Week 12 double headers

[Wascawy Wabbits]

Looks like there's BYE weeks in the NFL this season. Is that going to affect the week 12 double header games? Extra interested in this since I will be without McCoy and Green that week

[braven112]

This will be tough there aren't any perfect solutions but week 11 only has 2 teams on bye, whereas week 12 has 4.

[Wascawy Wabbits]

Would a triple header in week 1,2,3 or 13 be a potential solution?
Set the triple header week to be a division battle week?

[bonscott]

I was just looking at this myself for my league. What a bag of suck, they keep spreading the bye weeks out...might as well do a bye week every week.

In my league we do divisional games week 1-3 and 11-13 as they used to be bye week free. Last year they put byes in week 11 and now in week 12. Ugggggg.

Honestly I say just leave the double-headers where they are and we'll just deal with it. Nothing we can do about it and it'll probably change every year.

[braven112]

The only other thing I can think of that may work is to move some or all of each team's second game in week 12 to weeks 4,6,7, or 11. Since there are only 2 teams on byes those weeks we may be able to adust individual games in such a way that we still avoid major bye week issues.

That would mean that teams would play their doubleheader on different weeks, though and I'd have to go through each game to see if it would work.

[bonscott]

Problem is you will arbitrarily still "screw" somebody. Even with two teams, what if one of them is the Packers or Patriots? #1 QB on bye that week. I think it's better to just stick with a planned schedule and let the cards fall as they may instead of trying to play a bye week game every year.

OR get rid of the double-headers all together.

An idea for a "clean" 13 week schedule would be to have teams play division opponents 3 times each and then play 1 game vs. one other division. 9 division games plus 4 outside the division. Rotate the divisions each season.

Just some ideas.

[braven112]

I hear ya, I would lean towards keeping it as is unless we can get a solution that will work for everyone. There's no point of screwing over someone else when at least the way it is now was out of our hands. But I ran through the scenario's just to see and came up with this schedule below. I tried to find the week(s) that would work best for both teams, factoring in what weeks teams had ideally no players on bye or just backups. Initially I looked at week 4, 6, 7, 11, or leaving it at week 12.

I only did a quick run through so I may have overlooked a player a team views as a starter. If that is the case we can take another look and adjust or keep it week 12 but a few of these eliminated all the bye week issues and would seemingly make perfect sense.

Week 4 Poker v. Bring the Pain
Week 12 Exectutioner v. Degenerates
Week 4 LV v. Wabbits
Week 11 Midwest v. Treasure
Week 7 Vitside v. Devil Dogs
Week 6 Sabertooths v. Dark Magicians

These matchups weren't quite as easy but I found a couple other weeks that looked like they could also work but I'll let you look at it and judge for yourself.

Week 10 Decleaters v. Amish (Week 9, 11 or 12)
Week 5 Pigskins v. Fire Ready - (Week 7, or 12)

This only works if each team is ok with it. MFL is down so I can't look into it any more but it seemed worth exploring.

[Wascawy Wabbits]

I'd be happy to get my double header week moved seeing as how I'd be affected pretty badly if it remained on week 12.

I would still think that having a triple header could be the easiest solution since the aim is to replace the 1 game?

In Week 1, each team could face their 3 division opponents since that's when our teams (in theory) should be their healthiest.
Week 2 & 3 double headers against other divisions
4-9 single game matchups vs other divisions
10-12 division matchups
13 double header vs other divisons

Or
Weeks 1-3, 1 division matchup 1 non-division matchup
Weeks 4-12, non-division matchups
Week 13, pivotal divisional matchup triple header week... Make or break for the playoffs

All the teams on a similar schedule, could help avoid the BYE week shuffle?

[braven112]

I'm not a huge fan of doing a triple header but the second option with the final week divisional tripleheader is a pretty cool idea and a fun way to handle a triple header!

I don't want to have to deal with shifting games around each year so having a backup preset schedule like this would be nice. Just a year or two ago they talked about moving the bye weeks closer to the middle of the season for all team, its hard to predict anymore what they are going to do.

[bonscott]

If we have to keep the extra games then with a quick gut check I think I like the week 13 "do or die" triple header idea. You have a bad week that week you could be screwed. But really, someone will be screwed no matter what we do. I'd rather it be because my guys had a bad week or injury vs. arbitrary bye weeks.

[bonesman]

Week 4 LV v. Wabbits

My #1 player (Cam) the last 2 years is on bye that week and his backup has what should be a difficult matchup (@Hou).

But I'm okay with it if it's the alternative to a week 13 divisional triple header. I don't get the appeal of something like that at all.

[braven112]

I had week 10 as an alternate week for your game with Amish.

[bonscott]

It's a serious slippery slope to try to customize a schedule per team that minimizes bye weeks. You'll never have it "perfect" and it leads to hard feelings for someone because it works out for a couple teams but not for them.

Just leave it as it is. We just have to deal with the double-header in week 12, deal with it.

[Wascawy Wabbits]

Myself - McCoy, AJ Green
Vit - Lynch, Seahawks DST
MWC - Spiller
Saber - Harvin, Maclin, BJGE, Bengals DST
LBer - Wilson, Stevie J, Gresham (although they might just be depth players on his team this season)
Poker - DJax

Be crappy for those of us that have some pretty key starters missing in week 12 to have to be without them in a double header week right before the playoffs...

Like you said before... I'd rather deal with a bad scoring week or an injury then getting put in a tough spot with a double header missing my key starters because they have that week off on a BYE.

[braven112]

It's a serious slippery slope to try to customize a schedule per team that minimizes bye weeks.

This isn't a long term option for that reason. It happens to work out this year but I'm not suggesting we consider doing that for anything past this year.

I would guess any team that has bye week issues that week would at least want us to explore other options.

[bonesman]

Just leave it as it is. We just have to deal with the double-header in week 12, deal with it.

I prefer that to making a super week 13... but we've moved double header weeks around in the past (was a little more convenient before) because of byes, so I don't think we should all of a sudden take a stance against being accommodating. I do share your concerns about it being a slippery slope though and difficult to be fair to and please everyone.

[Vitside Mafia]

I'm in favor of moving around the double headers as mentioned previously.

I like the double-headers because it is a good balance that off-sets the bye weeks that determines how strong your team's depth is vs the non bye week that determines how strong your best players are.

The reason why I do not like the 3 triple header because it's such a huge emphasis on just one game. Even though it appeals to me to take on all my division rivals in a climatic final week game in the regular season, it would have the possibility to dramatically swing positioning for the play-offs as well as determining the wild cards based on how strong your division is. It feels too unbalanced to me.

My only suggestion is that we determine moving the double headers after the rookie draft so the rookie starts gets determined in the equation.

-Vit

[griblets]

One of the options mentioned was dropping the double headers altogether. I have been doing a 13 game season in a 16 team league for years. Div opponents 2x, and 7 other teams 1x based on previous season's finish. I'll share details if interested.

Otherwise, I say let the byes fall where they fall. Customizing a schedule around byes is dangerous. Someone will always draw the short stick. Besides, isn't depth an important component of a good fantasy team?

[joe.commish]

OR get rid of the double-headers all together.

An idea for a "clean" 13 week schedule would be to have teams play division opponents 3 times each and then play 1 game vs. one other division. 9 division games plus 4 outside the division. Rotate the divisions each season.

Just some ideas.

I don't like double-headers but live with them in this league. I'd be all for this clean schedule.

It's not a huge deal for me either way, though. If you have a good team, it will work out. If you don't, it won't. But I think it would be that way regardless of the schedule. Sure someone will get the short end, but sh!t happens.

[bocious]

I like the double-headers and would like to see details of how this works in griblets' other league. That said, if we're going for a "clean" schedule, this seems like the most realistic to how the NFL currently runs it:

2x each division rival = 6
1x each team in another division that rotates every year = 4
1x each team in the other divisions who held the same division rank in the previous season = 3 (you would play one of these teams twice in the season since they're also in your rotating division opponent).

This setup lets us play 6 non-division opponents each year and varies strength of schedule similar to how the NFL does it.

[bonscott]

I like the double-headers and would like to see details of how this works in griblets' other league. That said, if we're going for a "clean" schedule, this seems like the most realistic to how the NFL currently runs it:

2x each division rival = 6
1x each team in another division that rotates every year = 4
1x each team in the other divisions who held the same division rank in the previous season = 3 (you would play one of these teams twice in the season since they're also in your rotating division opponent).

This setup lets us play 6 non-division opponents each year and varies strength of schedule similar to how the NFL does it.

I like it.

[BarneyFife]

I am open to what makes sense.... I see my conflict is with the Commish - so i am good - pick a week 7 or 12

[braven112]

Now that the draft is over and we all have as close to a full roster as we are going to get the year, I wanted to doublecheck the schedule to see if moving the games around would still work. We've had the same basic schedule for the last 7 years and I don't want to do anything drastic if we don't have to. Hopefully, the NFL will go back to a similar schedule as they've done in the past. If not, we'll need to vote on a backup schedule going forward. We have a lot of options to choose from so I'll put those the options up for vote and we'll try to narrow down the list. We'll probably have have to have a runoff if one of the ideas doesn't get a majority.

For 2013 We'll go with the schedule below:

Week 4 Poker v. Bring the Pain (1)
Week 4 LV v. Wabbits (1)
Week 5 Pigskins v. Fire Ready
Week 6 Sabertooths v. Dark Magicians
Week 7 Vitside (2) v. Devil Dogs
Week 10 Decleaters (1) v. Amish (2)
Week 11 Midwest (1) v. Treasure (1)
Week 12 Executioners (2) v. Degenerates

I put the number of players each team had on bye during the week in parentheses.

[griblets]

I like bocious' suggestion.

My league weighs a lot more heavily based on the previous season's standings, but it also reshuffles the divisions annually based on the previous season's point totals.

For example, the first place team would play the top two teams in each of the other divisions, and then the next highest scoring team from the previous season.

Conversely, the last place team would play the bottom two teams in each of the other divisions, and then the next lowest scoring team from the previous season.

All others fall in between. It's too involved to describe, but the "math" works out.