For the most part, Nilbog has some of the best league parity you will find in a sixteen team dynasty league. But for years, three teams have lingered behind the rest. In 2025, the league will be undergoing a soft reset to try and resolve this issue.
Why?
Let’s look at the list of teams with a Nilbog regular season record under 50%:
| GM | W | L |
|---|---|---|
| TWatkins | 40 | 41 |
| LBtown | 39 | 42 |
| RKMay | 37 | 44 |
| HaffCaff | 33 | 48 |
| WyattBrady | 32 | 49 |
| JamesMyers | 30 | 51 |
| Rest.Hollow | 25 | 56 |
| GreysonH | 14 | 67 |
TWatkins has had a winning record the last two seasons. LBtown just finished 2nd. RKMay is a wildcard contender every year with a great WR corps. HaffCaff is a strong team that keeps getting bitten by the injury bug. WyattBrady had one of the highest scoring teams in 2024 that just got unlucky in their week-to-weak matchups.
But then we hit the final three…oof. JamesMyers’ team finished 3rd in 2019 and it’s all been downhill from there. After years of neglect from a previous GM, this team is in an abysmal state. There’s Caleb Williams and…not much else. This team has had their dues comped for two years straight now, and it would take *at least* another two to put the team in a position to compete.
RestingHollow’s and GreysonH’s are two more teams who have a couple strong pieces, but I think anyone would agree they’re years away from being competitive. So my choice as commissioner is to either continue to comp buy-ins until I feel comfortable charging these GMs the price of admission, or fast track them to parity. We’re gonna fast track.
Phase One – Communism
Two GMs have left this year, TigersMom and RAllen. RAllen’s team is now managed by GreysonH and as we all know, it’s garbage. TigersMom left behind a pretty good team though. So, before DHenman gets their chance to enjoy a playoff contender, we’re going to strip it for parts.
Now, we don’t want to just turn it into another bad team with no assets. The goal is to evenly distribute the talent so that it becomes roughly the same level of bad as JamesMyers, RestingHollow, and GreysonH.
All the teams have a decent starting QB so I’m not touching that. I don’t want to take McBride from DHenman and Hunter Henry has been on the team since day one so I’m not going to touch the TEs either. Let’s look at the running back situation for these teams.
JamesMyers has no real RBs, so we’ll strip Kendre Miller and Zack Charbonnet from DHenman for them. Are these good running backs? No. Are they better than no running backs? Yes. RestingHollow has Kyren Williams and GreysonH has Saquon so I think we can stop there. That leaves DHenman with Swift, Mattison, and Spears which is fine.
Next is WRs. GreysonH has Nabers so once again I’m leaving that team out. JamesMyers and RestingHollow basically have no WR1. JamesMyers will get Ladd McConkey as a strong piece to build around. RestingHollow will get Xavier Worthy, who is valued as more of a WR2 but his team is generally better so he gets the lesser player. This still leaves DHenman with Terry McLaurin and Jaylen Waddle who are both considered quality dynasty WRs.
At this point I’m calling phase one complete. All four teams are close to the same level of bad. DHenman has gotten worse, JamesMyers and RestingHollow have gotten better, and GreysonH has stayed the same.
Phase Two – Expansion Draft
We don’t just want these teams to be acceptably bad, we want them to be competitive. The only way to make this happen is to take the redistribution one step further and hold the Nilbog equivalent of an expansion draft.
We won’t actually be expanding, but we’ll be using similar principles to a real league’s expansion draft. Here are the rules:
- The expansion draft will be held right before the 2025 rookie draft.
- DHenman, GreysonH, JamesMyers, and RestingHollow will each receive the opportunity to draft two players from the other 12 Nilbog teams.
- The other 12 teams may each protect 8 players. These 8 players can not be selected in the expansion draft.
- The commissioner has the power to exclude any player from being drafted.
- The drafting teams may not draft a player from a team that has already lost a player. Ie. You can not be drafted from twice.
- If you have a player who is drafted, you will receive a compensatory pick in this year’s rookie draft or the next. These compensatory picks will occur in a special round held between rounds one and two. Your exact pick is determined by how early in the expansion draft you lost a player.
- The expansion draft will be held snake-style.
Expansion Draft Order:
- DHenman
- GreysonH
- JamesMyers
- RestingHollow
- RestingHollow
- JamesMyers
- GreysonH
- DHenman
When Do I Get My Compensatory Pick?
As stated above, the earlier you have a player drafted the earlier your compensatory pick will be. These picks will be the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th players of two rookie drafts. Since they occur as their own round between the normal 1st and 2nd rounds of the draft, they will be notated C.01 for pick 17, C.02 for 18, etc. See the table below for when these picks will occur.
| Expansion Pick | Compensatory Pick | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | C.01 | 2025 |
| 2 | C.02 | 2025 |
| 3 | C.03 | 2025 |
| 4 | C.04 | 2025 |
| 5 | C.01 | 2026 |
| 6 | C.02 | 2026 |
| 7 | C.03 | 2026 |
| 8 | C.04 | 2026 |
What Gives You The Authority?
Ok, so there’s absolutely nothing in our bylaws that explicitly give me the power to do this. But our bylaws do say that the commissioner has the right to take any action that isn’t expressly forbidden, and taking the opportunity to give the league a [very] soft reset when two new GMs join is not expressly forbidden.
I think that this will be an excellent way to increase parity even further for those teams at the very bottom of Nilbog while providing fair enough compensation to teams that lose players in the expansion draft to not delegitimize the league. Most importantly:
This is not intended to create any precedent. This is not intended to be something that is ever repeated. I’m not opposed to doing something similar in another five or six years if we find ourselves in the same situation, but I would sooner reset the league than make a habit of redistributing assets.
Nilbog Fantasy League 