SAFFL '25 The SCOOP --- #105 August 25, 2025 Prelude ... =========== As usual, most of this 'Draft Prep Edition' covers things that are helpful to know before the draft and is a lot of repeat information from previous seasons. But there is some new stuff! To help you navigate this newsletter ... here's what's new: - Draft Party Site - ESPN Draft Practice Feature - ESPN 2025 Projected Points - Schedule ... No More Byes - Making Extra Bonus Bucks - Scoring Model Story And if you need the refresher package ... it's all here, too! Hear the Buzz? Draft Party! ============================ The draft start date & time: *** Sunday, August 31st, 1:00pm ET *** 11:30am - Draft party open ... pulled pork and more awaits 12:00pm - ESPN draft room opens for SAFFL ... enter from your 'MyTeam' page. 12:15pm - Zoom conferencing activated. 1:00pm - Draft starts! THE BARRACUDAS are on-the-clock. 3:00pm - Draft is done (and likely sooner). It'll be on Labor Day weekend like we've held the Draft so many times. And we've got a dual-hosting effort from multi-time champs. Brothers Pat Malburg and John Malburg will combine forces to be our most excellent hosts out at the SUPER BEEZ headquarters in Fair Haven, Michigan. It was an exciting previous draft at Pat's house about 20 years ago ... hopefully the only things we'll see flying this time are the picks coming off the board! The exact address of the Malburg residence: 7272 Swan Creek Dr. Fair Haven, MI 48023 Maps are attached. We'll be able to have owners from around-the-country/world tune-in. Please note ... this is the ZOOM MEETING ROOM that we first started using last year. The connection process is the same as last year: Web Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/6030563680?pwd=myXALyRdWtdQC47XQqilwyE9Ap2svk.1 Meeting ID: 603 056 3680 Passcode: sparty Phone Link: 669-900-6833 (west coast) or 646-876-9923 (east coast) or 312-626-6799 (midwest) Meeting ID: 603 056 3680 Passcode: 849302 If you need the Zoom client app or software, go to: https://zoom.us/download If Zoom or Internet fails for you on draft day, I'll have my phones on standby: cell: 734-476-3408 backup: 734-429-4045 The draft will start at 1:00pm ET sharp (launched automatically be ESPN). Remember, the draft moves fast and can finish in less than 90 minutes. All 14 rounds! Draft Site Internet =================== Though on the far northeast edge of metro Detroit, Pat's house had fine Internet connectivity years ago, and I would expect the same for this Draft. We'll have backup 'hotspots' ready to go, just in case. Of course, feel free to use your own cellphone hotspot from the get-go if you prefer. It does not matter as all roads (connections) lead to ESPN. Protected Lists (Keepers) ========================= All SAFFL teams now have exactly 20 players going into the draft. That means every SAFFL team will draft 14 players during the draft to fill their rosters to the 34 player limit. When you visit your 'MyTeam' page at ESPN, you'll now find a small black block letter 'K' next to each player's name. This means he's protected (a keeper). All other players have been moved into the free agent pool, which becomes the draft pool on Draft Day. Affiliate Add Opportunity ========================= Until earlier this evening, SAFFL teams were able to add affiliate rookies, affiliate players just cut by other SAFFL teams, and even affiliate players they had just left unprotected and now have a change of heart. We had a couple teams take advantage of the 'AAO' this year. As with all other protected players, these added affiliate players had to be part of the exact 20 keepers, and also had to fit into a starters slot. Here are the transactions: POLISH REDSKINS add GB LB Edgerrin Cooper POLISH REDSKINS cut NYG LB Micah McFadden WARREN WARRIORS add ATL WR Darnell Mooney WARREN WARRIORS cut BAL WR DeAndre Hopkins REYNOLDS RANGERS add BUF CB Christian Benford REYNOLDS RANGERS cut CHI CB Kyler Gordon That's it ... the player pool is now finalized and ready for the draft! Quick ESPN Maintenance ====================== There may be very brief occasions during this week where you could see your team roster looks a bit weird and filled with more than 20 players. Please ignore ... it will revert to your protected 20 players within a few minutes. It's a side affect of some occasional maintenance I may have to undertaken to get everything in order for the draft. Trading This Week ================= You can make trades between teams anytime now, until and through the draft, and then through most of the season. But you won't be able to do it directly (yourselves) through ESPN until the draft is over. Fortunately, we have workarounds. If trading before the draft, I need both owners to contact me and confirm the terms of the trade. I will then make the trade happen by using my special commissioner tools. If trading during the draft, contact me with the trade terms and be prepared to complete the trade 'NBA-style'. Teams (and even the commissioner) can't put through trades on ESPN during the draft, but we'll just have to track and, if needed, make picks as directed by your trade partner. I can handle the correct transfer of players immediately after the draft completes. I can pause, backup, and make picks on behalf of owners during the draft, giving us some additional 'breathing space' in terms of clock and pick control. So don't feel rushed or panicked when making a trade (or helping with a directed pick). But please try to give me as much a heads-up as possible so I can prepare myself and pace the ESPN draft 'machine' as needed. Please balance the number of picks on each side when making trades, even if that requires a team to 'thrown-in' it's lowest (usually 14th) pick. If you don't ESPN will discard keepers from any team with more than 14 total picks. ESPN drafts your protected players onto your roster once we are done drafting. Weird, but that's how the ESPN software merges keepers with those freshly drafted. During the season, using ESPN pages to automatically make a trade is pretty convenient and reliable. When it doesn't seem to work, contact me and I will make it happen with my commissioner tools. ESPN 2025 Projected Points ========================== ESPN provides both historical stats and projections, along with calculations of 'Fantasy Points' (FPTS) for all players, that is, how many points they score according to our scoring system. You see them on the right side of your 'MyTeam' page and on the 'Players' (Free Agents) page. The main thing to watch out for is when relying on '2025 Projections'. ESPN is very good at keeping up with whether players are injured, where they are on NFL depth charts, what their general potential is, and factoring that into the projections. ESPN is also accurately using all the statistical categories we use for scoring our games, but comes up short by not using all these stats in projections for some positions. All ESPN projection show a 'reversion-to-the-mean' bias. This means that projections are conservative and tend towards the average whereas the real performances will end up more spread out (both high and low). Aside from this reversion effect, here's my analysis of what ESPN is good at projecting (or not): QB, RB, WR, TE ... very good, 2025 projections fit with 2024 actuals DT ............... too low by about 33% (projections are 67% of actuals) DE ............... too low by about 25% (projections are 75% of actuals) LB ............... too low by about 25% (projections are 75% of actuals) CB ............... good, just significant reversion-to-the-mean S ................ slightly low, by about 10% K ................ slightly low, by about 15% P ................ slightly low, by about 5% HC ............... bad, low by 55% (projections are less than half of actuals) So when looking at '2025 Projections' for defensive players, coaches, punters, and kickers, I advise using the historical '2024 Season' view to get a more accurate gauge of how these positions will score in SAFFL during the coming year. Individual players will vary, but the range of scoring capability for these positions is reflected well in last year's history. I've got a pretty good hunch why ESPN misses on DT, DE, LB, and S. I believe that ESPN is not using 'STUFFS' in their projections. This is the stat the ESPN has had trouble defining (they changed the definition a few years back) and gave us some heartburn in the past with possible double-counting. And when I look at how much the different defensive positions are affected, the order from worst-to-best ... DT-DE-LB-S ... follows the same pattern as which positions actually produce the most STUFFS. So I'm guessing ESPN never incorporated STUFFS into their projection software/model. As to whey K, P, and HC are off, again I'd guess ESPN was unable to get the needed data feeds, or were just lazy, to incorporate ALL factors they offered for those positions. I'd guess 90% of fantasy leagues ignore defensive and special team positions ... and ESPN may have just made a business decision. I haven't tried to isolate which factors are missing in the K, P, HC projections ... yet. Hopefully when I have some more time (by next season). I may send my research to ESPN and ask if the can fix it (don't laugh). Auto-pick Rankings & Strategy ============================= Even if you don't have much time ... take a few minutes to set your key draft auto-pick player preferences and strategies. Things will happen fast, or you'll find you are inadvertently on auto-pick -- don't get stuck drafting mostly QBs, RBs, and WRs! The default auto-pick scheme uses ESPN's rankings of best players which, as explained above, undervalues the defensive and special team players that we are using. You can set your player rankings list and strategies from your 'MyTeam' page. Look for the blue 'Edit Draft Strategy' button. You will then get a chance to edit 'Pre-Draft Rankings' and 'Autopick Strategy'. Even if you do just a little re-ranking, it will help. Just pull up top a few players from non- QB/RB/WR positions that you like. When the draft start, these players will show up in the draft software just as you ranked them. And by putting maximums on QB/RB/WR selected in the strategies, you'll avoid getting swamped with them on your bench. If you make round-based specifications, remember that our 1st round is now the same as ESPN's 1st round ... easy-peasy. (That was not true a few years ago.) New ESPN Practice Draft! ======================== ESPN is now providing the capability to practice drafting with the available players and teams that will be in our draft this coming Sunday. To try out a practice draft, go to your 'MyTeam' page on ESPN, and near the top just to the right of the countdown clock is a white button with blue letters that says, "Practice Draft". Click it and have some practice fun! Don't worry ... practicing the draft through this feature will not affect your SAFFL team in any way. A couple things to be aware of ... the practice draft autopicks for every team except your own (unless you choose to autopick). Your team will be given only 30 seconds to make a pick (our SAFFL draft gives you 120 seconds). And there is no way to pause a practice draft ... so be ready to move fast! The old way to practice, via the ESPN 'Mock Draft Lobby' is still available. You can jump into any practice league, with random people across the Internet jumping in, too: https://fantasy.espn.com/football/mockdraftlobby No changes to your SAFFL team are made no matter how many times you practice with the mock drafts. Be aware that these mocks do not use all the positions, the same available players, and the same teams that we have in SAFFL. Use the 'Practice Draft' feature on your 'MyTeam' page (it also appears at the top of the 'Mock Draft Lobby' page) to have a more SAFFL-specific practice experience. Either way, the look & feel of the interface is the same as what you will deal with on Draft Day. Preview: How Our Draft Will Execute ==================================== One hour before the draft start (12:00pm ET) be on your ESPN 'MyTeam' page and ready to join the draft. At that time, the draft countdown clock disappears from the MyTeam page and instead a blue button appears inviting you to 'Join Your Draft!'. Do it! If it's past 12:00pm ET, and you don't see the launch button, refresh/reload the 'MyTeam' page in your browser. So you've hit 'Join Your Draft!' button ... the screen changes (or a new tab appears). It will be dark in background with just an ESPN Fantasy Football logo appearing while the application is loading. In 10-30 seconds ... your draft command center appears … now with a white background. Get familiar with the layout. If you remember, a very useful thing to do before the draft starts is to build up the 'Queue' (top left corner). By putting players in the Queue, and keeping it re-filled during the draft, you'll be telling ESPN to 'take the top guy in the queue' if you don't make a manual pick within the allowed 120 seconds. And if you neither pick yourself or have players in the queue, ESPN will use your pre-draft priority list and strategy. Finally, if you didn't do any of these things ... ESPN will just pick the highest guy on the default ESPN list. And that will very likely be a QB, RB, or WR. NOTE: The 'Queue' is not the same as the pre-draft preferences you may have set days earlier. Whatever you put in the 'Queue' overrides your pre-draft preferences. And you can override the 'Queue' by clicking 'Draft' on the player you want when you are on-the-clock. Put another way, here's how ESPN prioritizes and responds to your inputs when its your turn to pick and your team is 'on-the-clock': Priority Action -------- ------ 1st .... Manual pick (click a 'Draft' player button on the live draft screen) 2nd .... Queue (top guy you put in your 'Queue' on the live draft screen) 3rd .... Draft Strategy (what you preset ealier via your 'MyTeam' page) LAST ... Time runs out ... ESPN makes a pick for you. And just like last year ... our draft round 1 corresponds the ESPN round 1. Your keepers will be listed in the draft interface as on your team when the draft begins, but ESPN will not technically 'draft' (show) them on your MyTeam roster page until our 14 rounds of drafting are done. (Don't freak out in the hour before the draft when there are no players on your 'MyTeam' page!) Remember, too, that the 'ZOMBIES' and the 'BOSS MARTIANS' will be making picks at the end of every round. They will be on auto-pick, so they will be quick. After our 14 rounds are finished the draft will be done. ESPN will immediately send everyone an email with the draft results. Huh? What Are These teams Called 'ZOMBIES' and 'BOSS MARTIANS'? ================================================================ These are two special teams that do not actually compete in SAFFL (at least in a normal way). During our draft they will take their turns in the draft order like all SAFFL teams picking players. And those players will be stashed away, unavailable to SAFFL teams until Halloween. During Halloween Week, all these stashed players will be released to the free agent pool go to highest bidders. It's been good fun the past few years ... and the ZOMBIES will rise again! If you have noticed, every year I choose a different team name for the 'companion' team that is drafting players along with the ZOMBIES to be zombie-fied for Halloween. I try to pick a companion team name that typically has a musical connection and/or goes along with the draft location or current events. With the draft at the home of the SUPER BEEZ, we are borrowing the name of the 50s/60s band that actually recorded a song about the Super Bee automobile. Here's the link if you'd like to listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjqb1OcOm7M Note: the ZOMBIES and BOSS MARTIANS placeholder teams will be loaded with 20 keepers each to support the draft. These 20 are just 'dummy' players needed to make these 'mindless' teams stop picking at the same time SAFFL teams do. These dummy players are hopefully considered un-draftable by SAFFL teams. If you do find someone that's protected on the ZOMBIES or BOSS MARTIANS before the draft that you would like to draft, let me know and I'll put them back into the draft pool. Otherwise, the dummy players will be released immediately after the draft and become free agents (as you would expect - I've tried to pick the most unlikely to play players for this dummy role). The Rest of the Season ====================== Once the draft is done, ESPN goes into regular season mode. Owners can manage rosters completely on their own. Adding/dropping, moving from starter-to-bench, bench-to-starter, on and off IR, negotiating trades ... that will all be under owner control using the ESPN interface. You'll be able to start the moment the draft is done. I'll be writing-up another SCOOP right after the draft with more details on how things will work in the regular season on ESPN. We've got budgets to draw from when making free agent bids, transaction limits to respect, and daily free agent claim resolution. Our draft takes place just four days before the NFL kicks-off with the first game of the regular season on a Thursday night (Cowboys vs. Eagles). And the NFL has cooked up something new for the night after ... a Friday night international game (Chiefs vs. Chargers) from Brazil! Schedule ... No More Byes! ========================== Every team will play every other SAFFL team exactly once during the first 15 weeks of the NFL season. Rivalry Week will take place during week 15, the last SAFFL regular season week. With the NFL now regularly on an 18 week season, our playoffs run during NFL weeks 16 thru 18. Because SAFFL has 15 teams, we used to have one team not play each week due to having a bye. No more! As explained in the previous newsletter, the ZOMBIES (and later ELVES) will fill in as 'weak' competition each week to ensure every regular SAFFL team a matchup. Just to be clear, the ZOMBIES/ELVES cannot win the championship (they will be extremely fortunate to even win one game). Also, no SAFFL team will be scheduled to face the ZOMBIES/ELVES when their NFL affiliate is on bye. The 'Rivalry Week' tradition continues. There has been discussion among some teams about changing-up or adding rivalry games. I'll know more about who signed up to play whom when our schedule is finalized later this week. If you'd like to establish a yearly rivalry game, please let me know. Other teams are matched up on a year-to-year rotational basis. Look for the full SAFFL schedule to be posted on ESPN within the next few days. I'll send an email announcement when it's ready and released. Get Extra Cash ... Earn Bonus (Sparty) Bucks! ============================================= A few seasons back, we added a rule (see the Rulebook, section 23) that would provide an opportunity to earn back some Bonus/Sparty Bucks during the season. It reads like this: SAFFL teams can earn Sparty 'Bonus' Bucks by proposing, counter-proposing, and consummating trades. The League Office will specify in what ways and how much SAFFL teams can earn of these bonus bucks. These bonus bucks will be added by the League Office to team acquisition budgets and used by SAFFL teams when bidding on free agents. A trade proposal or counter-proposal will earn $10 Sparty Bucks for the initiator. A completed trade will earn $20 Sparty Bucks for each party. A maximum of $30 Sparty Bucks can be earned by a SAFFL team per each team engaged, regardless of the number of trade actions. Trade action credits will be added to SAFFL free agent acquisition budgets once a week on Mondays. Frivolous (unreasonable) trade actions will be not be credited by the League Office. The commissioner can solely decide reasonableness for all teams except his own; a single objection from an owner voids crediting to the commissioner's own team. Whew! That's a lot of lingo for just a few bucks! Well, it's turned out to be a not-often used opportunity. Partially due to most teams having sufficient funds to perform FA acquisitions, and partially due to my inability to automatically track trade proposals and counter-proposals. There's also been the issue of ESPN limits on team budgets... no matter what we do, ESPN caps team budgets at $1000. Well, with this season's addition of a $10 minimum bid (for the first 8 weeks) I suspect we may see more teams looking to leverage the trading-bonus rule. And that's a good thing ... the intent of the rule was to encourage team-to-team trading. But the main downside remains ... I have no way of automatically tracking, or even seeing, trade proposals and counters. Only completed trades are automatically visible to me (and the rest of the league). So if you'd like to cash in on your proposal/countering efforts, please be sure to send me an email (snapshot or text) when you are ready to collect. And please cc: your proposal partner. Also, if getting the bonus would put you over $1000, please notify me at that time when the bonus could be effectively added to your budget... because if sooner there's a real good chance I'd forget! There's no official time limit during the season, but I won't take any rebate requests after the week 12 trading deadline. Also, I only do rebates once a week on Mondays ... don't expect instant money! Let's see how the new minimum bid thing works out, and it's interplay with the bonus bucks rule. We may need to make some tweaks come next season. Maybe just completed trades (that are automatically tracked) get bonuses? Scoring Model Story and Update ============================== I thought I'd have just a brief update on some minor scoring model adjustments. But this week I got an email from the REYNOLDS RANGERS (Andrew) asking about some possible changes to our scoring model. So I'm going to try to address the minor changes made, Andrew's inquiry, and try to provide the 'big picture' background on how our scoring model has evolved. First the big picture ... we started out 30 years ago as very simple scoring system, only things related to points that a player would score in a actual NFL game were counted. Only offensive players were used. Game scores were much like NFL game scores: 35-17, 20-7, 42-28. We later added a coach (much like ESPN gives us now), and a minor yardage bonus for TEs to move them more on par with other positions. It was nice to have our game scores look like real NFL game scores. Moving to ESPN 8 years ago brought some new capabilities, but also some restrictions. We could use nearly the full set of NFL positions (including defense). We could have the draft and scoring automated (before then I wrote custom software to run the draft and to 'scrape' data from the Internet to do scoring). And that was after the first couple years where we had lovely young ladies writing the draft picks up on posters taped to the walls and me sticking postage and mailing out home printed results to owners. One of the first principles to carry forward in scoring to ESPN was trying to make every position have the same impact on a team. The league's top RB ought to have the same impact as the league's top punter, top linebacker, top quarterback, etc. Further, the marginal starters for any position (on average) ought to provide the same impact as any other position's marginal starters. The second principle was to try to keep game scores looking like real NFL scores. But with having a full starting lineup of 22 players, either it was to go fractional, and have decimal points everywhere, or just multiply everything by 10 and stick with 10x bigger whole numbers. After early experiments looking at web pages filled with fractions, the whole number approach appeared far more readable and easier to comprehend. I also found that ESPN was sometimes casual in not showing fractional values on some pages (when it would have been useful). An NFL team averages just under 25 points per game. So the goal was to have SAFFL teams average 250 points per game (10 x 25). The first ESPN season (2017) we came fairly close to that, just a little above. But over the past 8 years that number has gradually inflated to just over 300 points. Some of it was due to scoring model change requests (more points for tackles, less negative point events), some due to improved ESPN stat data and collection, some due to improved skill of players, and some due just to the changing nature of NFL games, where exciting 'events' seem to be ever more promoted. Three yards and a cloud of dust ain't' no more! A third principal was to make sure there is sufficient differentiation at each position. If the best starters are hardly different than the worst (marginal) starters, then winning in SAFFL becomes not much different than winning on a lottery ticket. Now put the above principals together with the fact we've got 15 teams and 22 starters on each team, we get the following positional objectives: At each position ... - Top ...... superstar ... starters to average over 20 ppg - Middle ... solid ...... starters to average around 15 ppg - Bottom ... marginal .... starters to average at least 10 ppg Note: ppg is points-per-game. For what it's worth ... when doing modeling I try to use whole numbers, multiples of 5 & 10, and football numbers like 3 & 7 to help in keeping the numbers in our fantasy tied to numbers that are easy-to-remember. That leads to the following set of position-by-position goals for STARTERS. Depending on the position there may a different number of starters needed to fit in the that 20-15-10 point range. For instance, the 'Middle' for QBs is the 8th best scoring player; the QB lowest starter-level player is the 15th ranked one. That's because we have one starting slot for a QB, and there are 15 teams in the league. For a position like RBs, which have two slots, the 'Middle' becomes the 16th best player and the 'Bottom' is the 30th ranked RB. Here's the full table: Top Middle Bottom ppg 20+ ~15~ >10 --- --- ------ ------ QB 1st 8th 15th RB 1st 16th 30th WR 1st 30th 60th TE 1st 8th 15th DT 1st 8th 15th DE 1st 23rd 45th LB 1st 23rd 45th CB 1st 16th 35th S 1st 16th 30th K 1st 8th 15th P 1st 8th 15th HC 1st 8th 15th Now there are a couple odd-balls in here, due to the need to fill up 'FLEX' and 'DP' starter slots. Instead of needing just 30 starters at WR (2 WR starter slots), WR starter needs are doubled to 60 to provide the 30 extra starters needed for FLEX slots. Why not have more RB or TE capable starters? The main reason is that are not enough RBs and TEs in the NFL to fill the void ... but there a bounty of WRs. I tried to goose the ESPN scoring parameters in all sorts of ways ... but no matter what I tried, creating more starting-level RBs or TEs would start to badly distort the whole scoring model. And given that often NFL teams put three (or more) WRs on the field with just 1 RB or TE (and sometimes 0), this made the modeling fit natural to let WRs dominate the additional starters needed for FLEX slots. On the defensive side, a similar problem arose for the two DP slots. Until a couple years ago, doing the same with LB starters (doubling) as was done with WR starters worked fine. But then ESPN reclassified many LBs as DEs (I think because they were mainly considered as 'edge-rushers'). As a result, I've tuned the defensive scoring model to make an extra 15 LBs and 15 DEs as starter-level players. A little tricky, but It worked out fine. Now it has been suggested that perhaps it would be more realistic to make our scoring more yardage-based on offense as opposed to what we have been doing (I call what we have as event-based). Way-back when we first went to ESPN I explored the yardage approach. I found that yardage performance was pretty linear, making it hard to get differentiation between top and bottom level starters. But the biggest problem was that tight end (TEs) became basically useless. TE performance vis-a-vis QBs, RBs, and WRs, except for a couple superstars, was awful. Where TEs could be put on a level playing field was by going event-based ... using number of catches (receptions) as the prime scoring factor. Try as I might, there was no other way to boost TEs. And given that a prime objective was to maintain that 'all positions are created equal', finding a way to preserve TE relevance was necessitated. It's possible things have changed .. maybe those limitation using a yardage basis are no longer present due to the evolution of the NFL. Maybe before next season I/we can take a deeper dive and see if there are new benefits to a bigger alteration of the scoring model. We shall see! Ok ... now let's move on to what is changed for this season. Three positions got tweaked ... K (kicker), P (punter), and HC (coach). The coach was the simplest and most minor: a coach gets 1 more point for every win than before. That raises up the bottom starting coaches to just above 10ppg, and maintains (and slightly helps) the overall distribution of starting-level coaches. Kickers and punters (K and P) had gotten out of control! They were a prime source of point inflation, with middle-level starter averaging about 18ppg, bottom-level starters close to 15ppg, and very little differentiation after the top couple players. For punters, one change was to make every punt now count a point, making it easier to choose a punter (i.e., NFL teams that stink on offense will punt over 50% more often than high-performing offensive teams). The other was to emphasize the best punt outcome ... dropping a punt inside the 10 yard line without a return. A punt inside the 20 gets some credit, a fair catch gets some credit, but put it inside the 10 with no return and ring the register! Now if the ball goes in the endzone for a touchback ... sorry but the punter is going to get some negative points. I took a look at data ... there are no longer many punting touchbacks in the NFL (less that one every other game). So touchbacks are not a major negative affect. But it creates very good differentiation between the top, middle, and bottom starting-level punters. And one thing I noticed ... a couple of those punters might have strong legs but can't seem to control punts are out of jobs this year. (Matthew Hayball where are you?) As for kickers, they had a similar too high middle-level average and not enough differentiation issues. ESPN offers a few more parameters, but not quite as many as I would like for tuning. It's not hard to get the average down, but differentiation is not possible without giving negative points for missed kicks. And it's what really separates the employed kickers in the NFL from those looking for work in Canada (CFL) ... miss too many kicks and you are gone. So missing a kick, extra point (XP) or field goal (FG), will get a kicker dinged. One exception ... trying a 60+-yarder will give a kicker no penalty for a miss (and a 60+ make a few more points than before). It's not a major change … we had negative points for bad kicking events last year ... but now they have been boosted a bit. And so that's the scoring model story ... at least the tip of the iceberg! I've put in many hours trying to provide some logical consistency and clarity to the numbers and factors we use. You may have noticed some years I announce I'm going to review the scoring model and nothing happens ... that's because it just takes a lot of time. ESPN provides about 110 different factors that could be used in scoring ... we use about 70. This year I had a little extra time ... and it needed to get done. Now I suppose we could just throw it all away ... just pick any scoring scheme and go with it. RBs and LBs could play like Godzilla, and the rest of the players would have to bow-down. (And there might be a few owners that would love that!) But that would involve a new learning curve for most of the league. Historical context would be lost, and we might just end up trying to solve the same problems (balancing, clarity, differentiation, relation to real football) that have been addressed before. Every year it does seem ESPN adds a few more capabilities to tune the scoring model. It looks like this year kicker scoring could be tuned by quantizing the FG distance in smaller steps that was already there. And on the offensive side, it looks like ESPN can tune scoring parameters to be position-specific (I wish they did that on the defense, it would make defensive scoring a little less clunky). In any case, these are things that can be explored next season. I'm tapped out for this year ... it's time to get ready for the draft! Coming up ... ============= - Draft Day ... this coming Sunday, 1:00pm ET ... ... the ESPN Draft Room opens @ 12:00pm ET from your ESPN 'MyTeam' page. - Woof!! Vrrrroooooom!! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------