Wrapping up the 2023 year of Omnifantasy
The Super Bowl finalized the 2023 Omni year, and crowned a new Omni Cup champion
With the Super Bowl on Sunday, the 2023 Omnifantasy season came to a close, in what was a fun transition year as we worked to add more features to the site. We’ll break down all the sports that finalized since our last update, including looks at strategy ideas for 2024, after a couple notes.
Omni Cup 2024 signups
Before I get too far into this, for those of you who want to play in Omni Cup 2024, the sign up sheet is open. The Omni Cup will consist of several 8-person drafts that all get joined together on one leaderboard, with an overall champion crowned.
If you’re interested, make sure you get signed up by one week from today, Tuesday, February 20th. I’m traveling from the 18th to the 20th, but we can’t afford to start much later, so we’ll fire these drafts up on the 21st. I heard from a lot of people who missed the signup last year, so don’t delay on this.
Omni Cup 2023 winner
The second-annual Omni Cup came to a close, with Paul taking down the top prize, posting a whopping 780 points to finish as the top-scoring team from across the 16 Omni Cup drafts. Paul’s roster was absolutely loaded with a whopping seven overall champions worth 80 points each, and some form of point-scoring out of each of his first 16 picks.
Paul crushed the first 16 rounds so thoroughly he decided to take the final six off, and still coasted to the title. Paul wins two tickets to a sporting contest of his choice! Last year, inaugural champion Anthony chose to attend his first live NASCAR event. Hit me up, Paul, and we’ll get your prize taken care of.
Wild fact about 2022 champion Anthony. He finished third in 2023, among the 128 contestants, nearly taking it back to back. With deeper 12-team drafts last year, Anthony took down the crown from a bigger field with 570 total points. You can read about that team in the final 2022 recap, but if you’re looking for commonalities, he went UCL in the second round both years, the high-profile teams he took both years were the Chiefs and Astros (as well as the LA Galaxy?), and then probably his biggest edge was he hit not just the NASCAR champion but also a second point-scoring Flex from NASCAR in both drafts — and all four picks came in the double-digit rounds. In 2023, he took a single-digit NASCAR pick as a third option from that sport, and hit th runner-up with that pick as well. This dude is a NASCAR grinder; glad he made it to a live race.
This year, Anthony posted a (nice) 690, just behind Sean with 710 for second and third. Sean had a wild roster, getting zero points out of his first-round pick, and also taking a goose egg in Round 5, but still winding up second overall thanks largely to eight different semifinalists or better in the double-digit rounds, including two champions in Ryan Blaney and the Texas Rangers.
Here were their rosters.
One other fun thing about these three teams — none of them aggressively benefitted from a bad draft or anything like that. I did a really rudimentary list of “ADP Value” after the drafts last year, where I just added up the total ADPs of all picks, meaning the drafter who had the lowest ADP Value got picks throughout their draft that — on average — went higher in the other 15 drafts.
Our champion Paul finished with the 40th lowest ADP Value out of the 128 teams, meaning he did scoop more value than the average drafter, but not by a ton. What’s fascinating is Sean actually had the 12th highest ADP Value, meaning he was one of the drafters most willing to Live A Little(TM). And then Anthony, our defending champ who finished top three the next year, finished 62nd, or right about average.
Scooping value is certainly not his (only) secret, which roughly tracks with my expectations given that Omnifantasy is a massive clusterfuck and no one knows anything about anything, so following the herd as it roams in circles chasing its tail isn’t going to have the same benefit as, say, fantasy football, where ADP is sharpened by lots of really strong analysis.
Congrats to our top finishers!
Finishing up our 2023 recap
The last time I checked in was in late November, where I talked through several events that ended earlier on the calendar. Since then, the final sports have wrapped up, with some exciting finishes. Let’s break those down.
MLS
When we last checked in, MLS was already to the quarterfinals, so we knew who the point-scoring teams were, and just had to sort out which ones would push up to the 80-, 50-, and 30-point plateaus. As I wrote:
It has been its typically unpredictable self as a league, but the top two highest-drafted teams did advance this far and earn points. New York City FC (MLS3), LA Galaxy (MLS4), and CF Montreal (MLS5) are all eliminated already, though, and the undrafted Columbus Crew, Houston Dynamo, Sporting KC, and Orlando FC are all still alive and kicking.
There were 16 different MLS teams picked in at least one Omni Cup league — out of 29 total teams in the league — so four of the 13 that weren’t picked have advanced to the quarterfinals, a pretty hilarious hit rate. For you Underdog enthusiasts, the MLS is your #ScrollDown league for Omni.
The undrafted Crew went on to take down the 80, winning over LAFC, who were the MLS1 (i.e. highest-drafted) in this year’s Omni Cup drafts. The undrafted Houston Dynamo and MLS14 FC Cincinnati (drafted in only 10 of 16 leagues) were the other semifinalists.
MLS is fascinating this year, because for as much as I wrote in our last update that this is your league to wait on, Inter Miami enters 2024 with the shortest odds of any MLS team I can remember (and almost certainly ever). Their roster boasts a host of former top-tier European players including not just Lionel Messi, but also Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets, and Jordi Alba, and regardless of the long-term trends that say MLS is unpredictable, I certainly don’t want to be betting against that group.
Men’s Tennis
Here was where we stood at last check-in:
Novak Djokovic (ATP1) was threatened by Carlos Alcaraz (ATP2) after the youngster’s upset at Wimbledon, but Djokovic rebounded to win the US Open and now holds a commanding lead heading into the Australian, given he was the runner up at Wimbledon and Alcaraz has failed to reach the final in either of the two tournaments Djokovic won.
Beyond them, Rafael Nadal (ATP3) is unfortunately probably a zero this year, while Daniil Medvedev (ATP4), Casper Ruud (ATP9), and Alexander Zverev (ATP7) sit in the next most-favorable positions.
You can find the results for both tennis leagues and golf here (I’ll make sure to drop the new sheet for 2024 in an upcoming post), which show that Djokovic coasted to an easy 80-point win, Alcaraz held onto second, and then Medvedev was joined by Australian Open champ Jannik Sinner (ATP6) at the 30-point plateau.
Zverev and Ruud finished with 20 points each, while Andrey Rublev (ATP10) joined them, as well as undrafted Taylor Fritz, who bested Holger Rune (ATP12) and Stefanos Tsitsipas (ATP5) in a tiebreaker for the final spot, making Tsitsipas the second-highest-drafted non-point-scorer behind Nadal.
The other five of the top seven ATP picks did score points, and all of the top four were among that group, in what was a fairly predictable sport. What’s fascinating about that is as Djokovic’s reign starts to come to an end, there’s at least some uncertainty about whether one guy will dominate the next phase, with Alcaraz looking like the top option but Medvedev having a strong case (he made the final in both hard court tournaments, while Alcaraz only made one final), and then Sinner being the most recent major winner in what might have been his breakthrough tournament where he slayed Djokovic in the semis then came back from two sets down against Medvedev in the final to prove he very much belongs in this conversation right now.
(All that said, my money is still on Djokovic until the year he doesn’t win the 80.)
Women’s tennis
Things were much more chaotic entering the final event with the Australian Open over on the women’s side. Here was my November breakdown with three events in the bag:
Top-drafted Iga Swiatek (WTA1) does currently hold the top spot, but only on a tiebreaker with Aryna Sabalenka (WTA2). And then only one “tennis point” behind is another tie between Coco Gauff (WTA6) and Marketa Vondrousova, who was not even in the system as of draft time because I didn’t go deep enough into the odds to make her a draftable option.
If any of those four women takes down the Australian Open, they will clinch the 80 Omni points this year. Additionally, Karolina Muchova (undrafted) and Ons Jabeur (WTA5) are both only three “tennis points” behind the leaders, and an Australian Open win for either of them would at minimum trigger a tiebreak for the top overall Omni spot.
As it played out, Sabalenka binked the Australian and the 80, and then Gauff earned the 50 with a semifinal run, in no small part because all of Swiatek, Vondrousova, Muchova, and Jabeur failed to reach even the fourth round. That left Swiatek and Vondrousova in the 30-point tier, with Muchova and Jabeur at 20 points each, where they were joined by Australian Open runner-up and 21-year-old up-and-comer Qinwen Zheng (WTA10, but only drafted once) and the undrafted Elina Svitolina, who I read returned from maternity leave this past year to be at or near the top form of her career, including a highlight win over Swiatek in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.
WTA3 Elena Rybakina, WTA4 Simona Halep, WTA7 Carolina Garcia, WTA8 Jessica Pegula, and WTA9 Maria Sakkari were all top-10 options that failed to score points, while again three undrafted options finished in the top eight in what looks like a difficult sport to predict (that said, the overall winner was the WTA2 from draft season, and WTA1 finished third).
NCAAF
I gotta say: I’m pumped for college football to move to a bracket large enough to accommodate Omnifantasy scoring, so I no longer have to award the fifth through eighth spots to the “next highest finishers in the final AP poll.” One small bit of alpha about the new system, since you’re reading along: As far as I can tell from this NCAA writeup and some other stuff I’ve seen, the four byes to the quarterfinals (which will all ensure 20 points) have to be conference winners.
That’s fascinating in that you can justify some weaker options from the Big 12 or ACC a little later in the draft, as potential plays at first-round byes and 20 points. On the flip side, there are six at large spots after six are locked in for conference winners, and those at large spots feel destined to be heavily weighted toward the Big 10 and SEC, which are likely to perhaps both get at least three and maybe even four teams in. So there’s an argument for seeking out those conferences as well, because they will likely have better odds to just get into the 12-team field, although will be comparatively more likely to not get a bye and need to win at least one playoff game to reach the 20-point plateau (on the other side, they will also likely have better odds of actually going all the way for the 80 points).
Anyway, this year’s results included NCAAF4 Michigan taking down the 80, with my Washington Huskies grabbing the 50 as the runners up despite not being drafted (NCAAF5 USC and NCAAF9 Oregon were the Pac-12 schools that got selected, but I do need to defend my honor and note I took UW in one of my other, slightly deeper leagues).
NCAAF2 Alabama and NCAAF10 Texas were the semifinalists, while the next best ranked teams in the final AP poll included NCAAF1 Georgia, NCAAF8 Florida State, the undrafted Missouri, and the aforementioned Oregon. Six of the eight point-scoring teams came from top-10 ADPs, but that was a little bit unique, and obviously the format is changing this year, so who knows how it’ll look next year.
The highest-drafted non-point-scorers included NCAAF3 Ohio State, USC, NCAAF6 Clemson, and NCAAF7 LSU.
NFL
Our final sport, freshest on everyone’s mind, where the top-drafted NFL1 Kansas City Chiefs narrowly edged the NFL3 San Francisco 49ers in a great Super Bowl. The semifinalists were both popular mid-rounders, but the Baltimore Ravens (NFL9) and Detroit Lions (NFL12) still came in behind some pretty questionable teams, and remind that there is value in thinking through who has resources and could build efficiently through the NFL offseason.
One of my favorite later-round options for 2024 has a rookie QB contract where the talent is already clearly a massive surplus value, and they also already made the quarterfinals this year as an undrafted team, and that was the Houston Texans. People will say the AFC is too stacked, and that’s definitely a truth, but it reminds a bit of early-career Joe Burrow and the Bengals being able to vault over the other very good AFC teams because of the way they were able to build with cap flexibility in that early window. One tricky thing is whether the Jacksonville Jaguars (last year’s NFL8) rebound, and whether the Indianapolis Colts have their own rookie-QB stud paired with a good, young coach, which we didn’t get to see enough of but might well be the case. That might make the AFC South more competitive than it feels.
Outside Houston, NFL4 Buffalo Bills, NFL14 Los Angeles Rams, and another undrafted in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were the other 20-point winners, reminding further that you can find point-scorers from late when making these picks before the offseason has even begun.
For similar recaps of the other sports that include some forward-looking thoughts, hit the November article and also the original long strategy piece from 2021, which is in fairness a bit outdated now, but is the foundation for a lot of my more recent commentary. If you’re new, that’s a good one to go over, as it includes some ideas for resources to consult and ways to consider various leagues that should help form the basis for more updated analyses. (One of these years, I’ll write up something similar again, but I probably won’t have the time again here in 2024.)
That’s all for now! Make sure to get signed up for the Omnifantasy Cup, with the details at the top of this post. We’ll chat again soon.
Thanks for the update and insights!