Currently, it is possible for eliminated teams to increase their draft order by intentionally losing games at the end of the season. Managers are currently incentivized to start their worst players (soft tank), abandon their rosters (ghost ship), and/or bench their starters to incur massive penalties (hard tank).
I propose a three-round Anti-Tank Bowl where the worst teams are pitted against one another for their first round draft positions. In this consolation bracket, teams would play at least one meaningful playoff game against their nearest neighbor for a chance to improve their draft position. We would operate this bracket as a win-and-out “toilet bowl” with losers advancing to the next round.
Note: the outcome of this bracket would only affect the first round of the draft, not subsequent rounds.
Boy, this sounds terrible for the last-ranked team!
That it is, voice in my head! The purpose of the Anti-Tank Bowl is to incentivize managers to keep playing through the last few weeks of the regular season, after they’ve been eliminated from the playoffs. With the exception of #12, all participating teams would stand to gain a position in the draft order.
| Round 1 | Round 2 | Round 3 |
|---|---|---|
| #8 BYE | ||
| #8 v. #11 / #12 (Third Pick) | ||
| #11 v. #12 (First Pick) | ||
| Losers (Fifth Pick)* | ||
| #9 v. #10 (Second Pick) | ||
| #7 v. #9 / #10 (Fourth Pick) | ||
| #7 BYE |
*The team that doesn’t win any games in the tournament gets the sixth overall pick.
What about draft pick trading?
Trading first round picks gets slightly more dangerous. If you want a guaranteed position, wait until after the Anti-Tank Bowl.
I guess I see this as 2 separate topics (Anti-Tanking and Player Engagement), you are trying to solve with one solution. These are kind of intertwined and with our current rule system it can be optimal to abandon your team in the last few weeks once eliminated from play-off contention. Here is my 2 cents on the matter.
Anti-Tanking
Seems it would be a good time to vote again for Max PF (for non-playoff teams) to determine draft order? This should help for the worst teams to get the best picks right?
I also don’t think its a great idea to make the worst ranking team have to win a playoff game to get the pick. If the goal is to add chaos so that the draft picks are not so pre-determined I think a lottery would be better. Maybe “toilet bowl tournament” can be used to increase your odds in the draft lottery? Not as impactful as Dom’s proposed tournament but still give teams something to play for. I think that is something I could get behind. Makes the season last longer for teams at the bottom of the standings without overly penalizing the worst teams.
Player Engagement
I think we need a better solution than what we currently have regarding starting players on IR/BYE/OUT or empty slots. Losing 10 points in the matchup doesn’t really penalize the player because they are clearly not trying to win. I would propose one of the following solutions:
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Monetary fine per slot for not starting an eligible player
a) All monies go to Championship team b) Split monies between Championship team and Toilet Bowl Winner c) Donate money to charity d) Dom keeps all the monies because he does a good job running the league and this puts more work on his shoulders -
1st Round Draft Pick drops one spot per instance of not starting eligible player
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Decrease of odds in potential draft lottery per instance of not starting eligible player
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I refuse to use Max PF as anything other than a tiebreaking metric because it removes agency from the player. I only want to incentivize winning and participating.
I like the idea of the Toilet Bowl affecting lottery odds rather than directly impacting the draft. This idea is so good, I’ll edit my original post.
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I disagree that a team needs to be able to win a game to get the first overall pick. Take this season as an example of that. I was playing against FetalBeater week 14 in a battle of #1 overall pick. My team has been ravaged by injuries and bad players. The three RBs on my roster that actually played in a game in Week 14 scored a collective total of 5.6 points. Kickers can score more than that on a single play! Assuming I had the insight to put the optimal lineup in that week, I still would have lost to the #2 overall pick team by 36.58 points (not including their optimal lineup scoring opportunity).
The point being, some teams that suck genuinely do just suck. So yes, I think it’s important that shit teams don’t need to win to get draft positions. The reason they need draft picks is because they can’t win already. Why penalize them twice for the same issue?
My suggestion is to penalize intentional tanking or at the very least, encourage your so called “Soft tanking” strategy over the other options. I suggest forcing all teams to play a full roster of active players. This would eliminate benching studs without backfilling and starting inactive players. Should a team start players that violates this, they should automatically lose one (or more) draft position(s). (Open to other penalty options, but this would be easy to enforce regardless of overall team ranking)
If a team truly cannot field a team of active players (too many BYE players/injuries/contract hold outs, etc) then tough shit. Either drop a player to the waiver wire or risk losing draft capital.
Tank Dell is currently the #19 ranked WR despite missing 3 or 4 games to injuries and after having a pretty slow start to the season. You traded your first round pick away and then dumped your subsequent picks before any games were even played. I have no idea why you thought a timeshare rb on a terrible offense was your answer. It’s also legitimately unfortunate that Dalvin Cook never panned out, but he hasn’t broken 5 points since week 1, so you probably could have seen that coming. Injuries are one thing, but “my team is plagued by bad players” screams “people just don’t want to work anymore!”
I’m confused what you’re saying here? Should I drop Dalvin Cook? There have been trade rumors so I’m hoping he moves to a team that values him more, especially when in my mind there aren’t better RBs available on the waiver wire.
The bad players did was more of a commentary on how I suck at identifying good players (see Tank Dell) but why I value a top pick higher than some unknown rookie I drafted in the third round.
The point being, why should teams have to win to get a first overall pick? It’s counterintuitive and doesn’t even align with the actual NFL guidelines for determining draft picks. If managers want to dump their $40 and tank in the hope of future years of success then that’s their decision.
You see, the goal is to NOT be the worst team. That goal should remain consistent.
Even Navikater has a win in Vampire League.
Counterpoint: SomaDaydream. His team is awful and he’s got a first round bye. Whether or not your team is good seems to have no bearing on how many games you win.
Soft tanking is insidious and difficult to prove, and I actually don’t think there should be a punishment for doing it. I just want those first few picks to be less than automatic, and a tournament seems more fun than a lottery.
