Speaker 1: Welcome to Fantasy Football Weekly, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Time now for Fantasy Football Weekly from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: your weekly source for the nation's best fantasy football advice, speculation,
Speaker 1: and whatever stupid stuff they decided to drop into the show.
Speaker 1: Now here's your host, Paul. Hello, and welcome to a
Speaker 1: no fun edition of Fantasy Football Weekly. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: we're overdue to talk COVID in detail, but look, nobody
Speaker 1: is having fun with COVID, and frankly, we're not gonna
Speaker 1: have fun with it here either. But it's awfully important
Speaker 1: to do some COVID planning now in the preseason. And
Speaker 1: that's part of the reason that I'm here alone today.
Speaker 1: Normally I've got my crew, some of my guys here,
Speaker 1: but nobody wants to talk COVID. Everybody wants to have fun.
Speaker 1: We want to talk about breaking down a DPS and
Speaker 1: our mock drafts and all the news around the league.
Speaker 1: This one is about the important steps that your league
Speaker 1: needs to take to make sure that you've got an
Speaker 1: action plan in place in the preseason for a variety
Speaker 1: of COVID related items. Now, it's so important to get
Speaker 1: this done in the preseason. If you wait until the
Speaker 1: regular season to try to figure things out on the fly.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a disaster. Friendships will end, leagues
Speaker 1: will dissolve. I'll give you an example. Let's say it's
Speaker 1: Week six and Bruce has no COVID players, and your
Speaker 1: league is trying to decide what to do when there's
Speaker 1: an outbreak of COVID. Bruce, who has no COVID players,
Speaker 1: is gonna be like, well, they shouldn't get any special
Speaker 1: consideration at all. But Becky's got four COVID players on
Speaker 1: her roster and she's gonna want all kinds of special
Speaker 1: consideration because she's going through a lot of difficulty with COVID.
Speaker 1: You can't do it in the middle of the season.
Speaker 1: Even worse, let's say it's like we twelve and the
Speaker 1: NFL cancels the whole rest of the season. One person,
Speaker 1: let's say Emma has got the best record. She's tending too,
Speaker 1: and she's lobbying hard that a twelve game season, twelve
Speaker 1: weeks season should be considered a full season and that
Speaker 1: she should be the champion. Meanwhile, there might be another guy, Eric.
Speaker 1: He's got a surging bubble team and he's convinced that
Speaker 1: if the season hadn't been canceled, he'd a roarred through
Speaker 1: the playoffs and he would have beat Emma and he
Speaker 1: would have been the champion. And you can't just give
Speaker 1: the championship to Emma. You have to decide some of
Speaker 1: these key things, like what constitutes a full season for
Speaker 1: your league? Right now? What are you gonna do when
Speaker 1: your some of your players get COVID and they're going
Speaker 1: to what are you going to do? You have to
Speaker 1: decide now in the preseason, not today. We sent a
Speaker 1: little time as a recording this it's July, but you
Speaker 1: need to do it very important. Let's start here with
Speaker 1: the draft or the auction. This part is really easy.
Speaker 1: Just you may want to have an online plan ready.
Speaker 1: Normally you're having your draft in person. For many of you,
Speaker 1: maybe in person drafts just not possible. You know, you
Speaker 1: might not. You may find that you can't get twelve
Speaker 1: people that are all willing to sit in the same
Speaker 1: room together. That's the case. You need to have an
Speaker 1: online online plan ready. Many sites let you draft online
Speaker 1: for free, and you could certainly use those sites if
Speaker 1: you want to. You may have to change the starting
Speaker 1: date of your draft or auction as well. So be
Speaker 1: ready for that as well. The NFL. And I say
Speaker 1: that because the NFL could end up pushing one of
Speaker 1: its season start the start of the season back a
Speaker 1: couple of could be weeks, maybe Monts who knows that
Speaker 1: start of the season could move. And if the start
Speaker 1: of the season removed six weeks, you'd probably want to
Speaker 1: move your draft with it. So just be just be
Speaker 1: ready to be flexible on the date for the start
Speaker 1: of your drafter auction as well. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I'll mention as a quick piece of draft or
Speaker 1: auction strategy here to to think about with COVID. And
Speaker 1: we're not gonna spend much time here on on strategy
Speaker 1: around COVID, but I want to mention this. It's possible
Speaker 1: that a whole team could get COVID, could like run
Speaker 1: through the locker room of a whole team. You might
Speaker 1: be like, man, I want Bucks. I want to have Brady,
Speaker 1: and I want to have Chris Godwin and I want
Speaker 1: to have Gronk. But what happens if what happens if
Speaker 1: your your Buck heavy team gets swarmed under with COVID
Speaker 1: and you know there's a real scenario where the Bucks
Speaker 1: get shut down, the league continues playing, but the Bucks
Speaker 1: get shut down for a week or two. So you
Speaker 1: may want to give some thought to diversifying your roster
Speaker 1: a little bit as well, something that I think would
Speaker 1: make sense this year more than other years. Okay, now
Speaker 1: let's talk about what to do when a player test
Speaker 1: positive for COVID and your and your league needs to
Speaker 1: make a decision. So first, when a player does test
Speaker 1: positive for COVID, player probably gets quarantined. So when that happens,
Speaker 1: I think most likely scenario is that player is going
Speaker 1: to be unavailable for two or three weeks. While that
Speaker 1: player is presumably alone in a bedroom someplace chilling out
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks. Now that player will not practice,
Speaker 1: so the team obviously will have no chance of playing.
Speaker 1: I think you you'd really accept in very large rostered leagues.
Speaker 1: I think you need to create, and by large roster
Speaker 1: I mean at least twenty plus where you've got most
Speaker 1: of all the depth anybody you want to pick up
Speaker 1: already in a roster. I think you need to create
Speaker 1: a not necessarily an I are spot, because I are
Speaker 1: is one thing. This isn't quite I R some other
Speaker 1: spot that you use, and you might have to designate
Speaker 1: it in your league manager as I are, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call it a a COVID slot. You need to
Speaker 1: create a COVID slot that your league can use to
Speaker 1: just slop people in who've got COVID, and those guys
Speaker 1: are off to the side, and that opens up a
Speaker 1: spot that you can go you can go fill up.
Speaker 1: You're already punished enough that a starting player has COVID
Speaker 1: and can't play for two to three weeks, So why
Speaker 1: are you gonna double down on that and not let
Speaker 1: that owner go pick up a free agent and fill
Speaker 1: that spot. I think you should. You should treat it
Speaker 1: just like you probably do. I R. Right now, player
Speaker 1: goes on I R, he shelved until he comes back.
Speaker 1: When he comes back, you take him off. I R.
Speaker 1: Same thing you should do with your COVID slot. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, some teams so many new weeks gonna
Speaker 1: be unlucky here, and it's gonna have three or four
Speaker 1: players get COVID at one time. I mean, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why you need to have this COVID slot. You don't
Speaker 1: want those teams to be in a spot where they
Speaker 1: have They're in a a brutally tough position. With the
Speaker 1: three or four players that have COVID and that they
Speaker 1: either have to drop those presumably good players and pick
Speaker 1: up some dregs or or or you know, or even worse,
Speaker 1: you don't want to have that player who's already stuck
Speaker 1: with COVID players having to then become a default win
Speaker 1: and wreck the integrity of the league because they can't
Speaker 1: they can't roster anybody. So really important to create the
Speaker 1: COVID slot. Now, how many players can you put on COVID.
Speaker 1: I've had some people on Twitter asking me how many
Speaker 1: COVID slots should we create. In my mind it's unlimited number.
Speaker 1: So if you do get struck with the three, four
Speaker 1: or five COVID players, god forbid, but it could really
Speaker 1: could happen. You need to just be able to use
Speaker 1: as many as you need to use. Okay, next topic
Speaker 1: for COVID, and this one I think is even more important,
Speaker 1: and this one is gonna be thorny for a lot
Speaker 1: of leagues. Your league needs to decide if you and
Speaker 1: your co owners need to have a six team game
Speaker 1: season to be considered a valid season, because the NFL
Speaker 1: could end up torpedoing the season at some point. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's eight weeks, maybe it's ten weeks, twelve weeks, whatever.
Speaker 1: At what point have you played enough of the NFL
Speaker 1: season for your league to consider it a valid season
Speaker 1: where you're gonna crown a champion, where you're going to
Speaker 1: award the prize money, where you're gonna send that traveling trophy.
Speaker 1: How many games does it have to be? Does it
Speaker 1: have to be a full sixteen game season? Bear in mind,
Speaker 1: if you went twelve twelve weeks kind of a long time.
Speaker 1: It's three months of play out of four months. You're
Speaker 1: early December. Twelve weeks is kind of a lot. I
Speaker 1: think to me, it's my personal recommendation. Twelve weeks is
Speaker 1: about the right number to be considered a valid season.
Speaker 1: Now where it gets thorny is playoffs. You have a
Speaker 1: twelve week season. You know, if the NFL cancels it
Speaker 1: after twelve weeks, you will not have had playoff. But
Speaker 1: I think that's just, you know, it's just unfortunate. We'd
Speaker 1: all prefer to have playoffs, but you just you can't
Speaker 1: know that it's going to happen that way. And if
Speaker 1: you play three out of four months and you hate
Speaker 1: to have it be worth nothing. You know, all the
Speaker 1: epic victories, the Monday nights when you were crossing your
Speaker 1: fingers hoping your tight end is going to get that
Speaker 1: fourth quarter touchdown that you needed. All that stuff is
Speaker 1: totally invalidated because you needed a sixteen game regular season
Speaker 1: when it just wasn't possible. So my recommendation, I feel
Speaker 1: like twelve ish games is about right to be considered
Speaker 1: a valid season. But let's um, let's talk it through
Speaker 1: a little bit some scenarios where the season could be interrupted, shortened, modified, altered, aborted, canceled, whatever.
Speaker 1: Number one, if they delay the start of the season,
Speaker 1: that's pretty easy. You'll start when the NFL season starts.
Speaker 1: So a delayed season really is not a big deal
Speaker 1: for fantasy owners yet. Now, if there's an interrupted season,
Speaker 1: so let's say they play four or five six games,
Speaker 1: then they pause for a month to get everybody through
Speaker 1: some COVID problems, and then they come back and play
Speaker 1: the rest of them. They play a remaining sixteen game schedule,
Speaker 1: however long. You just stop when they stop, you start
Speaker 1: when they start, and you continue when the season comes back.
Speaker 1: I think that's really easy for everybody to understand too.
Speaker 1: So delayed starts not a problem. Interrupted starts, not a problem.
Speaker 1: Canceled seasons where it starts to get dicey for the
Speaker 1: reasons we just talked about how many weeks do you
Speaker 1: need for your league to consider it a valid season.
Speaker 1: So let's say you take my recommendation you go twelve
Speaker 1: weeks for a valid season. You will not have started
Speaker 1: the playoffs in twelve weeks, so you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: come up in advance with what are our what are
Speaker 1: our criteria for crowning a champion after twelve weeks? Is
Speaker 1: it by best record, with a tiebreaker being most points scored?
Speaker 1: I think that's what it is, and that's what I
Speaker 1: would recommend doing. Is you would after twelve weeks, you
Speaker 1: just give it to over Scott or whatever you know,
Speaker 1: twelve weeks or beyond. If you say you gotta have
Speaker 1: a minimum of twelve weeks, could go four team weeks
Speaker 1: whatever best record. What if it's uh week fifteen, you're
Speaker 1: halfway into the halfway into the playoffs, then I think
Speaker 1: you would shorten it down to just the teams that
Speaker 1: are still alive. Every team that's still alive, then who
Speaker 1: had the best who had the best record, who had
Speaker 1: the most points? So really important that you talked through
Speaker 1: how many weeks of play you need to have to
Speaker 1: have a valid season if we get to a canceled
Speaker 1: season scenario where there's fewer than the number of weeks
Speaker 1: that you want played. So let's say you do believe
Speaker 1: the bar at twelve weeks, but they only play ten weeks. Now,
Speaker 1: what seasons canceled? What does your league do in some
Speaker 1: very important situations, like what happens all the money? I
Speaker 1: recommend you roll it forward to the next year. All right,
Speaker 1: you paid in twenty twenty, it didn't work out, they
Speaker 1: canceled the season, and you know, we're just gonna roll
Speaker 1: everybody's money to next year. You could refund it to
Speaker 1: everybody if you want, and you have to recollect it
Speaker 1: again in the spring. I think you should just roll
Speaker 1: it forward. Now, this last part is specific to Dynasty
Speaker 1: and Empire league owners. Now, if you're not in a
Speaker 1: nice your Empire league and you just don't care about
Speaker 1: COVID stuff, hanging up, this podcast effectively over for you.
Speaker 1: This is only for Dynasty Empire League players commissioners. You
Speaker 1: need to think about if you have a canceled season
Speaker 1: that is not a valid season, what do you do
Speaker 1: about the draft order next year. That's now we're really
Speaker 1: future thinking. But this could be a huge problem later.
Speaker 1: So again you get it squared away. Now, how are
Speaker 1: you going to figure out the one draft order if
Speaker 1: you didn't have a valid twenty season. The temptation maybe
Speaker 1: to just say we're gonna roll over last year's draft order.
Speaker 1: So the team that picked first in is also going
Speaker 1: to get to pick first in one. Same thing. Whoever
Speaker 1: picked second in would pick second in one. I think
Speaker 1: it's a terrible idea. First of all, you've double rewarded failure.
Speaker 1: These are the worst teams in your league last year,
Speaker 1: they're going to get to draft at the beginning in
Speaker 1: and in. I like it. Here's what I would do instead,
Speaker 1: for those of you in dynasty or empire leagues thinking
Speaker 1: about how to set the draft order if you have
Speaker 1: an invalidated season, in I would have a reverse weighted lottery,
Speaker 1: meaning that team that did finish last. Let's say it's
Speaker 1: a twelve team league, the team that did finish last
Speaker 1: would have twelve ping pong balls. In a twelve team
Speaker 1: league in a lottery, the team that finished second to
Speaker 1: last would have eleven, so on and fourth so forth
Speaker 1: down to the champion who only gets one ping pong
Speaker 1: ball in, and then I would pull draft order randomly.
Speaker 1: That's how I would do it, and I think that
Speaker 1: feels fair random enough that you're gonna get You're gonna
Speaker 1: shake some things up. Gives everybody a chance at the
Speaker 1: first pick and the second pick in the third pick,
Speaker 1: and won't be identical as last year, so you're not
Speaker 1: exactly rewarding failure the same way you would have been previously.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. All the things that you
Speaker 1: need to think about related to COVID, and that's a lot,
Speaker 1: and it's not very fun being made it to the
Speaker 1: end of the podcast, the No Fun Podcast of Fantasy
Speaker 1: Football Weekly. I'm very impressed. All things to think about.
Speaker 1: We'll look forward to more fun stuff next week. My
Speaker 1: co host will be back. We'll talk about news you
Speaker 1: don't at the things that really I'm excited to talk
Speaker 1: about next week. Can you have a starting backfield that
Speaker 1: is the two chiefs runners, Clyde Edwards A Laire and
Speaker 1: Damian Williams. As you're starting running backs and that's it.
Speaker 1: You go to war with those guys every week except
Speaker 1: there by week. Is that a viable strategy. I'm excited
Speaker 1: to talk to you about that next week as well.
Speaker 1: So a lot to get to next week. Thanks for
Speaker 1: making to the end of the special COVID edition of
Speaker 1: Fantasy Football Weekly on Paul Charchie and talk to you
Speaker 1: next week. Fantasy Football Weekly is a production of I
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