Regular Season 2019

[Voltaire 4,552]

Thanks for those who stuck with it as I was mailing it in those last few seasons. I'm feeling much more engaged now than I have the last couple of seasons and should be back to normal as a GM. That Kaepernick kneeling cr@p almost had me give up on the NFL and FF entirely and it was all I could do just to plug in my lineups that year. But yeah, I'm feeling the energy and enthusiasm has returned.

Each week I'll be rotating out the masthead. If you win weekly high score, you control it. Just giving me just a movie name will get it done but you can also feel free to provide a pic and a scrolling text writeup if you're feeling ambitious. I'd as soon you NOT request me to plug in your team name during the regular season, but if you want me to, I'll do it.  "Control of the masthead" means whatever you want. I'd prefer you be like NHL players who refuse to touch the Stanley Cup unless they've won it. One of the perks of winning the championship is your team gets the masthead for the entire offseason and into the next one.  Come waiver time, if the high scoring team has not made a selection, I'll switch it out myself, as I get tired of looking at the same thing.

Waivers process at 10 PM Eastern on Wednesdays, then FCFS through kickoff. Hopefully. I'm never quite sure that the GM levers are all properly set until I see the results.

If you have any rules change ideas, now is the time to propose them, we'll vote and they'll kick in for 2020.

One thing that we did this year that drove me batty was drop players so late in the preseason. In some situations, I don't mind if cuts are made on/after the Thursday deadline. A team at 18 on Thursday that goes to 17 on Sunday affects me not at all. It's OK, I know you're there and active, you draft five rounds not four. It's no extra work nor worry. No big deal. What gives me anxiety is the Thursday before the draft looking at a team with zero cuts and 22 players because I don't know what to do with this team. Are they going to make cuts? Are they going to disappear?  If they don't make cuts, do I strip them of their picks? Should I make cuts for them?   It's my job to worry about this sort of thing and I don't like wrestling with it or making such decisions. I had quite a bit of anxiety this year. So then I spent the next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday asking for cuts and when I was still looking at teams at 22 when I went to bed that Sunday, it was no fun.

One team this year had no cuts in when we started and I decided to strip them of all their picks. I didn't want to do that. The first five picks were already off the board when those cuts were made. Now I was on the spot again had to decide to be a d*ck or to be a softie. So his time, I chose to be a softie and gave the team their draft back. It was expedient and a kindness but not very legal. The players cut weren't very desirable seeing as they made it through the draft unclaimed, but what if somebody good had been cut and the first five teams had been denied an opportunity to pick them up? I like things flowing smoothly, I hate being put on the spot to decide things like this, thank you everyone for not anyone criticizing me.

The third preseason game is the regular season "dress rehearsal." Coaches ideally give their starters enough preseason work to get the rust out so they don't show up in week one looking like Green Bay and Chicago did. And then week four is time to rest the starters and conduct a battle of backups on the bubble, fighting for the last few spots on the roster. Having a draft after week four offers not enough time to finish. Having the draft after week three gives us eleven days to do our draft and we've always only needed about five, that pattern holding again this year. And that's why we do it that way, to maximize eyeball time. Other leagues may draft earlier in preseason and temporarily go from 22 to 28 players, then cut back to 22 after week four but before kickoff.  That's how my other league does it and it's a good way too, no doubt if a bit more lucky: this hyped rookie isn't looking very good, that seven year veteran got hurt, this person nobody in the FF community ever heard of is just on fire. 

[taco breath 419]

how you guys doing?

ill prolly win this thing again, will you be bitter?

[Voltaire 4,552]

No never. Feel free.

Firefly is looking good too.