The Dice Roll Fantasy League

Introduction

Sep 13, 2023

I’ve had a lot of silly ideas in my time - it was my original suggestion that spawned our conference tournament midpoint piece, after all. I’m the person who gives genuine thought to the idea of shedding all my earthly obligations to go coach soccer and/or baseball in the South Pacific (Palau, my phone is open for you, babes), the same way I have, despite being extremely out of prime shape and very bad at baseball, decided that I will be starting a town ball team by my 30th birthday in 2027.

I’m a dreamer, is what I’m getting at. I don’t let little things like reality or reason get in my way when I have ideas. It’s both my greatest strength and my deepest failing, because I’ll get these ideas in my head like a redesigned interstate network with floating bridges to Hawai’i, and then I have to be tugged back down to earth by my friends, reminding me that, according to the government, that’s money far better spent on F-35s.

Sometimes, though, I get to actually execute my dumb ideas - or at the very least, broadcast them publicly. Why else would The Low Major exist?

This is very much one of those times.

Welcome to the Dice Roll Fantasy League.

The Concept

Here’s the issue I was pondering - fantasy football scoring is often pretty contentious - though most of the time, I’ll just run with the ESPN default settings, there are constant and at times ferocious squabbles over being a league that runs with points per reception (PPR), what the value of a pass or a rush or a kick might be, what it’s worth to score a touchdown - all in the name of bragging rights in these simulated management scenarios.

Then I had a brain flash.

You see, lately, I’ve been super into Dungeons and Dragons - the classically nerdy tabletop role-playing game, and though I’m still trying to orchestrate a session I can join to actually play, I’ve been living vicariously through both Brennan Lee Mulligan’s campaigns on Dimension 20 and the multitude of people playing Baldur's Gate 3, orchestrated on a similar concept - and it gave me an idea.

One of the central methods of play in DnD and games like it is the use of dice - you can roll anything from a d4 (the number referring the number of sides) to a d20 in most play, the idea being that it determines how successful you are in doing something, whether that’s flirting with the local knockout, stealing from the big fucker down at the end of the bar, or trying to slay a literal dragon.

In order for this to apply to fantasy football, though, we have to modify it a little bit - we can’t score by player, but we can do it by position. Those same actions? We can determine exactly how valuable they are.

So that’s what I did.

The League

Because this is a test run of the league with the idea being to see if it’s a viable thing to do next year, I’ve set the league up with four teams, currently named after the four places I’ve called home in my life: Minnesota, Texas, California, and England.

I control all the teams, will play all of them with equal judgment, and have every intent of trying to make this as fair as possible. If I’d come up with this prior to Sunday afternoon, I would have considered running this with other people, but it just doesn’t feel right to shortchange anyone on this little notice.

It’ll be a 15-week regular season (each team plays every other one 5 times), before a single-elimination playoff bracket involving everyone. Just how I like to play it.

The only other major variation outside of the scoring, which we’re about to get to, is the roster - ESPN’s default in this regard is 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 FLEX (RB/WR/TE), 1 K, and 1 DEF.

I’m playing with 2 QB, 4 RB, 4 WR, 2 TE, 4 FLEX, 2 K, and 2 DEF, allowing 10 bench players, for a total roster size of 30. This has two reasons behind it - one, because it’s a small league, I’d like to get visibility on more players to test the viability of it in deeper formats; two - because high scores make my brain drop the good chemicals.

Of course, this is the standard stuff. What’s next is the really fun shit.

The Scoring

Here’s how I did it - Google lets you roll a D20 and will return a value for you. I had that on one tab, and the scoring inputs you see below on another. With the exceptions of passing yards, rushing yards, and receiving yards, which were multiplied by their ESPN-standard multipliers (0.04 for passing, 0.1 for rushing and receiving) in order to not totally blow the game apart, every other scoring number you see here is decided entirely by dice roll.

The obvious standout here is the value for completing a 2pt conversion - honestly, something I think Roger Goodell and company could take from me (with royalties, of course). The other change of note is that a rolled 17 now means that every single yard is worth a little more than half a point. We’ll talk about what that means for scoring in a bit. Both touchdowns and interceptions for QBs are now worth two more points either direction.

Again, with the 2pt conversions. Roger, call me. Seriously.

Another rolled 17 for yards means that each rushing yard is 1.7 points - which, again, we’ll get to the scoring implications later on, but I’m sure you can do the math on what that might mean for Derrick Henry owners. Rushing touchdowns are roughly double-weight as well, now, meaning that RBs are finally being treated with fair value. It only took a literal bout with random chance!

Roger. Please. I’m begging you.

Though the conversions are funny, that’s not the thing I want to talk about - and we’ll quickly gloss over the receiving touchdowns, which are actually worth a hair less and receiving yards - yes, it’s about a point now, but y’all.

When I first was walking through the quibbles over fantasy scoring, and I mentioned the debate between PPR styles, I was talking about 0, 0.5, or 1 - in other words, every catch is worth an additional point, half-point, or adds no value.

In this league, each catch is worth 20 points. Yeah.

A stroke of luck means that kickers don’t pay a hefty price for missing, but in a stroke of perfect comedy, making a field goal specifically between 40 and 49 yards is about twice as valuable as field goals from further out. Also, extra points are touchdowns now. Congrats.

Most every single oddball category is now insanely impactful - except for losing a fumble. It was deeply funny to me that, of all the stats, it was never the bad ones rolling 20s - and Eli could tell you that I did this honestly. Just incredibly silly.

Everything except sacks got a boost - which is a shame, because that could have made defense an absolute powerhouse - but even then, making interceptions and fumble recoveries so nicely weighted means there’s plenty of fun to be had here.

Nothing too obvious to point out here, you can kind of see the lines. If you give up 22 instead of 21 that’s a 21 point swing against you, so might wanna shore up those lines. Interestingly, the dice gods must have something against being meh, because it’s actually better if you just get absolutely shellacked by 46+ points or if you happen to go all Big 12 and let someone just pile the yards on.

Recap + Week 1 Preview

Now, the astute among you have probably realized that I put this together after the NFL’s Week 1 - and yes, while I was disappointed in missing that, it did give me the chance to get a look at this week’s top scorers and set the tone for what to expect.

Each week, I’ll give y’all the top 3 scorers at each position from the previous week, as well as a general top 5. I’m not sure actually if these numbers from Week 0 will count towards the season totals for the guys, but either way.

QB: Tua Tagovailoa 287.5; Justin Fields 223.3, Mac Jones 222.5
RB: Christian McCaffrey 348.1; Austin Ekeler 341.6; Nick Chubb 283.3
WR: Tyreek Hill 466.5; Justin Jefferson 345.0; Puka Nacua 330.9
TE: TJ Hockenson 198.5; Hunter Henry 166.6; Evan Engram 153.9
K: Jason Sanders 43.0; Jake Moody 43.0; Brett Maher 36.0; Anders Carlson 36.0
DEF: Cowboys 86.0; Falcons 56.0; 49ers 54.0
Weekly Top 5: Tyreek Hill 466.5, Christian McCaffrey 348.1; Justin Jefferson 345.0; Austin Ekeler 341.6; Puka Nacua 330.9

… so. When I mentioned scoring being interesting, this is kind of what I was getting at. Tyreek Hill dropping nearly a half-millennium of points in a single week is absolutely absurd, yes, the best game of the week by about 120 points, but the comical thing is looking down the line - C.J. Ham of the Vikings had 2 catches for 7 yards. 47 points.

I’m in an eighteen-man league and I genuinely think something like this might be the solution to our personnel and scoring woes, if for no other reason than that it might be one of the funniest things I’ve ever done.

Here’s how things are looking for this weekend’s games. 3,000 points a pop - godspeed to all involved.

Like I said to begin this piece - I’ve had some pretty silly ideas in my time. This is just another notch in a long list of pretty wild concepts that I’m proud to have brought to fruition - if for no other reason than that hey, it’s funny. What other reason do you need?

I’ll see y’all next week for the next installment.