After each ShePlaysNWSL round, the ShePlays team puts out a graphic showing the “Team of the Round.” The TOTR is the starting XI that would have earned the most fantasy points in that round while still meeting all of the criteria for a valid ShePlaysNWSL team. Because the TOTR has to be a possible starting XI, a player might be left off despite scoring more fantasy points than other players who do make the team. To explain a little bit more about how it all works, here’s an overview of the considerations that go into the TOTR!
Price
One of the most significant elements of the TOTR calculation is pricing. The ShePlaysNWSL salary cap is $3,300,000 – but that’s for 15 players, so what do we use for the 11-player TOTR? We imagine that our bench is made up of four players in the lowest price tier – in this case, that’s $75,000 per player, or $300,000 total for the bench, leaving $3,000,000 for the TOTR.
If an initial 11-player list exceeds that limit, we exchange more expensive players on the list for less expensive players that scored slightly lower, while otherwise keeping the team score as high as possible.
In general, the TOTR doesn’t consider player prices beyond what is necessary to fit the salary cap, with one exception: if two players scored the same number of points in the round, but the lineup only has room for one of them (say, the top two goalkeepers had the same score), the less expensive one will be included on the TOTR, and the more expensive one will be left off.
Formation
Often, many of the highest-scoring players for a round will come from the same position group – usually forwards, but in some rounds, multiple teams keep clean sheets and there are tons of defenders amongst the top scorers.
However, the TOTR has to fit one of the five permitted formations for ShePlays starting XIs, meaning at least one goalkeeper and three midfielders (typically lower-scoring positions) and no more than three forwards or five defenders.
The TOTR will sometimes leave off, for instance, the fourth-(or fifth-, or sixth-…) highest-scoring forward, even though they are in the top eleven scorers overall for the round, and include the highest-scoring goalkeeper or the third-highest scoring midfielder in order for the lineup to be valid. This means you could have a positional line in your fantasy lineup that outscored that positional line in the TOTR.
Teams
The TOTR also has to follow the rule that no fantasy team can have more than four players from the same NWSL team.
This doesn’t come into play as often as pricing or positional concerns, but sometimes, one team will have an extremely good week with lots of high-scoring players, while the remaining teams didn’t do enough to have many standout players. Think of those weeks where there are a lot of draws, but one team wins big and has a clean sheet.
If more than four players from the same team make the top eleven, assuming all the other criteria are satisfied, we trade out the lowest-scoring player(s) from that team for the next-highest-scoring player(s) from teams without as many representatives in the TOTR.
TL;DR
If you are making your very first ShePlaysNWSL team today (or you are making a lot of changes to your existing team), you can always use a TOTR as a starting point – the TOTR will always be in a valid formation for a ShePlays starting XI, it won’t have more than four players from the same NWSL team, and although it might be expensive, it will still leave enough room in the budget to fill your bench.