If your reading this and you can help...a BIG THANK YOU.

Our league has been in existance for 14 years. However, this year we decided to do a Salary Cap/keeper league to change it up a bit. It has been a good experience so far, except for a few things along the way(and Sportsline's inability to manage our cap automatically!!), but the following potential problem could be huge and needs to be addressed before it happens:

Background - Everyone makes the playoffs - single elimination (falling to lower place brackets)......

Here is the situation I am worried about. Lets use my team hypothetically. Lets say I lose two straight playoff matchups and I am no longer in the running for a
"money" finish (top 3)... Looking at my roster I am going to start switching completely into "build for next year" mode... Forexample, I think Steve Smith will be a top 10 WR next year and easily worth $10, and I will drop Favre or Bulger
to gethim... I know David Boston will be a freak next year - and would be a bargain at $4... so I will drop Ahman Green to make room for him too...

*Here is the problem - teams that are "out of it" may start shedding legit talent just to grabspeculative players for next year. This could cause a very unfair situation for players that are "still in it". Lets say that Team X is playing Team Y for the championship, but Manning is injured... how fair would it be to Team X if I
start dropping QBs like Favre and or Bulger that Team Y can pick up... What if I drop Ahman Green - and Team Y picks him up and destroys Team X with him...


Any ideas from your experience would be greatly appreciated !!!
-JDM

We freeze all free agency and trades after week 14

Freeze FA ? I understand the trade deadline (which we have) but what if a team has a serious injury ? Are they just out of luck ?

JD

How big is your roster? Don't you have backups? We freeze our FA/Trade at week 12. You need to make sure you have backups going into the end of the season and playoffs.

The other thing we have is a 2 player practice squad. They don't count against your Cap unless you activate them during the year.

Our rosters are 20 players deep. One year I was only carrying 1 kicker and had to take a zero because my kicker was doubtful for the week. Plan ahead.

We made the same switch this year. Unfortunately I am already in next years team mode. One in my position would be increadible stupid to start dropping players like Green and Bulger to pick up high risk potentials for next year. I don't think this is going to be as big an issue as you might think. I have Alexander, Brown and Jones and plan to keep all of them as I think this year was just flat out bad luck.

OK...so the concensus is to lock down a deadline on FA.......We are leaning towards something similar that would forbid you from dropping anyone after the start of the playoffs, however if you have cap room you could add at any point.

Oh, and we have a roster limit of 16.

And Thanks !!!

Another thing that may be worthwhile to consider (in addition to getting larger rosters for next year so this is less of an issue) would be to limit FA moves of players who have a current year salary above X% of the total team salary cap after Week Y.