Everything you need to know about SFBX

Each year over the past decade, the venerable Scott Fish has run a fantasy league that allows for fans and analysts from across the industry to play together. The goal of the Scott Fish Bowl is to raise awareness and money for Fantasy Cares, a charity that Fish set up to give back to the community. This is mostly done through purchasing toys for children at Christmas, but Fantasy Cares has also donated to hurricane relief, stopping domestic violence and more. It is truly one of the best events every year.

But just because the league is played for charity, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be trying to win! Through numerous generous donors, there are some great prizes you can win as a part of this contest: site subscriptions, gear, etc. Being competitive is also just part of the fun.

Here’s everything you’ll need to know about this 10th iteration of the Scott Fish Bowl, SFBX.

SFBX Format

The most important thing to remember as you go through this guide and the subsequent projections piece is that the Scott Fish Bowl is ultimately a tournament. It comprises 120 different 12-man fantasy leagues (15 conferences). Each league will function as its own entity with its own player pool, roster moves and the like. Then there are the playoffs, which you can make by doing any of the following over the first 12 weeks of the season:

• Finish with the most wins in your division (bye)
• Finish with the second-most points in your division (bye)
• Have a top-16 record in your conference
• Have a top-16 point total in your conference
• Win 8 H2H matchups

The playoffs are a mixture of all-play and H2H. If you would like to read more about how to become an SFBX champion, Fish has the rules posted on the event website.

Since this is a tournament-style contest, you likely want to draft more aggressively than you would in a normal league. You are now trying to have the best team out of 1,440, not just 12. It is likely that you are going to need to hit big on some mid- and late-round picks in order to win. A few players who beat their ADP but finish 40th at their position isn’t going to do much for you. Go for home-runs, not singles and doubles.

Stacking is another technique that can help elevate the upside of your team. Pairing the QBs on your roster with some pass-catchers in the same offense will expand your range of outcomes in any given week and can lead to higher point totals over the course of the year if you stack the right offense. This is typically a strategy discussed for best-ball formats, but it can certainly be deployed in re-draft tournaments as well. 

The Scott Fish Bowl is also a great place to try some extreme strategies. Whether it is zero RB, robust RB, or anything else you can think of that may be a little outside of your comfort zone for your other leagues, try getting a little wild. Extreme strategies through structure can have great results when things break your way, and that’s exactly what you should be looking for in this format.

Roster Settings

SFBX will likely be the deepest fantasy league you have ever played. It is a 22-round draft that will require you to then start 11 players each week:

• 1 QB
• 2 RB
• 3 WR
• 1 TE
• 1 SuperFlex (QB eligible)
• 3 Flex

Being required to start so many players makes it difficult to feel comfortable leaving your draft but further emphasizes why extreme strategies are a good approach to try to take down this league. 

It is also worth noting that you can play a second QB in this format, which will generally raise their prices during the draft. While QBs can make up more of your starting lineup (18.2%) each week than a standard eight-man lineup with one QB (12.5%), the roster flexibility can also allow you to play up to six RBs (54.5%) or seven WRs (63.6%). If your league prices up the QBs too much, don’t feel pressured to continue the runs. 

Scoring Settings

If the Scott Fish Bowl wasn’t already one of the wildest leagues you’ve participated in, it also has a very unique scoring system. 

Not only does the league award 0.5 points per first down in addition to 0.5 points per reception (doubled for TEs), but the QB scoring is also remarkable. Points will be awarded for completions but taken away for incompletions and sacks. Take a look at how this would have impacted scoring at the position last year.

Lamar Jackson broke QB scoring last year regardless of the settings, but you can see that in a more traditional scoring format such as the FFPC, QB scoring was fairly flat afterward. Using SFBX settings, QBs scored fewer points overall and fewer points per position advanced in the final standings. This certainly makes the elite QBs more valuable and discourages streaming or playing committees. But don’t make the mistake of targeting the same QBs you would have in a normal format. Take a look at how the top-30 QBs in SFBX compared to FFPC.

The value of QB rushing is reduced, and players who complete a high percentage of their passes are elevated. Players such as Kirk Cousins and Derek Carr were top-10 QBs in SFBX scoring last year despite finishing outside of the top-20 in the FFPC. Be sure to keep this in mind when drafting your teams.

And just to circle back quickly to first downs, they won’t occur quite as frequently as receptions will but come as an almost direct result of volume. I ran regressions on every position dating back to 2000 looking to find how to best predict first downs. Rushes explained almost all of rushing first downs, while targets did the same for receiving first downs. I recorded this in the table below.

The “coefficient” you can think of as the percent of rushes/targets that go for first downs at each position. This first down scoring, especially since it includes rushes, helps to keep scoring competitive across positions. We can see this by taking a look back at the SFB8 results since that league featured the same scoring for non-QBs.

The stud RBs dominated in 2018, but you’ll note that by the 10th player at RB and WR, scoring was basically the exact same through the rest of the top-50. TEs predictably score less at equivalent position ranks, but the top handful of them would have qualified for top-12 status at either RB or WR, giving the entire position more viability in the early portion of drafts. 

Let's have fun with this thing, and remember SFBX is for charity!