available yet is because there are many problems.  I'll just quickly name four:
(1) when to start the scoring season
(2) when to hold the draft
(3) what scoring system to use
(4) how to distinguish between high count stats (like rushing yards in football) and low count stats (like stolen bases in baseball).

It may take years of awkward failures and unhappy participants but, I think, eventually, full-year fantasy will be the next, big thing.

DAN:

The "idea" of full year fantasy is better than the actual participation in such an endeavor, in my humble opinion. It solves one major issue I have with the current fantasy sports landscape, the overlapping seasons. It's a good thing I'm not a huge basketball fan, because the first several months of fantasy basketball basically don't exist for me since fantasy football is still happening. And come Christmas I feel like I need a break. I play fantasy basketball and enjoy it, but from Christmas until mid March is a fantasy sports breath of freedom that is much needed. Fantasy baseball is just too dynamic.

Year round fantasy, full-year fantasy, or as I like to call it the "FCS" or Fantasy Championship Series, would be amazing and yet completely overwhelming to participate in as fantasy sports currently stands. I propose we hash out something which would actually be fun to play and not just a headache to set a lineup for. Do we have to choose between starting Adrian Peterson in week fifteen or LeBron James for five games in that same week? How do we even divvy up the sports? The one thing that is very, very clear to me are which sports make the cut. Sorry hockey, auto racing and golf, but baseball, football, and basketball are our winners here.

As for fantasy football itself, I think something big is coming. Something that removes arbitrary luck of injury from the game. We all draft bench guys and some leagues let you play with an injured reserve (IR) spot on your roster, but what about an injury draft at the half way point of the season?

Fantasy Football Addendum:
In week eight, the half way point of the season, an injury draft is held. It would have to be on a Wednesday night (mid week) and along the lines of a real life expansion draft. Every team must place at least one player into the draft and nominate one other player from someone else's team. Each team can also mark six guys as safe, untouchable.

The draft lasts two rounds.  It now gives everyone a chance to steal players from a team that got lucky with a super deep bench, or snatch up a guy who was an injury replacement, or grab someone that got hurt early and is coming back. I love this for two reasons:
(1) More auction draft time!
(2) When everyone gangs up on the team in last place to nominate his best player for the draft, said person isn't participating and keeps no one safe, and now we can all bid again to draft the one and only 'All Day' Adrian Peterson.

[Part Two]