2017-18 Pro Bowl Starters Named
AF PRO BOWL – In Week 13, Associated Fantasy opened up voting for our Pro Bowl Tournament, giving all Association teams a chance to select the very best teams to be placed into a tournament next season to see who’s the best of the best, and the results are now in. Designed to honor the best teams in the Association each fantasy season just as NFL players are honored with their Pro Bowl appearances, the Associated Fantasy Pro Bowl Tournament is also designed to test those teams and fantasy managers with the toughest, most challenging FF tournament around. Making it into the tournament was the first part of the competition.
A field of 17 teams were nominated from all of the teams playing in the Association (currently 106), and those nominees were voted on by all of you over the last 4 weeks. The Top 6 will be named Starters and receive invitations to the Pro Bowl Tournament, to be held next season, while the rest of the nominees become Alternates, ranked in the order of the vote totals they received, and will take the place of any selectees that decline the invitation. Each ballot cast, allowed a vote for 3 individual Nominees (or a write-in candidate), and ballots from AF Registered Teams had the option of casting a 4th vote. Teams were allowed to cast a vote(s) for a write in candidate with any or all of their ballot selections. Votes were then tallied on a points system:
- 1st ballot selection = 1.5 points
- 2nd ballot selection = 1 point
- 3rd ballot selection = .5 points
- AF Registered Team (AFRT) ballot selection = 1 point
Voting was closed at the end of Week 16, and all ballot selections have been totaled based on the scale above and are displayed in this chart. There were a significant number of write in votes, and these appear in red text.
In all, 44 (of 106 elligible) teams cast a ballot for next year’s Pro Bowl Tournament Starters, and here’s a look at each of them:
Suspension Freaks – Coming in as the consensus #1 selection with a total ballot score of 21.5 points, including 6 first ballot selections and another 6 made by AF Registered Teams, and representing the Legion of Defense, Coach Shane Rocks’ Bouncing Tigers debuted at AF#1 on 2017’s first edition of the Top 25, and carried a sub-100 PR Score for more weeks than any other team in the Association. The Freaks finished the 2017 Regular Season with a disappointing 6-6-0 record in the Legion’s top-tier division, however 4 of those losses were by a margin of just 15.5 points combined, and 3 were to fellow nominee Insane Clowney Posse. They managed to qualify for the League’s Points Wid Card playoff slot with their 1st place season points total of 762 points – 14% higher than the 2nd place team and 41% higher than the league average.
Kizzys Krackbacks – A 2017 rookie franchise in the Fantasy Addicts League, meigzoh’s Krackbacks got more first ballot votes (7) than any other team in the field of nominees, and totaled 17.5 points in the voting. The Krackbacks took the league by storm from the very start, scoring the High Score of the week 6 times and the Offense of the Week 5 times. They finished the Regular Season as the Addict’s Ladder Champion with an 11-2-0 record and headed into the playoffs, as the AF#12 and the league #1 in total scoring. They added another pair of wins in the Addicts playoffs to come away with the League Championship.
Los Angeles Dragons – Tying with Kizzy’s Krackbacks with 17.5 points, in this year’s voting, the Dragons have been oned of the biggest stories of the 2017 season in the Association, Coach Joey Drakor’s Dragons won World Bowl IV for the League Championship of the World Fantasy League in 2015, then finished 10-3-0 in 2016, before jumping to the IFFL this season in a quest to be the first Association team to win a championship in two separate leagues. Since joining the IFFL, they have been almost unstoppable, finishing the Regular Season as the League #1 with an 8-3-0 record – 2 of their 3 losses to playoff teams – they also finished #1 in scoring with 2092 points. They beat the New Orleancss VooDoo in the two-week Americas Division Championship, and advanced to the IFFL’s Final Four.
Arizona Firebirds – Coach Crash’s franchise in the Super 16, the Arizona Firebirds came in fourth in voting with a total score of 15.5 points. They finished the S16 Regular Season with a 10-3-0 record for the #1 seed and were ranked as AF#3 on the AF top 25. They were the #1 scoring team in the league and won the S16 West Division Title, with 3 of 4 teams ranked in the Top 25, perhaps the toughest division in the Association this season. The Firebirds became a Gold Star Team in the 2017 season reaching their 50th career win with their final win, and went on to win the Super 16 Championship by beating fellow Pro Bowl Starter Birds of Prey by just 1 and a half points.
Birds of Prey – Coach Roger Tripp’s juggernaut in the Super 16 was the only veteran All-Pro team in this year’s round of nominees, and are the Champions of the 2015-16 Pro Bowl Tournament. This year, coming in fifth in voting with 14 points, just a fraction behind the Arizona Firebirds who they’ve been neck and neck with throughout the 2017 season in just about every way. BoP won the South Division Championship for the fourth time in 5 seasons this year, finishing the Regular Season as the AF#15 with a 10-3-0 record and a first round bye in the playoffs before going all the way to the Championship where they lost by a point and a half in fantasy overtime (by stat correction) to Arizona. The Birds are a Gold Star Team and currently have more career wins than any team in the Association.
Finkle is Einhorn – run by the Association’s very own Stats Director, Coach mattoaks (AF Registered, but not yet in the system) the AF#8 Finkle is the inaugural season Champion of the Suicide Squad Racing Society’s Points Race League with 3228 points. They led the field through 11 of 17 weeks and had the #1 score for a league high 6 of 17 weeks on their way to the checkered flag. The second and third place teams in the league – both also Pro Bowl Nominees – made things competitive at times, but by all measures, Finkle was thouroughly dominant through all of 2017.
The Tournament uses AF Classic roster settings and AF Century scoring settings. The scoring settings are the most challenging around, awarding only single points, and awarding them very stingily. Score a touchdown? 1 point. 50 yards rushing? 1 point. 10+ tackles? 1 point. With only 6 teams competing, and with such thin starting line-ups and extremely low scoring, success becomes all the more based on personnel decisions instead of just becoming a stats arms race. Each team’s player personnel decisions will be tested from the very start with the Tournament’s double draft – the first an auction draft, and the second a traditional snake draft, but teams must choose wisely, as once they build their teams, they’ll have only 20 add/drop transactions available to them for the whole season. You can learn more about the Pro Bowl tournament’s set-up and requirements by checking out the AF Pro Bowl Tournament Page or you can go straight to the Tournament Rules Page for detailed information, and Associated Fantasy will make sure you’re able to follow all of the action next season as the tournament unfolds, with updates and stats for you to root for your favorite team.
Good luck to our 2018 Starters!
