Hey gang,
I wanted to share some thoughts about the Reverse Guillotine League - looking back on our inaugural campaign and thinking out loud about next year. It’s too much for a Discord post, and multiple posts gets complicated. I’ve given everyone Comment privileges to this document, so as you read it, please mark it up with your thoughts, questions and comments. If you haven’t done that before, just right click anywhere and click “Comment” from the drop down. I don’t know the right-click mechanism if you are doing this on your phone. (Someone else can add that instruction as a comment!) And I guess you can comment on each others’ comments too. Snarkiness and sarcasm is always allowed, but it might be more helpful to limit those remarks to the Discord server.
So first of all, I will echo Alec’s comment that I also think the Alive league was a smashing success. I thought it went great right off the bat, and I think it will be even better in the future now that everyone “gets it.” I mentioned in Discord recently that going forward, I wanted to (1) only run one Reverse Guillotine league and (2) fiddle with the format every year ala Scott Fish bowl. Now that we’re about at the end of the season, I’m going to go back on both those comments. Well, actually going back on 1.5 of them. First, because I think the Alive League went so well, and because I want those who didn’t “get it” the first time around (looking at you Derek) to have another chance with a ruleset they now fully understand, I do NOT want to make any tinkering changes to that League format. At the beginning of the season, one of the biggest points of discussion was whether or not players should be allowed to be cut unlimited times. It's entirely possible that limiting guillotines per player would make the game even better, and it’s a rule I absolutely want to play around with in the future… but not next year. That’s too big of a change in the game mechanic for us fully to capitalize on this year’s experience. I will revisit that rule tweak in 2025. Maybe this will be a good routine, making major changes to the format every 2-3 years so that people have a chance to get used to them and develop their strategies for ensuing years before they change. We shall see. But the first 0.5 of my previous intentions that I’m going back on is that I am NOT significantly changing the rules for Alive League next. On the other hand, I definitely do want to change Dead League, which brings up the other 1.0 priorly expressed intention I’m going back on…
So about that statement I recently made that I am definitely only running one of these leagues next year: I’ve changed my mind. I will be running two Reverse Guillotine leagues again in 2024.My reasoning is first of all everything I said in the last paragraph: I want to re-run Live League with no big changes, but I also want to play mad scientist with tweaking the rules every year. So the only way to do both is to run two leagues again. My main incentive for cutting down to one league was of course, as intimated in Discord, the substantial weekly workload for the commissioner. I’m indeed circumspect about retaining that commitment indefinitely into the future. However, it makes me feel more confident about that decision when I’m making it in week 16, at the height of exhaustion, rather than in August when we are all rabid with anticipation and optimism - and for me at least, full of energy after being out of school and sleeping in for a couple months.
But a second reason I’m going back on my plan and committing to two leagues in perpetuity is that it will allow me to implement a cool idea that someone pitched me in one of the Harris/LTS public forums from whence I recruited Paul and Mark. (I don’t think it was actually anyone currently in the league who suggested this plan, but correct me if I’m wrong.) I am of course open to discussion from the people actually investing in this venture, but what I would like to do with the Reverse Guillotine league dues going forward is this: 90%(?) of the dues will go to the annual prize pool for that league; 10%(?) will go to a legacy pot that will be awarded to the first player to win both leagues in the same season. Here are some answers to the immediate questions you should have:
OK, the next item on the agenda is the rules plan for Dead League next year. I have two wildly different ideas. I will only be implementing one of these options and will maybe save the other one for a future season.
Option A - The ULTRA Slow Draft. The season starts with all the best players un-rostered and every team gets to add one new (good) player each week throughout the season via a weekly one-round draft.
I’ve discussed this idea in some Discord or Sleeper forum a couple times over the season, so there has already been some conversation about it. I think I first threw it out there the week before the season started and Derek wanted me to launch it immediately. It was a little short notice at that point, but I’m circling back to it now. This is the idea I’m probably more intrigued to try and the one I’m leaning toward doing for 2024’s second Reverse Guillotine. But it’s also the option where I’m less certain about the weekly management mechanics for the commish.
In this format, the season would begin with the top 150-200ish players unavailable, presumably on taxi squads. The remaining players will be rostered in a preseason snake draft. I think to keep the initial draft from being mind-numbing and to keep the waiver wire from being UTTERLY desolate, we’ll want to keep bench size pretty small. I believe the parameters of this game will make that feasible. Alec’s idea for implementing this startup seems sensible: X rounds of autodraft, pause the draft, everyone moves drafted players to taxi squad (remembering that they are not “yours”), then resume the draft in slow time until rosters are full.
After the draft, the commissioner will publish a Google spreadsheet which will be updated throughout the season as players are drafted or added to the list. Everyone will have (view only) access to the spreadsheet so you can quickly tell at any time who’s available; something like this.
Here’s how I think the weekly game play would work. After the previous week’s games end:
Managing the weekly queuing and draft process is where this format gets a little tricky. I have a quasi-manual procedure in mind involving Google Sheets and Google Forms. It would definitely work, though it would be kind of labor-intensive for the commish, plus there’s a transparency/accountability issue (Is the commissioner pulling any funny business with draft queues?) and a fairness issue. (Is the commish getting a competitive edge by seeing everyone else’s queues each week?) Hopefully, none of that will matter because my son Joey assures me it will be pretty easy for he and I to program a Discord-bot where we can all submit our queues via a DM to the bot, which will then spit out the weekly draft results at noon on Wednesday (insert Fire emoji x 12). I am confident enough with his confidence that if others are game, I’m willing to plan for option A, even if the backup plan is a personal headache for me.
Question: Can we trade? Like players for future picks, picks swaps as part of a player trade, etc?
Answer: I definitely would like to say “Sure, of course, love it.” But it would all need to be administered by the commish, not by Sleeper, so… let’s get the draft figured out for sure and then revisit.
Option B - Dead League Redux: Extreme Tiny Edition. Three player rosters, no bench. One player gets chopped each week and is replaced via Sleeper-administered FAAB.
I think 2023 Dead League was OK as a game; definitely not as good as Alive League (as several folks indeed predicted) but also not a disaster. In my opinion, the two problems were that it was a good bit more luck-based than skill-based (at least in comparison with Alive League) and that by the end, it just wasn’t much fun because of the boring player choices available. I’m confident the ruleset I’m proposing here fixes the second issue; I think it helps with the first issue too, though we’d have to play it out to see for sure. I mentioned this idea on Discord earlier this week (#general channel). No one replied, which could mean no one saw it or it could mean the idea sucks. Either way, I’ll rehash it here - but if you did see it, please re-read, I’ve made some significant tweaks. For starters, my previous description mentioned reverse-standings waivers, but I think this game must use FAAB, just like this year.
Here’s the game: Roster is one super-flex spot and two flex spots, no bench positions. (Our slow draft will be done in like an hour!) Each week, every manager drops their highest scoring player to the taxi squad. Additionally, managers may drop one or both of their other two players to the waiver wire. With no bench spots, clearly, injured players are almost always going to be dropped, even for a short term injury! Bye week management could be a more interesting strategy wrinkle: Do you drop CMC and hope to FAAB him back next week? Do you try to roll with just two players against three? Do you only conditionally drop him if you win one particular FAAB bid? Can you clump your bye weeks and just take one big L? Is that at all a feasible strategy with players getting chopped each week? I’m guessing that generally bye week players would almost always be cut, which should help with both the issues mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Besides the smaller rosters, the other thing that will keep the waiver options fun deeper into the year (I hope all the way until the end) is that teams will start getting eliminated earlier in the season, and, like this year their rosters go back in the pool. “Regular season” will be weeks 1-11 which will result in 132 guillotines. From weeks 12 to 15, the two lowest remaining teams in the standings will be eliminated each week. All teams still alive will get their highest scorer guillotined and then the 4 remaining players of the 2 eliminated teams will drop to waivers. So during those weeks, there will be 36 more cuts (12+10+8+6) but also 16 players returned to the waiver pool. So by the time we get to the final four in week 16, we will have chopped approximately the top 152 players. Add to that a handful of out-for-season injuries and the 8 players who are still alive on the rosters of the final four, and it means that our 4 semi-finalists should be bidding on players with pre-season ADP’s in the 160-180 range. I think it is very likely that they will still be picking up players that are legitimate flex options in regular leagues. In comparison, currently at the same point this year, we have chopped 176 players and have 40 more remaining alive on our final four rosters.
I think option A is clearly the sexier of the two ideas I’ve put on the table though option B could end up being pretty cool. The one big appeal of option B is that I’m pretty sure it could be implemented with very little special work by the commissioner. We could let everyone be responsible for cutting their own high scorer to taxi. Very clear and straightforward with only 3 players and no bench. If the commissioner has to intervene due to failure to guillotine, the offending manager will only get to have 2 scoring players that week. Keeping the Dual Reverse Guillotine program going long-tem (with the enticing legacy jackpot) will be a lot more feasible if one of the leagues is labor-free for me, so maybe this could be an option? That said, I’m still leaning toward option A, but I thought I’d throw this on the table for everyone to examine / poke holes in.
Two last bits of admin to make this long message a little longer. We need at least one new manager for next year. Caleb is bowing out. He’s cool with Reverse Guillotine but is just wanting to get out of all managed leagues on Sleeper. So first of all, before I get too carried away with plans for next year, I guess I should make sure we’ve got a quorum to have a next year (and beyond). We’re a good 7.5 months from needing a definitive final commitment, but if anyone else does know your intentions for next year, let us know now if you don’t mind. And on the other side of that coin, please pass the word in your fantasy circles that we have at least one seat available at what I hope you all agree is a pretty awesome table.
The Reverse Guillotine League
This game is a new fantasy football format; as far as I know, this is an original idea. I am experimenting with two different versions of this concept. In order to evaluate the two ideas and decide if either or both is worth repeating, this league will be “two leagues in one” – each participant will manage two teams which will each play under different rules as described below. At the end of the season (and along the way for that matter), I will be interested to hear what everyone thought and which format was better. To motivate active participation throughout the season (which will be essential in both versions of the game), I am collecting a small financial stake: $20 total; $10 for each league. For each league, the winner will get $80 and the runner-up will get $40. Monies will be handled via League Safe.
Initial publication of this document specified $100 for league winner and $20 for runner up in each league. I have updated it to provide more reward for runner-up than just getting ante back.
Basic Idea – Typical fantasy football rules apply (see details below regarding scoring, rosters, etc.) – but with the following important twist: at the end of each week, the top scoring player on each team will be cut from the roster! From there, the game will play forward in two very different ways:
DEAD LEAGUE – In this version of the game, the 12 players chopped each week will be removed from the player universe for the remainder of the season. This means that by the end of regular season, most of the players who were starters week 1 will be gone and rosters will be made up of deep reserves.
ALIVE LEAGUE – In this version of the game, each of the 12 players chopped each week will enter the FAAB auction for the following week and can be acquired by any team, including the team that just lost the player if they are the highest FAAB bidder the following week.
If you are interested in participating in this experiment, please read through all the rules below and then contact me via whichever medium you learned about the league to let me know you are in!
Weekly Guillotine Rules
At the end of each week of the season (including playoffs), the commissioner will manually cut eactly one player from each roster in the league: the player on each roster that had the highest score during the previous week as calculated by the game platform (Sleeper).
In the event of a tie, the player to be cut will be the player with the most points scored for the whole season. Second tie breaker: the player cut will be the one with the higher original draft position.
Cuts will be made regardless of whether the player was on his team’s starting lineup or on the bench during the previous week.
Cuts will be made regardless of injury status and bye status for the upcoming week.
QUARTERBACKS: in the “Dead” league, exactly one quarterback will be cut each week. The QB to be cut will be the highest scoring quarterback who is on a roster (tiebreakers same as described above). That QB will be cut regardless of whether he was the highest scoring player on his team; higher scoring players on the cut QB’s team will remain alive.
Rosters
ALIVE LEAGUE
o 1 QB
o 2 RB
o 3 WR
o 1 TE
o 2 Flex (RB/WR/TE)
o 7 Bench
DEAD LEAGUE
Note: in the “Dead” league, teams may only roster 2 QB’s total at any given time; managers should make sure those players don’t have the same bye week! I think this will still work out for every team to still have a starting quarterback for every matchup (week 13 might be sketchy!), but just in case, I am making the “QB” slot a superflex.
o 1 Superflex (QB/RB/WR/TE)
o 1 RB
o 2 WR/TE
o 2 Flex (RB/WR/TE)
o 4 Bench
Waivers / In-Season Aquisitions
Each manager will have a $1000 Free Agent Acquisition Budget to add additional players during the season. Waiver auction will run early Thursday morning. This schedule is one-day later than in most typical leagues to try to ensure no one misses their bid each week and to allow more time for the guillotine process to occur and be communicated and reviewed. Every team will have at least 1 spot to fill every single week; I anticipate that active participation in the waiver process every week will be critical to remain competitive in both versions of this league. Requesting to join this league is understood as a commitment to pay close attention to the FAAB / waiver process every week.
In both league formats, players that clear waivers will be eligible to be picked up for free on a first come first serve basis until that players game begins the following week.
“Dead League” Waivers: I expect that I will be unable to actually remove cut players from the game on the platform. Therefore, to adhere to the spirit of the game, it will be incumbent upon each individual manager to NOT bid on players who have been guillotined. To aid this process, I will maintain an easily accessible list of all players who have been cut. I expect this list will be curated as a pinned post to the league chat… but we shall see what works best.
To provide a “stick” to encourage everyone to abide by the foregoing rule, the following penalties will be enforced against owners who roster guillotined players:
o First offense: player removed from roster, FAAB returned to the manager’s total.
o Subsequent offenses: player removed from roster, any FAAB spent will be lost.
o I considered further escalations in these penalties… but I’m not sure how easy they would be to enforce, and I hope they won’t be necessary. Bottom line: pay attention, don’t be a jerk, play by the rules.
“Live League” Waivers – inasmuch as every manager will have one open roster spot but could choose to bid on more than one of the previous week’s cut players, I have a feeling that managing waiver bids will be a challenge and a learning process. My hunch is that anytime I bid on more players than I have openings, I will want to submit two bids for each player: one with a corresponding drop and one without. I hope as we learn how to play this game that we will share relevant lessons learned on such matters in the chat. In the event that confusion, misunderstanding, platform idiosyncracies, etc, result in the need for manual corrective action by the commissioner (e.g. restoring a player to a roster who did not need to be dropped during the waiver process), we will handle these issues with transparency, collective communication, and abundant grace.
SCORING (pretty standard non-PPR)
· Passing: 0.04 pts per yard, 4 pts per TD, 2 pts two-pt conversion, -2 pts per interception
· Receiving: 0.1 pts per yard, 6 points per TD, 2 pts two-pt conversion (0 points per reception)
· Rushing: 0.1 pts per yard, 6 points per TD, 2 pts two-pt conversion
· General: -2 pts per fumble lost, 6 pts for fumble recovery TD or special teams TD
DRAFT
Slow snake draft, order randomized prior to start, 8 hrs per pick, paused from 10 pm EDT to 10 am EDT.
PLAYOFF
Sleeper standard settings: 6 teams, 1 week matchups, weeks 15-17. Cuts and waivers:
Dead League is pretty straightforward: All non-playoff teams rosters are frozen after the last week of the regular season: no drops, no pick-ups. I guess the only thing up for discussion would be how to handle quarterbacks. Mandating 1 QB drop doesn’t seem to make sense. I think there are two possible approaches: (1) No quarterbacks dropped, only flex-eligible players get chopped. This option seems like it could give a random unfair advantage to the team(s) who made it QB-unscathed to the playoffs. (2) No special QB consideration: highest scoring player is dropped regardless of position. This option seems like it could result in us running out of QB’s. Maybe we just accept that possibility since that roster spot is a superflex anyway? I think option (2) makes more sense. Others’ thoughts?
For Alive League, obviously all teams still playing lose their highest scoring player as usual (player must be on their starting lineup). But to keep waivers interesting all the way to the end, I’m thinking it might be interesting to still cut a player from every team even during the playoffs. That way playoff teams have more decision-making strategy to consider. For non-playoff teams, all players would be cut-eligible since there is no starting lineup. Non-playoff teams won’t replenish rosters with waiver claims.
Dead League: