Along with the big changes accompanying the move to the new sim, ISFL Fantasy has also made a groundbreaking change in the way that rosters are setup: including human Offensive Linemen as draftable players. As a supporter of Fair Rubs, I think this is a great change and I am really excited to see people care about OL and their stats beyond paying lip service to how important they are to the team and 1 award at the awards ceremony.
However, because of the sim change I see a lot of uncertainty in terms of what kind of strategy might be best for deciding which human OL to draft for your fantasy team. Having spent a lot of time with the sim as part of the sim transition team, I thought I would shed some light on what kinds of factors I will be thinking about when deciding which OL to draft for my fantasy team this season. Note that the only advantage I have here is experience - I will be going only off of things that are readily available to the public (such as attribute uses and trait effects). I also make no claims that anything I'm talking about here will lead to a better OL in terms of helping a team's win percentage - I am concerned only about getting as many fantasy points as possible.
Scoring
Offensive linemen will earn 2 fantasy points for every pancake they record, and lose 5 fantasy points for every sack they allow as recorded in the index.
This last part is important - while I truly believe that the sim is much better now, it is still dumb sometimes and one of those ways is that a lot of sacks are not counted as "allowed" by any particular player. My best understanding of this is that you need to make an attempt to block the player who gets the sack for it to be recorded against you. If the player speeds right by you on the edge and gets a sack because you never touched them, the sim might just see a free runner and figure it was no one's fault at all. This is our first big important point: for fantasy OL, it may be better to be slow. Obviously it doesn't help the team at all to allow a free runner to blaze past you and get a sack easily, but for OL fantasy stats it looks pretty good.
Besides sacks costing points, the way that OL will earn points (barring any weird trickeration) is pancakes! Everyone loves a good pancake. While pancakes in DDSPF16 were a pure flat random chance on every successful block, DDSPF21 ties the chance of a pancake to specific attributes: specifically Hands, Run Blocking, and Pass Blocking. Note that Run and Pass Blocking increase the likelihood of a pancake on any block, not just on the "correct kind" of block as you might expect. So those are the 3 main attributes we will be looking at.
Traits?
Obviously one of the biggest additions with DDPSF 21 are the new traits available to each position. For offensive line, they get the flashily named Tenacious Blocker trait, which makes them "much better at blocking". Note that this does not influence pancakes at all! So we see a tradeoff here - for pure fantasy value, investing the whopping 150 TPE that it takes to acquire the Tenacious Blocker trait in other attributes (Hands, Pass Blocking, and Run Blocking especially) will make you much more likely to get valuable pancakes compared to a Tenacious Blocker. However, you also run the risk of being much worse at blocking, potentially allowing more sacks by allowing players to overpower you.
Archetypes
The sim transfer team also made an effort to increase the diversity of archetypes in the new sim. This means that OL have significant choices to make between the 3 archetypes available to them (Balanced, Athletic, and Mauler), and of course these choices will have ramifications on fantasy points as well.
In terms of weight, Mauler is the heaviest archetype at 325 lbs, followed appropriately by Balanced at 315 lbs, which leaves Athletic as the lightest archetype at a slight 310 lbs. As in the previous sim, weight does play a significant role in blocking success chance, so the heavier guys will naturally have an easier time of this. However, the heavier archetypes are not strictly advantaged because of their lack of speed/agility; while Athletic Linemen live up to their name with a healthy 75 maximum Speed and 80 maximum Agility, Balanced Linemen can reach only 70 in both attributes at maximum, and the big slow Maulers can only reach 60 maximum Speed and 65 maximum Agility.
While this should hopefully lead to balance between archetypes in gameplay and team success, for fantasy it makes no difference as we would expect slower to actually be better! So Mauler OL actually have 2 advantages for fantasy scoring, both in greater success chance on blocks and in not having sacks by speedy players credited to them as often. Balanced will likely be the 2nd best archetype for fantasy points, with Athletic being last because they should most often be able to make contact with a defender but might get overpowered frequently leading to a greater number of sacks credited against them.
Position
The last thing to touch on for OL in fantasy is what position they play. Despite how it is often talked about in the ISFL, OL is not a singular position but instead comprises Centers, Guards, and Tackles. From the prior sim the common wisdom is that pancakes are most common for Tackles, and slightly less common for interior offensive linemen. I don't know for sure whether that pattern will hold up in the new sim, but I think it makes sense to expect it to as Tackles are more often going to be tasked with blocking lighter Defensive Ends or pass rushing Linebackers, while Centers and Guards will have to block the big boys in the interior defensive line. The weight differentials associated with these matchups would likely lead to better block success rate on the outside, and the thinking would go that this could lead to more pancakes as well. It will be interesting to see how this holds up as we collect more data from the new sim, but I think it is a good first guess at what will happen currently.
Rankings
Now that you've read through my ramblings about what may or may not happen in a sim that no one really has a good sense of yet, I thought it was the least I could do to at least suggest some potential ranking of OL for fantasy. I am terrified for making these suggestions so if you want to totally disregard them and pick someone higher or lower than I think they should be, please feel free so that I am not as worried about ruining peoples' fantasy drafts this season.
1. Bruce Buckley
Can't go wrong with the highest TPE OL in the ISFL as the number 1 fantasy OL pick. While I don't love the Athletic Lineman archetype for fantasy, Buckley's good pancake attributes of 70 Hands, 95 Pass Blocking, and 90 Run Blocking are sure to make them a pancake machine. On top of those attributes they also have the Tenacious Blocker trait meaning that they should not get overpowered too often and sacks allowed should be low. The tracker also lists them at 340 lbs currently, so if Buckley's illegal weight can avoid detection for a few weeks that will surely boost his numbers as well.
2. Julio Jones
Julio Jones is the highest TPE Balanced Lineman in the league, and with that comes a healthy 5 lb. weight advantage over his more common Athletic Lineman counterparts. After Buckley, the rest of the top TPE Athletic Lineman all match Jones's 90 Pass Blocking / 90 Run Blocking (except one which I will mention shortly), and while Jones has only 61 Hands compared to the 70 of most of his competitors I think the weight advantage and slowness advantage (70 Speed vs. 75) will help him avoid enough sacks allowed to be worth it.
3. Greedy Sly
Sly is the second highest TPE OL in the league after Buckley, and has a solid 70 Hands, 90 Pass Blocking, and 90 Run Blocking along with Tenacious Blocker on his Athletic Lineman build. While I think you can do better in terms of getting pancakes from your OL fantasy player, Sly should be able to stonewall most defenders in the league and I would expect them to record very few sacks allowed even with the inherent penalties from being light and fast.
4. Benson Bayley Jr.
I initially thought that Bayley would be an easy top choice for fantasy as the highest TPE Mauler out there, given I think Mauler is the best OL archetype from a purely fantasy perspective. However, I was concerned upon looking further at a few things. First, only 30 Hands, 90 Pass Blocking, and 90 Run Blocking is not a great mix of attributes for recording a lot of pancakes - there are plenty of high TPE Athletic Linemen with a better mix of stats. Two, I was informed that they play Center for the Butchers rather than Tackle, which is likely worse for pancakes + sacks allowed given the matchups against heavier DTs compared to DEs/LBs. I can't be 100% sure where Chicago will play him next season, but a 53 Speed Mauler at Tackle seems sus so I suspect Bayley Jr. will face some disadvantage from their on-field position.
5. Jay Cue
Cue is another boring Athletic Lineman with the standard 90 Str / 90 Pass Blocking / 90 Run Blocking build + Tenacious Blocker trait. He has only 40 Hands, but I believe he will have an inherent advantage due to the Outlaws' strategic makeup this season. Having just acquired Tatsu Nakamura in a trade, Arizona will be looking to keep the ball on the ground with a dynamic RB duo of Tatsu + Runner Turbsin rather than put the ball in the hands of rookie QB Charlemagne Cortez. This means few passing attempts and therefore few opportunities to allow sacks for the Outlaws OL, so Cue should be a safe play even if he's not the fantasy superstar he was at QB.
6. Future Trunks
Future Trunks is the third highest TPE Athletic Lineman build after Buckley and Greedy Sly, but has a very unusual build among his peers with 96 Pass Blocking but only 40 Hands and 60 Speed. He does have the Tenacious Blocker trait, so I think he will be able to avoid getting overpowered too often, and although the light+slow combination is certainly an interesting choice I think it could work well for fantasy. It will be interesting to see how they apply their TPE during the course of the season - if they prioritize Hands over Speed, Trunks could end up being a fantastic fantasy OL. One downside to keep in mind is that OCO may have the worst running game in the league next season, forcing them into a lot of pass attempts and many potential sacks allowed.
I know I only need to rank 6 OL since that's how many will be drafted in each group, but as a bonus I'll give a couple more just so you have a few more options to decide amongst for yourself as you make your own fantasy draft choices like the well-informed, thoughtful user you are.
7. Mo "Mamba" Magic
Another 90/90/90 Athletic Lineman build, this time with 70 Hands as well which is nice. Sly has a significant edge on Magic in Agility and Intelligence which are both helpful in blocking, so we might expect Mo to be a little bit more easily overpowered by the defensive lineman that he faces. Otherwise everything I said for Sly holds here as well.
8. Simon Tremblay
Tremblay is yet another Athletic Lineman, but the first one we've talked about who hasn't bought the Tenacious Blocker trait yet. However, that trait is not super important for the purposes of fantasy evaluation and Tremblay does have a solid 90 Pass Blocking, 90 Run Blocking, and 70 Hands which is great for pancakes. In addition Philadelphia might be another fairly run heavy team with Phoenix in regression and a big offseason pickup in Darrel Williams, which is good for not allowing sacks and helps counteract the negative impact of missing out on Tenacious Blocker.
Well, that's all I have! Hope this was enlightening and informative, unless you end up in the same fantasy group as me!
However, because of the sim change I see a lot of uncertainty in terms of what kind of strategy might be best for deciding which human OL to draft for your fantasy team. Having spent a lot of time with the sim as part of the sim transition team, I thought I would shed some light on what kinds of factors I will be thinking about when deciding which OL to draft for my fantasy team this season. Note that the only advantage I have here is experience - I will be going only off of things that are readily available to the public (such as attribute uses and trait effects). I also make no claims that anything I'm talking about here will lead to a better OL in terms of helping a team's win percentage - I am concerned only about getting as many fantasy points as possible.
Scoring
Offensive linemen will earn 2 fantasy points for every pancake they record, and lose 5 fantasy points for every sack they allow as recorded in the index.
This last part is important - while I truly believe that the sim is much better now, it is still dumb sometimes and one of those ways is that a lot of sacks are not counted as "allowed" by any particular player. My best understanding of this is that you need to make an attempt to block the player who gets the sack for it to be recorded against you. If the player speeds right by you on the edge and gets a sack because you never touched them, the sim might just see a free runner and figure it was no one's fault at all. This is our first big important point: for fantasy OL, it may be better to be slow. Obviously it doesn't help the team at all to allow a free runner to blaze past you and get a sack easily, but for OL fantasy stats it looks pretty good.
Besides sacks costing points, the way that OL will earn points (barring any weird trickeration) is pancakes! Everyone loves a good pancake. While pancakes in DDSPF16 were a pure flat random chance on every successful block, DDSPF21 ties the chance of a pancake to specific attributes: specifically Hands, Run Blocking, and Pass Blocking. Note that Run and Pass Blocking increase the likelihood of a pancake on any block, not just on the "correct kind" of block as you might expect. So those are the 3 main attributes we will be looking at.
Traits?
Obviously one of the biggest additions with DDPSF 21 are the new traits available to each position. For offensive line, they get the flashily named Tenacious Blocker trait, which makes them "much better at blocking". Note that this does not influence pancakes at all! So we see a tradeoff here - for pure fantasy value, investing the whopping 150 TPE that it takes to acquire the Tenacious Blocker trait in other attributes (Hands, Pass Blocking, and Run Blocking especially) will make you much more likely to get valuable pancakes compared to a Tenacious Blocker. However, you also run the risk of being much worse at blocking, potentially allowing more sacks by allowing players to overpower you.
Archetypes
The sim transfer team also made an effort to increase the diversity of archetypes in the new sim. This means that OL have significant choices to make between the 3 archetypes available to them (Balanced, Athletic, and Mauler), and of course these choices will have ramifications on fantasy points as well.
In terms of weight, Mauler is the heaviest archetype at 325 lbs, followed appropriately by Balanced at 315 lbs, which leaves Athletic as the lightest archetype at a slight 310 lbs. As in the previous sim, weight does play a significant role in blocking success chance, so the heavier guys will naturally have an easier time of this. However, the heavier archetypes are not strictly advantaged because of their lack of speed/agility; while Athletic Linemen live up to their name with a healthy 75 maximum Speed and 80 maximum Agility, Balanced Linemen can reach only 70 in both attributes at maximum, and the big slow Maulers can only reach 60 maximum Speed and 65 maximum Agility.
While this should hopefully lead to balance between archetypes in gameplay and team success, for fantasy it makes no difference as we would expect slower to actually be better! So Mauler OL actually have 2 advantages for fantasy scoring, both in greater success chance on blocks and in not having sacks by speedy players credited to them as often. Balanced will likely be the 2nd best archetype for fantasy points, with Athletic being last because they should most often be able to make contact with a defender but might get overpowered frequently leading to a greater number of sacks credited against them.
Position
The last thing to touch on for OL in fantasy is what position they play. Despite how it is often talked about in the ISFL, OL is not a singular position but instead comprises Centers, Guards, and Tackles. From the prior sim the common wisdom is that pancakes are most common for Tackles, and slightly less common for interior offensive linemen. I don't know for sure whether that pattern will hold up in the new sim, but I think it makes sense to expect it to as Tackles are more often going to be tasked with blocking lighter Defensive Ends or pass rushing Linebackers, while Centers and Guards will have to block the big boys in the interior defensive line. The weight differentials associated with these matchups would likely lead to better block success rate on the outside, and the thinking would go that this could lead to more pancakes as well. It will be interesting to see how this holds up as we collect more data from the new sim, but I think it is a good first guess at what will happen currently.
Rankings
Now that you've read through my ramblings about what may or may not happen in a sim that no one really has a good sense of yet, I thought it was the least I could do to at least suggest some potential ranking of OL for fantasy. I am terrified for making these suggestions so if you want to totally disregard them and pick someone higher or lower than I think they should be, please feel free so that I am not as worried about ruining peoples' fantasy drafts this season.
1. Bruce Buckley
Can't go wrong with the highest TPE OL in the ISFL as the number 1 fantasy OL pick. While I don't love the Athletic Lineman archetype for fantasy, Buckley's good pancake attributes of 70 Hands, 95 Pass Blocking, and 90 Run Blocking are sure to make them a pancake machine. On top of those attributes they also have the Tenacious Blocker trait meaning that they should not get overpowered too often and sacks allowed should be low. The tracker also lists them at 340 lbs currently, so if Buckley's illegal weight can avoid detection for a few weeks that will surely boost his numbers as well.
2. Julio Jones
Julio Jones is the highest TPE Balanced Lineman in the league, and with that comes a healthy 5 lb. weight advantage over his more common Athletic Lineman counterparts. After Buckley, the rest of the top TPE Athletic Lineman all match Jones's 90 Pass Blocking / 90 Run Blocking (except one which I will mention shortly), and while Jones has only 61 Hands compared to the 70 of most of his competitors I think the weight advantage and slowness advantage (70 Speed vs. 75) will help him avoid enough sacks allowed to be worth it.
3. Greedy Sly
Sly is the second highest TPE OL in the league after Buckley, and has a solid 70 Hands, 90 Pass Blocking, and 90 Run Blocking along with Tenacious Blocker on his Athletic Lineman build. While I think you can do better in terms of getting pancakes from your OL fantasy player, Sly should be able to stonewall most defenders in the league and I would expect them to record very few sacks allowed even with the inherent penalties from being light and fast.
4. Benson Bayley Jr.
I initially thought that Bayley would be an easy top choice for fantasy as the highest TPE Mauler out there, given I think Mauler is the best OL archetype from a purely fantasy perspective. However, I was concerned upon looking further at a few things. First, only 30 Hands, 90 Pass Blocking, and 90 Run Blocking is not a great mix of attributes for recording a lot of pancakes - there are plenty of high TPE Athletic Linemen with a better mix of stats. Two, I was informed that they play Center for the Butchers rather than Tackle, which is likely worse for pancakes + sacks allowed given the matchups against heavier DTs compared to DEs/LBs. I can't be 100% sure where Chicago will play him next season, but a 53 Speed Mauler at Tackle seems sus so I suspect Bayley Jr. will face some disadvantage from their on-field position.
5. Jay Cue
Cue is another boring Athletic Lineman with the standard 90 Str / 90 Pass Blocking / 90 Run Blocking build + Tenacious Blocker trait. He has only 40 Hands, but I believe he will have an inherent advantage due to the Outlaws' strategic makeup this season. Having just acquired Tatsu Nakamura in a trade, Arizona will be looking to keep the ball on the ground with a dynamic RB duo of Tatsu + Runner Turbsin rather than put the ball in the hands of rookie QB Charlemagne Cortez. This means few passing attempts and therefore few opportunities to allow sacks for the Outlaws OL, so Cue should be a safe play even if he's not the fantasy superstar he was at QB.
6. Future Trunks
Future Trunks is the third highest TPE Athletic Lineman build after Buckley and Greedy Sly, but has a very unusual build among his peers with 96 Pass Blocking but only 40 Hands and 60 Speed. He does have the Tenacious Blocker trait, so I think he will be able to avoid getting overpowered too often, and although the light+slow combination is certainly an interesting choice I think it could work well for fantasy. It will be interesting to see how they apply their TPE during the course of the season - if they prioritize Hands over Speed, Trunks could end up being a fantastic fantasy OL. One downside to keep in mind is that OCO may have the worst running game in the league next season, forcing them into a lot of pass attempts and many potential sacks allowed.
I know I only need to rank 6 OL since that's how many will be drafted in each group, but as a bonus I'll give a couple more just so you have a few more options to decide amongst for yourself as you make your own fantasy draft choices like the well-informed, thoughtful user you are.
7. Mo "Mamba" Magic
Another 90/90/90 Athletic Lineman build, this time with 70 Hands as well which is nice. Sly has a significant edge on Magic in Agility and Intelligence which are both helpful in blocking, so we might expect Mo to be a little bit more easily overpowered by the defensive lineman that he faces. Otherwise everything I said for Sly holds here as well.
8. Simon Tremblay
Tremblay is yet another Athletic Lineman, but the first one we've talked about who hasn't bought the Tenacious Blocker trait yet. However, that trait is not super important for the purposes of fantasy evaluation and Tremblay does have a solid 90 Pass Blocking, 90 Run Blocking, and 70 Hands which is great for pancakes. In addition Philadelphia might be another fairly run heavy team with Phoenix in regression and a big offseason pickup in Darrel Williams, which is good for not allowing sacks and helps counteract the negative impact of missing out on Tenacious Blocker.
Well, that's all I have! Hope this was enlightening and informative, unless you end up in the same fantasy group as me!