Find the proposed draft date and PS week 3 injury rule listed below. Please comment as you see fit.

All-Pro draft

Starts on Sunday, August 23rd at 8:00 am EST. A moratorium goes into effect on Thursday, August 27th at 7:00 PM EST at the start of Preseason week 3 games and the moratorium ends at Tuesday, September 1st at 12:00 noon EST.

* - There is a Monday, August 24th game between the Jets and the Ravens. However, based upon current ADPs the likelihood of a player from one of these team being drafting before the game starts is remote, unless the draft were to move exceptionally quickly. If this does happen and an injury occurs to a drafted player, the rule below will go into effect

***************************************************

Preseason Week 3 injury rule

If a player(s) drafted on or before pick 4.12 is injured in Preseason Week 3, AND there is a report posted at nfl.com or the official team site that the injury is reported to result in that player missing at least 6 weeks from the date of the injury (missing at least 4 weeks of regular season play), the owner of the player, solely at their discretion, may elect to return the player(s) to the free agent player pool and select any undrafted player only from that dropped player's same team and at that player's same position to fill the dropped player's roster spot.

IF a player is dropped as detailed above, the dropped player will be ineligible to be drafted by any other team for the remainder of the All Pro draft. The dropped player will become eligible for acquisition at the first blind bid free agent session of the regular season and may be acquired by any team in the league per blind bid free agent rules.

Owner(s) electing to drop injured players complying with the qualifications listed above must notify the commissioner through e-mail and/or pm and the league through a post at the Huddle league message board before 12:00 noon EST on Tuesday, September 1st. Notice to both the commissioner and the league occurring at or later than 12:00 noon EST on Tuesday, September 1st will result in any owners losing the right to replace the player(s) per the rules posted above.

I'm good with all of the above.

Works for me. Will there be a time limit set on the picks?

2V

I think the clock is set at a 12 hr time limit for all divisions. I also think that if we do the simple things - like e-mailing the next person in line when you make your pick - that we won't have an issue with the timer.

What if a player gets injured but not in a preseason game? Is an injury an injury regardless?

So there's no drafting during the moratorium?

All of the above works for me.

That's FF. If you were worried about one of your top players getting hurt during the season, you had ample opportunity to make drafting his handcuff a priority. My problem with drafting before week 3 is that the top players tend to get their greatest preseason work during PS week 3, but the draft will most probably not be far enough along for owners to secure handcuffs if they would like to do so. It also could tip the balance of the league unfairly by having someone on the clock during preseason week 3 when a stud goes down and that owner is allowed to snap up what could be a better FF producer later in the draft through sheer luck.

Good point, though, and well taken.




No drafting would be allowed during the PS week 3 games moratorium - for the reason stated above to prevent an owner from lucking into an injury situation that would give them what would be a top FF producer later in the draft through injury/luck timing.






Always appreciate the Devil's advocate in discussions like this. I know for a fact that there are angles that I haven't looked at when I cook up crap brilliant ideas ( ) like this...

I am fine with it but would have been fine without any compensation aswell injuries happen there is nothing you can do about it they don't even need to be playing the games to get injured as training camp is showing.

Yeah, we're off to a rocky start, especially in the WR department. The few that aren't getting injured are getting demoted!

Fine with me.

Also fine with me. Two questions though.

First, why are we arbitrarily capping this at the 4.12 pick? If I draft at the 4.12/5.01 turn, why is one player covered and the other not? Seems a little silly, but perhaps there is an angle I'm not seeing?

Second, I want to bring up that different teams handle injuries differently. For example, if a Patriot is injured, it is highly unlikely that their injury will be announced as serious enough to miss 6 weeks, unless it's clearly season ending, even if they end up missing 8-10 weeks. I appreciate that you spelled out the exact criteria for this rule to kick in. I just want to make sure we're all aware of pitfalls such as this. Not that I think it should be changed. Just want to bring it up so that it's understood and has been considered ahead of time. I guess that's not really a question...

Great questions. No rule is absolutely perfect, and you hit two really goods points.

The 4.12? It's arbitrary, but the thinking behind it is that it encapsulates the almost the entire portion of the top 50 players, and protects what would be each team's top 4 players - players that would be difficult to replace with players drafted after them unless you have a good fit replacement on the same team for them. The value drop isn't nearly as great after round 4 as you go into subsequent rounds, meaning after round 4 you can probably find a decent replacement later in the draft who is untied to the injured player's team/position. We are looking predominantly at RB3s, WR3s, and QBs outside the top 5 once we get into rounds 5 and beyond. There has to be a cutoff somewhere or we could have 7th/8th/9th rounders being replaced - which an owner can do through subsequent draft picks.

As to injury reporting - that isn't perfect either, but at least we'll have at least 2 1/2 days before the deadline kicks in for all but two teams (all but MIN & HOU play on or before Saturday, and both of those teams aren't known for prevaricating on injuries like some others). That should allow for more thorough information to leak through.

I'd like to make this completely clear - the PS week 3 rule is not set in stone, and it is okay to kick it to the curb and not use it. This is as much a discussion thread as it is an approval/disapproval thread. It's a pretty radical idea. But I hate to see imbalance through luck (or lack of it) before the season even starts if it can be prevented. Hopefully no one here will have to invoke the rule.

I say we just draft.

Although I appreciate the spirit of this proposed rule, I could take it or leave it.

Yep.

Just an FYI, if we start and then stop the draft, the timer will be running in the other leagues. It will be also running in the All Pro Draft. If there's a way to halt the draft or just start it over where it ended as a do over. I'm all for making things work out for what we want to work out. If this is something that is totally a must have, than we will find a way to do it. So far we have a few that can live with it or live without it.

I'll handle the draft board. I can modify as needed with my super-duper commish magic powers.

ok and good. I can't think of any more objections.

Okay, we're getting nowhere here, because most of us are playing the "I'm fine either way" card. So let's just put it to a simple vote, with no explanation necessary. Either "Yes" (this is something I'm genuinely interested in pursuing, but I'll bow to the majority), or "No" (I don't really think it's necesary, but I'll bow to the majority).

I vote "No".

Well, when you put it that way, I have to vote NO.

well since it has been put that way i guess my vote would be no

No
I like the idea but I don't like the extended break interrupting the draft.

BB, good thinking on the idea but it looks like the HOFers will be passing at this point.

I'll tack on another one of these for myself.

I prefer not to do the drafting interruptus myself.

Well, that sure queered up everything. Thanks.

We had 7 "fine with it", "works for me", or similar (in other words, 7 yesses) and 3 abstensions. Then you post this and we get 5 no votes.

My feeling now is to scrap the whole thing and let the draft run as-is straight through.

Actually BB, nothing got "queered up" unless we end up with a vote of like 6-6 or 7-5. In fact, asking for a definitive "yes" or "no" should ultimately allay potential issues with how the whole thing is handled. My initial response was indicative of the facts that I don't really like the idea from a practical perspective but I couldn't think of a good reason to fight it because I like the spirit of the rule. In this case, when presented with a direct question, practicality wins out.

No need to scrap it until we get more responses.

I'm really not worried either way. This isn't a personal battle for me and I would understand why some owners aren't comfortable with a rule like this.

My only reason for creating a rule like this in a FF league is:

1) Is there a worst case scenario that could significantly impact the league? Yes, pretty obvious that there is
2) Is the worst case scenario the result of luck or is it owner responsibility? Obvious that it could be exclusively luck
3) Is there a reasonable and relatively unobtrusive solution that would not impact various owners unfairly? Yes

My vision of a worst case scenario (and I'll use past names to refrain from name dropping):

Suppose a few (or more than a few for some of you...) years go Terrell Davis was the highest ranked RB on the predominance of FF cheat sheets. Suppose also that his replacement was an obvoius Mike Anderson, whose VBD was around 10.06 because Davis has shown that he could take a lot of work and play through pain.

So we start our draft after almost all PS week 2 games have been played and Davis of course goes at 1.01. We manage to get to the middle of round 6 by the time the weekend comes, and per rule the draft timer is off on weekends. The owner of pick 6.07 recognizes the situation and elects not to draft anyone starting Friday night, sitting on his pick until he is forced to select on Monday morning. The team with pick 1.01 has not had enough of an opportunity to select Anderson as a handcuff because the draft isn't far enough along and it would be unreasonable to expect him to select Anderson so early.

On Saturday night, Terrell Davis suffers a catastrophic knee injury in the third series of the game. On Sunday morning we all find that he has torn his ACL and will miss the entire regular season. The owner of pick 6.07 now goes into action, selecting Mike Anderson with the pick.

Now, through an event that is almost exclusively luck determined, the owner of pick 1.01 is playing an entire season without a first round pick, and the owner of pick 6.07 has now garnered what would be considered a mid-round first round pick in exchange for losing his 6th round pick, meaning he is starting the season with to mid-first round picks, which is where the real problem lies. There is an inherent imbalance in the league before the season even starts, and that imbalance was not created by good management or ownership, or other owners screwing up - it was the result of being at the right place in the draft at the right time when a catastrophic unpredictable event occured.

Had the injury occured in PS week 4, the draft would have been far enough along that the TD owner would have had the chance to handcuff Anderson to him, but because it happened in PS week 3, there was no realistic opportunity to do so. The only portion of this scenario not created by luck was the owner of 6.07 dawdling with his pick, which by rule was his right to do. So because of a lucky event, the league is now severely imbalanced.

************************

That's preventable by a pretty simplistic rule that impacts all teams equally. While this rule would unbalance the team with 1.01, the impact would be much less severe. It does not impact the owner of pick 6.07 at all, or any other owner, as no one had Anderson lined up to go in the immediate subsequent picks, and hence does not impact the draft. And even if TD suffered an injury like say a broken arm where he would be out 8 weeks and the 1.01 owner elected to replace him with Anderson, all other teams in the league would have equal opportunity to acquire an impact player like TD in FA blind bidding in week 1. And even if the owner of 6.07 had picked on Saturday morning, the owner of 6.08 or 6.09 could be in the same right place/right time scenario even if they were not intentionally dawdling to maximize their opportunities.

Not perfect, but much, much less impact on the league as a whole and on two teams specifically than doing nothing. Could this have happened just as easily in practice on Monday of the following week and had almost the same result of imbalance? Yep - but games situations are known events where injuries seem to have a greater probablility of occuring for obvious reasons. You can't prevent every bad scenario or drafts would never get done. Practicality has to overrule somewhere and sometime.

That's my thought process here. It meets all 3 criteria for creating a rule like this.

That said, I also understand and would support owners who do not want a rule like this in place. It's far from mainstream, and some consider FF to merely be a game of luck, and as such this event created almost exclusively by luck is just another event that should be accepted. And again, it's not personal, so if you do not feel like I do and think the rule is the worst rule you've ever seen drafted and ought to be soaked with gas and burned, I'm okay with that too...

Enough said by me - I'll stfu and let the league decide where we're going with this.

A couple of quick points:

1.) I know it might not seem that way, but I appreciate what you're trying to do BB. As I mentioned in the first thread, I've tried to implement injury rules as a commissioner myself with the intention of maintaining a fair and sportsmanlike environment for the league. Unfortunately, that's also where my resistence comes in. In the end, all it did was make things more complicated for everyone, especially me. After reading through this thread, I came to two conclusions: 1.) It was starting to get complicated and 2.) the interest level on the part of the league owners was lukewarm at best. Putting those two together, I thought it was important to say something before we spent another week trying to hammer it out.

2.) Using your example above, if Davis blows out a knee in the third preseason game and I have pick 6.07, there's no way I'm taking Anderson. I don't hope to win, I expect to win, and when I do win, I don't want an asterick next to my championship. Also, doing that to the Davis owner lacks class, and playing with class has never stopped me from racking up championships and scoring titles. I've seen enough of a sampling from the other guys in this league to go out on a limb and say that virtually every other owner in the Huddle Ladder league has the same standards I do. This is a class league with class owners.

3.) Points 1 and 2 don't change the fact that I support you and and what you're trying to do in principle. I just don't think putting a rule in place, particularly one that requires the draft to stop (something that two people have already expressed an issue with) is the way to go. I'm sorry I didn't say something sooner, but like BS, I didn't want to object to something that I agreed with in prinicple.

4.) With points 1,2, and 3 in mind, do we want to talk about either moving the draft up a week or back a week? Can we get it done in 10 days?

I sincerely appreciate the input. Like I said, with this being so radical, I can understand owners not getting behind it. But I do like to try to anticipate situations that can unbalance a league, and remediate when they involve luck rather than personal choice. Guess I've been playing too long and have seen some contentious stuff arise...




Moving UP a week? Ugh - IMO - and IMO only - I'd refrain from that. I know this time of year makes guys get really antsy when they see others drafting, but guys like us in All Pro ought to be able to garner some patience knowing the consequences of drafting too early.

Moving back a week? I think we had some concern about getting the draft done in 10 days, which is what got us here in the first place.

Well BB, since the response to this whole thing has been luke warm at best (have we even heard responses from 1/2 the division?) I say you make an executive decision, ie do what you think is best for the league.

As mentioned before, I'll be fine with it either way. A firm decision and some closure would be nice though.

I object that there are no more objections.


DRAFT ALREADY!!