01-14-2021, 10:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-16-2021, 03:29 PM by Asked Madden.)
Man oh man, this is gonna be a long one. Let's start with the most basic one; there are some blatantly obvious award robberies that occurred this year.
As you scroll down the award votes, nothing stands out as truly awful until we get to OROY. Which coincidentally, I think is by far the worst award vote. I'm proud of my Rookie Season, to be quite honest. With good efficiency, I got over 1000 yards and double digit touchdowns. That being said, I think I had a middle of the pack rookie season among the nominees. I think 2 people definitely had better rookie seasons than me...but you know who I don't think had a better rookie season than me? The only guy to get more votes than me, Mike Boss.
Mike Boss had a middle of the road QB season, ending up with the 9th best passer rating, lower than people like Chika Fujiwara, George O'Donnell, and fellow rookie Matthias Caliban. The only reason Mike Boss was even on the ballot was due to the fact that he threw the ball a ton, and racked up a ton of yards in the process. Caliban belonged on the Ballot and Boss, frankly, didn't.
Now, it's time to talk about Mike Rotchburns, AKA the guy who probably was the single most robbed by awards. For one, every single vote Bex got for anything probably instead belonged to Rotchburns, who consistently and constantly brought the ball down to within the 5 yard line for Marcella Toriki to then punch in. Rotchburns was far and away the most efficient running back in the league in terms of rushing the ball. The second most efficient running back with a similar level of usage was Gunnar Thorbjornsson, with 4.4 yards per carry. Rotchburns ran for 5.3 yards per carry. Toriki ran for 3.8 yards per carry when all was said and done, which is a full YARD AND A HALF WORSE. Yes, she got 19 TDs, which is a lot, but everyone who thought she was the best running back on NOLA this year was not paying attention. That or you have no idea why the Rams released Todd Gurley last year after a season where he ran for 12 touchdowns. I'm not saying Rotchburns should have been running back of the year, his lack of production in the passing game meant both Petrongolo and Watts were better on the year, but he definitely was better than Toriki, who arguably shouldn't have been nominated. Suffice to say, Rotchburns should have been OROTY, and Caliban should have been nominated instead of Mike Boss.
Bex and Marcella Toriki are the centerpiece of the next questionable award winner as well. Her offensive performance of the year award, where she got 4 touchdowns on 4.6 yards per carry, is really questionable. Let's take a look at her first touchdown of that game, where Rotchburns went 19 yards to the 2, both she and he got stuffed once, and then she took it in on 3rd down. The entire problem with Rushing Touchdowns being a significant determinator is that you can very easily get rushing touchdowns that others set up. To contrast, Jay Cue's week 8 performance had Cue set up every single touchdown of his with his arm, to the tune of a passer rating in the upper 130s. 4.6 yards per carry is somewhat impressive, but it wasn't even the most impressive mark in that game, on Nola. Rotchburns had 4.8.
Other standouts of misaimed award voting include Flash Panda, who fulfilled a specific niche in the returner role, having high averages in both punt and kick returns along with a touchdown, but wasn't even the best player in that category (Eddie Jeeta was a straight upgrade, and he wasn't even nominated). Brandon Booker's slightly worse kick return average but much better punt return average should have gotten him the nod over Panda, if not Ricky Vaughne's 2 touchdown returns. Cheese Farley getting screwed was apparently a result of a lack of information? Somehow nobody noticed or was informed about the massive penalty difference which definitely outweighed one more pancake.
Looking into specific ballots, in the DSFL we have what was maybe the greatest QB season of all time being considered 3rd, by a process that I'm pretty sure was clicking the index and seeing that Daytona and Cortez had the 1st and 2nd most yards in the league, never mind that neither threw more touchdowns than interceptions. This same person ALSO decided to leave the GMs of the team that went 13-1 completely off the ballot for GM of the year...and also said that the winners of that award should be the team that won a single game all season. Somehow he wasn't the only one to leave Southpaw and Panda completely off the GM ballot.
The ISFL had more vote fuckery, including a certain someone saying Chika Fujiwara and Mike Boss were the two best QBs on the year (8th and 9th in passer rating), who put Doug Howlett as WR of the year for being 2nd in yards and nothing else, giving Calvin Golladay a 1st place vote for OL of the year (gave up 2 sacks and had 1 more pancake than the actual winner), and said Von Hayes was the top DE for having less sacks and less tackles for loss than Asher Montain, who was 2nd, and less than half the tackles for loss and only 2 sacks more than Etrigan T. Slayer.
So, those are the complaints. In almost 1000 words. With those on the table, time to give some ideas.
IDEA 1: YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO VOTE FOR YOUR OWN PLAYER, OR YOUR TEAM'S OWN PLAYER
This is a pretty common fix I've seen in a number of leagues, from professional sports to little leagues; if your team's player is nominated for an award, you can't vote for them. If you're on a team and are in HO, then you can't vote for those team's players either. This is the kind of thing that I feel is a no brainer. And while that might lead to some weird looking ballots, let's be honest, those happen anyways.
IDEA 2: FIX THE BUGS IN THE SYSTEM
A more general title, but this applies to things like players being ineligible for any awards due to splitting time too evenly between positions, giving people all the important stats for positions as opposed to just one major one, and maybe, just maybe, not giving awards to inefficient touchdown hogs as opposed to efficient players who get touchdowns stolen from them. Then again, that last one is something that happens all the time in many different sports leagues so maybe hoping for that here is a bit of a stretch.
IDEA 3: ACTUALLY CARING ABOUT THE AWARDS
Yeah, I'm going there. As someone who writes a lot about the league, and takes part in fantasy, I look at the index pretty consistently, at least once per week. I look at rosters, I look at stats, I look at how much TPE players around the league have. Is it too much to ask for people who are looking over the awards to at least do that? Not saying that all of the voters, or even most of them, don't care, but it's very clear some people just did not do even the bare minimum to do the Award voting in a way that made sense.
I'm not sure anything's going to get changed, but it's clear that something has to in order for awards to actually feel like they went to the best player. Some of these awards probably ended up going to the best, most deserving player anyways...but others have a legitimate right to feel like this half-assed system robbed them of nominations or even awards themselves.
(1312 words)
As you scroll down the award votes, nothing stands out as truly awful until we get to OROY. Which coincidentally, I think is by far the worst award vote. I'm proud of my Rookie Season, to be quite honest. With good efficiency, I got over 1000 yards and double digit touchdowns. That being said, I think I had a middle of the pack rookie season among the nominees. I think 2 people definitely had better rookie seasons than me...but you know who I don't think had a better rookie season than me? The only guy to get more votes than me, Mike Boss.
Mike Boss had a middle of the road QB season, ending up with the 9th best passer rating, lower than people like Chika Fujiwara, George O'Donnell, and fellow rookie Matthias Caliban. The only reason Mike Boss was even on the ballot was due to the fact that he threw the ball a ton, and racked up a ton of yards in the process. Caliban belonged on the Ballot and Boss, frankly, didn't.
Now, it's time to talk about Mike Rotchburns, AKA the guy who probably was the single most robbed by awards. For one, every single vote Bex got for anything probably instead belonged to Rotchburns, who consistently and constantly brought the ball down to within the 5 yard line for Marcella Toriki to then punch in. Rotchburns was far and away the most efficient running back in the league in terms of rushing the ball. The second most efficient running back with a similar level of usage was Gunnar Thorbjornsson, with 4.4 yards per carry. Rotchburns ran for 5.3 yards per carry. Toriki ran for 3.8 yards per carry when all was said and done, which is a full YARD AND A HALF WORSE. Yes, she got 19 TDs, which is a lot, but everyone who thought she was the best running back on NOLA this year was not paying attention. That or you have no idea why the Rams released Todd Gurley last year after a season where he ran for 12 touchdowns. I'm not saying Rotchburns should have been running back of the year, his lack of production in the passing game meant both Petrongolo and Watts were better on the year, but he definitely was better than Toriki, who arguably shouldn't have been nominated. Suffice to say, Rotchburns should have been OROTY, and Caliban should have been nominated instead of Mike Boss.
Bex and Marcella Toriki are the centerpiece of the next questionable award winner as well. Her offensive performance of the year award, where she got 4 touchdowns on 4.6 yards per carry, is really questionable. Let's take a look at her first touchdown of that game, where Rotchburns went 19 yards to the 2, both she and he got stuffed once, and then she took it in on 3rd down. The entire problem with Rushing Touchdowns being a significant determinator is that you can very easily get rushing touchdowns that others set up. To contrast, Jay Cue's week 8 performance had Cue set up every single touchdown of his with his arm, to the tune of a passer rating in the upper 130s. 4.6 yards per carry is somewhat impressive, but it wasn't even the most impressive mark in that game, on Nola. Rotchburns had 4.8.
Other standouts of misaimed award voting include Flash Panda, who fulfilled a specific niche in the returner role, having high averages in both punt and kick returns along with a touchdown, but wasn't even the best player in that category (Eddie Jeeta was a straight upgrade, and he wasn't even nominated). Brandon Booker's slightly worse kick return average but much better punt return average should have gotten him the nod over Panda, if not Ricky Vaughne's 2 touchdown returns. Cheese Farley getting screwed was apparently a result of a lack of information? Somehow nobody noticed or was informed about the massive penalty difference which definitely outweighed one more pancake.
Looking into specific ballots, in the DSFL we have what was maybe the greatest QB season of all time being considered 3rd, by a process that I'm pretty sure was clicking the index and seeing that Daytona and Cortez had the 1st and 2nd most yards in the league, never mind that neither threw more touchdowns than interceptions. This same person ALSO decided to leave the GMs of the team that went 13-1 completely off the ballot for GM of the year...and also said that the winners of that award should be the team that won a single game all season. Somehow he wasn't the only one to leave Southpaw and Panda completely off the GM ballot.
The ISFL had more vote fuckery, including a certain someone saying Chika Fujiwara and Mike Boss were the two best QBs on the year (8th and 9th in passer rating), who put Doug Howlett as WR of the year for being 2nd in yards and nothing else, giving Calvin Golladay a 1st place vote for OL of the year (gave up 2 sacks and had 1 more pancake than the actual winner), and said Von Hayes was the top DE for having less sacks and less tackles for loss than Asher Montain, who was 2nd, and less than half the tackles for loss and only 2 sacks more than Etrigan T. Slayer.
So, those are the complaints. In almost 1000 words. With those on the table, time to give some ideas.
IDEA 1: YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO VOTE FOR YOUR OWN PLAYER, OR YOUR TEAM'S OWN PLAYER
This is a pretty common fix I've seen in a number of leagues, from professional sports to little leagues; if your team's player is nominated for an award, you can't vote for them. If you're on a team and are in HO, then you can't vote for those team's players either. This is the kind of thing that I feel is a no brainer. And while that might lead to some weird looking ballots, let's be honest, those happen anyways.
IDEA 2: FIX THE BUGS IN THE SYSTEM
A more general title, but this applies to things like players being ineligible for any awards due to splitting time too evenly between positions, giving people all the important stats for positions as opposed to just one major one, and maybe, just maybe, not giving awards to inefficient touchdown hogs as opposed to efficient players who get touchdowns stolen from them. Then again, that last one is something that happens all the time in many different sports leagues so maybe hoping for that here is a bit of a stretch.
IDEA 3: ACTUALLY CARING ABOUT THE AWARDS
Yeah, I'm going there. As someone who writes a lot about the league, and takes part in fantasy, I look at the index pretty consistently, at least once per week. I look at rosters, I look at stats, I look at how much TPE players around the league have. Is it too much to ask for people who are looking over the awards to at least do that? Not saying that all of the voters, or even most of them, don't care, but it's very clear some people just did not do even the bare minimum to do the Award voting in a way that made sense.
I'm not sure anything's going to get changed, but it's clear that something has to in order for awards to actually feel like they went to the best player. Some of these awards probably ended up going to the best, most deserving player anyways...but others have a legitimate right to feel like this half-assed system robbed them of nominations or even awards themselves.
(1312 words)