COVID Adjustments

Hello, Hughes Guys. Again, I hope you are all doing OK in this unique situation. Mask UP! and Stay Safe. That particularly goes for you Houston guys. Let’s hope the powers that be wise up.
On to football. I am not as confident as I was a month or so ago that the NFL season will go off in any way resembling ‘normal’. It was reported today that the preseason has been cut to two games. I suspect the next shoe to drop will be a push-back of the schedule, maybe a shortened one. I think the upcoming NBA tournament and MLB (ahem) ‘season’ will tell us what to expect as we approach the fall. Personally, I doubt that either will finish but we shall see.
I’m basing the rest of this post on the assumption that there will be a season that is long enough to be meaningful. No matter how a season goes there is no doubt that players will test positive for COVID and put a crunch on fantasy owners. I’ve been kicking around some ways to remedy the sorts of issues that will arise.
With my experiences back in the ‘do it all by hand with a pencil’ days my goal has always been to make it as easy on myself as possible. As it is now things are to the point where it runs itself for the most part. Once the draft is done I only have to do newsletters and retrieve passwords for some of you knuckleheaded Boomer owners. And I want to keep it that way. With that in mind I came up with the following plan:
Currently, we have 15-player rosters plus 1 IR spot and the player MUST be listed as IR in the NFL. Teams that fail to activate a guy off the IR can’t submit a lineup until they fix it. All of that is easily enforced within the system. We allow 3 waiver claims a week, 30 total for the season with a $350 allotment for Blind Bids and FCFS waivers, the latter is $10 a pop. We also have had lineups locked at noon kickoffs on Sunday (although this was changing in 2020) and an end to waivers after week 12 (this was changing also).
Here is what I’m proposing to avoid issues this season and still make it all as automated as possible:
1) Adding a roster spot, maybe two.
2) Adding at least two additional IR slots and allowing players to be placed there if they are NFL Out or IR. I’m guessing that a positive test will land a guy on the ‘Out’ list for a couple of weeks. I realize that there are always guys listed as ‘Out’ and this year will be the same with non-COVID, short-term dings, and such. Allowing players with the ‘Out’ tag to be IR’d is against my philosophy of roster management but I’m not going to be the IR police guy. ‘Out’ will be ‘Out’ for a one-week ankle strain as well as for COVID.
However.. one site I read suggested that the NFL will implement a separate designation for players being quarantined. That makes some sense and if it comes about I will re-think this IR qualification thing.
3) Bumping claims limits to 5 per week, 40 or maybe more per season, and making the $ allotment $500. those numbers are not gospel but you get the drift.
4) Changing to locking lineups at individual kickoffs. I’m sure there will be announcements made on a Monday morning that player X tested + and is out for that night’s game, etc. I want to give owners the chance to make sub moves to account for those situations.
5) Extending waiver claims through the end of the playoffs.
As I noted above, these last two were going to be put in place anyway this season.
The only thing I’ll have to do myself because of all this is to go in and take away the ability to drop and/or add players for owners as their season ends and as others are eliminated in the playoffs. And you guys aren’t going to skirt the rules anyway so that’s not a big deal.
One additional adjustment that is there as a possibility is MFL’s ‘taxi squad’. We’ve never used it and in a league like ours, I’m not sure it has a place. But it may be a way to stash away drafted rookies who we won’t really be able to evaluate or as a place to keep ‘handcuff’ players. Frankly, I think the other things I have proposed will take care of us. But I have time to investigate it.
If we play in 2020 I’m probably going to implement many/most/all of these changes…just for this year unless you owners as a group, have issues with them. I’m going to continue to do what I think is best for the league. I am always open to suggestions and discussion.
Now… a month ago I had very little doubt that there would be an NFL season, maybe shortened, maybe pushed back, but a season. Now, well, I wouldn’t want to bet much on it either way.
I really hope I’m wrong.
-commish