Week Three Recap

 

Well, nobody died, so there's that. I experienced one of those odd Monday nights where I was rooting 'for' and 'against' Patrick Mahomes. I had a substantial lead on the Mahomes-led Legends here in the Hughes but in my dynasty league I was down about 30ish with Mahomes in my pocket. I loved seeing him go off on the f'ing Ravens but why, oh why couldn't the last TD gone to Kelce? 

Ended up winning in my dynasty (that's now 20 regular season wins in a row going back to 2018 ::bows::) but lost to James here in the Ed League by a point. And so it goes....also taking their first loss of 2020 was one of the chalk favorites for the Hughes Bowl, the Holes. It's a big win for the R'backs as they put a tiebreak notch in their belt... don't look now but the defending champs ain't defending much. Yup, the Giants under-performed this week and they'd better step quick it up cause the Nats look stout.

Speaking of the Nats, (unlike my game) the old man schooled the kid over the weekend. Jack's Pirates are 0-3 but that's to be expected when every team you play has a banner weekend. Check out that Points Against column...the Blizzard have had a shitload of points scored against them as well but when you lead the league in scoring it doesn't matter as much. McCaffrey or no McCaffrey, they look tough.

Week One's Wednesday waivers totaled $395 for 10 successful claims. Week Two's claims jumped to $473 for 8 successful claims, an average of $59 a body. We are trending up.

NFL Stuff... If you read my email from earlier tonite you know that the 'bubble' has burst as far as COVID-19 in the NFL. Looks like at least one game and maybe more are in jeopardy this coming weekend. I'm surprised we got this far but maybe we can keep getting lucky. As I said in the email (and have said all year) I'll do whatever I think needs to be done to make this thing work for everyone. Please read your emails from me... no new catastrophic injuries that I am aware of have cropped up. Remember that the IR list is there for you to take advantage of. Guys are eligible if they show NFL tags of IR, Out or COVID. And if a guy loses that tag you need to move him to roster or drop him. No lineups accepted with a violation.

League Site Stuff... I was only half-ass watching the KC-Baltimore game and checking our scores on the app so I wasn't aware that the main scoreboard on our homepage had cratered. The guy who hosts so much of the custom stuff had his servers wiped out by mistake and by the time I got wind of it the game was almost over. It got fixed today. If you ever see that something has gone south on the site like that please contact me. 

Check the front page of the site for a new link to the MFL-Live page. 

And I can't finish without a mention of the death of Gale Sayers. Most of us are probably old enough to remember watching him. He was simply incredible.I've seen a lot of football players in my time but I've never seen anyone who could compare. Take a couple of minutes to watch this video with a few of his highlights. 

His career was similar to that of Sandy Koufax...he wasn't around a long time but when he was, he was transcendent. 

I collect his cards and some other items (and he wasn't a Baltimore Colt so that should tell you what I thought of him!).

His rookie card.....

A piece I found years ago that I couldn't pass up at the price...

RIP, Kansas Comet.

Week Two Recap

Well, that's interesting...all three divisions have a 2-0 team, a 1-1 team, and an 0-2 team. What's crazy is the a couple of those are not the teams you'd expect. Take mine, for instance. If I wasn't such an idiot and had kept Fournette and Mongomery in my lineup instead of yanking them on Friday, I'd have hit 178 points. That would have been just three points off the all-time record. And I'm the guy who preaches about using your first instinct. 

We've Moved!

Like the 1984 Colts, The Hughes News has picked up and moved on. Unlike the Colts it's not being done by a drunk asshole in the middle of the night. Without boring anyone with the specifics I'll just say that WordPress, our home for these many online years, has made changes in their writing tools that have been giving me fits since the summer of 2019.

Week One Recap

If you were tracking scores this week I want you to know that the NFL (or me, either) isn’t responsible for your case of whiplash.

The points ran hot and heavy. I had the same thought this morning that a couple of others did…this was the highest weekly scoring ever. That turns out not to be the case.

Teams averaged 108 points this week. That’s good for 7th on the list of highest scoring weeks:

Lets Kick This Off!

Here We Go!

As the 2020 Hughes League gets underway, I thought it would be a good idea to post a list of the changes we are facing this season. There are many, some are permanent (or as permanent as these things ever are) and some are specific to this 2020 season. Those changes are in responce to the problems we may encounter with COVID+ players, etc.

Long Term Changes:
Lineups…now players lock at their kickoff rather than everyone locking at the Sunday first kickoff.
Waivers…will extend into the postseason. Only teams still ‘alive’ can make pickups.
Trades..All trades will come to me for approval. See the February 11 post below for an explaination. I may double-back on this. The trading deadline has not been extended.
Dalvin Cook Rule..in short it protects your investment in a highly drafted player who loses a year due to injury. Check the Rules page for details.
Draft Value (beginning w/2021 draft) No player will have a Draft Value later than Rd 10 no matter how he is acquired.
Sixth playoff spot i.e. the second Wild card team, will be awarded on record.
Points Per Game is the second tie-break in all cases after head-to-head for standings and playoff qualifier tie-break where applicable.
2020-specific adjustments:
Rosters raised to 18 players
IR raised to six slots and players with IR, Out, HoldOut/OptOut, or Covid designations are eligible for our IR list.
Waivers…Waiver claims are raised to five per week/40 for the season and the waiver cash allotment is $500.
Commissioner reserves the right to make whatever adjustments might be needed (schedule, playoff qualifiers, etc) to make the season work.

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Handy Guide To Waiver Calender:

Weekly Waiver Timetable:

Sunday Noon-system begins accepting blind bid waiver claims
Wednesday night @ 9 p.m.- Blind Bid waivers are processed, and players awarded
Friday morning @ 8 a.m.-FCFS waivers open
Sunday Noon-FCFS waivers close and cycle repeats
Notes: Week 1 does NOT have the Friday-Sunday FCFS, that is run between the draft and first season kickoff.
Postseason Waivers are only blind bid and run on Wednesday at 9 p.m. (Dec 9, 16, & 23). There are no FCFS waivers in those weeks.
And finally…at least one owner has found that email alerts for lineups (his and opponents) were not being received. Turns out that somehow his franchise had all emails turned off. There are many options for what you can receive from the league..lineups, results, waiver results, and on and on. You can specify what email you want to get by going to For Owners–>Franchise Setup and then clicking the Contact Info link which is one of the choices right below the league banner.
Have a great season. Let’s hope we can get it all in. Feel free to fire your questions and concerns my way.
-commish

August Update

Yes, indeed there is a lot to talk about in the second week of August. I’ll try and list everything here. Some adjustments have changed from the previous update due to updates from myfantasyleague.com and some are just a result of me re-thinking how we should approach the season. Many items are interrelated but I’ll try to keep it organized. Here goes:

The Draft/Keepers

The date has been set as Friday, August 28. The time will be 7 pm Central. I hope that doesn’t need to change. We will be entirely online. We will use the regular league site draft room. I may have a Zoom meeting room set up which would be fun. It’s optional but I hope as many of you that can participate will do so.
We will go 17 rounds. The first 15 are being treated as a ‘normal’ draft with some skipped picks due to teams acquiring earlier picks. Then we will go two more rounds. Those have had a separate draft order generated. If the draft runs too late for you it’s no issue for me to skip your pick and you can add players later. just let me know that night.
You have in your hands the Draft Grid and Draft Value list. The Grid will be updated and re-issued after keepers are declared. See the calendar on the league site.
Keepers can be sent at any time via email, text. or phone. I’ve opened it up early but won’t do anything until the deadline on April 25th. Up till then, you can change your mind as much as you want. Please don’t use the site to ‘Select Keepers’.
Rosters, Waivers and more
We will have an 18 player roster this season. There will be an expanded IR. I’ve set it at six but I may lower it to five or four. I’m still thinking that over. MFL has added a couple of new player designations for 2020.
A player out for COVID-related reasons will be marked with a ‘C’ where you are used to seeing injury status. ‘H’ will be applied to players who have (or will, I guess) opted-out for the 2020 season. Both of those will be allowed to be put on our IR. That means you can IR players with the following designations: ‘IR’, ‘O’ for ‘Out’, ‘C’ for ‘COVID’, and ‘H’ which MFL is using for ‘Holdout/Opt-out’. Suspended players will still not be allowed on our IR if acquired with that status. There is no minimum or maximum IR stay.
There may be a player who opts out who you might want as a keeper. Not likely but possible. In that case, you would keep him and then IR him later.
Waiver limits and available cash have been expanded. See previous news posting here for details. We will again have a first-come, first-served that will open the Monday after the draft. Again, see the calendar.
The Season
I will adjust the schedule if I need to based on the NFL. My guess is that the games may shift. We’ve seen the mess baseball made of this. I am expecting football to be the same. I think that at least ten fantasy weeks will be needed for this to be a valid year for us, eight regular-season games, and a two-week playoff process. We could just seed and then play off the division winners to get to a champion. We’ve done it before. Gonna play it by ear. Nothing else we can do.
New Draft Value Regulation for 2021 Draft

This does not apply to the current Value List or this year’s keepers. Going forward, beginning with next season’s draft, we will assign a Round Ten value to any player drafted in Rounds 13 or later. There are exactly seven players currently on rosters who, if kept, would be effected next season. These players are listed now with a value of 13 or 14. These players will be ‘grandfathered’ if the current owner decided to keep them this year. In other words, a player with a ’14’ this season and used as a keeper will still have a 12 value next year, all things being equal. None of the other regulations, i.e. the placing of players with equal value, the Dalvin Cook rule, round ‘boost’ for a traded player, etc will change.
The Website
The homepage is ready. Setting the draft order correctly became a headache due to how MFL handles traded slots and removing slots. Took some work but I think it’s fine. I plan to check it against the printed draft grid which I know to be correct.
The rules page needs a refresh. I updated it months ago with some of our ‘permanent’ changes, the lineup deadline change, postseason waivers, and a few other items. The 2020 temporary changes like the number of waiver claims, waiver funds, and all the rest of this silly nonsense, has not been added in. I may just allow these news postings to serve that purpose. Consider this to be a disclaimer…”2020 IS DIFFERENT. THE RULES PAGE MAY NOT ALWAYS APPLY.”
If you’ve forgotten some of the new regulations go back through the past few posts. That will help. Only some of the numbers (roster limit, waiver cash, etc) are not valid for this season but should be for the next one. I also communicate via email and the front page message at the league site.  Hopefully, I won’t need to do a lot of that.
‘See’ ya at the draft. Until then Stay Safe. Fire away with any questions.
-Commish

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