Free Agent Acquisition Budget
Boy that’s a mouthful. So let’s stick to FAAB (pronounced FAB), as in “what a fabulous new way to handle waivers in my fantasy league.” If you have never been that person who […]
Redraft at Bernie’s
A Rule About Waivers
It is week 7 and you are 2-5 and the season seems lost and for some reason even your own dog looks disappointed in you, but wait. What is this? A mid-season draft? It can’t be. It is time to redistribute that wealth people! Here comes the mid-season draft where the bottom half of your league participates in a draft from a pool of the best team’s players. For all you fans of the underdog out there, this rule is for you.
How It Works
For the league as a whole, low-morale from bottom dweller teams is not necessarily a good thing. At a certain point in each fantasy football season some of the teams in a league lose hope. They start realizing their postseason dreams are crushed and they just stop paying as much attention. The waiver wire becomes less competitive and trash talking dies down — until the Redraft at Bernie’s.
At the mid-season point, the teams in the bottom half of your league engage in a draft from the top team’s players. The idea here is not to turn the league completely on its head, so every team in the top half will be allowed to protect its most important players. We suggest allowing each team to select as many keepers as you have starters in your active roster.
From there, no one is safe. All remaining players on the teams in the top half of the standings are thrown into a pool where the bottom half drafts, just as you held your initial draft in the beginning of the year. A one to three round draft works best to not only limit the amount of work for yourself as commissioner but also to limit any crazy shifts in the league. The main goal is to level the playing field by involving those teams who may not have much to play for and inspire them to stay engaged.
Nuts and Bolts
- Pick a mid-season point for your league to hold a redraft involving the bottom teams.
- Give the top half of the league a week to select their “off-limit” players for this draft. We recommend this number be approximately the number of starters per roster.
- Establish how many rounds this draft will be. We recommend one to three rounds so there is not too dramatic of a shift, but enough for teams to get back to competitive.
- The last place team will have the first pick and second to last the second pick and so on and so forth.
- As Commish, you will have to hold this draft manually, either through a Skype session, preferably in person with hors d’oeuvres, or just in a text thread.
- The teams participating in the draft will have to choose the players they will drop to accommodate the new players post-draft.
Change Ups
You obviously have some flexibility with the point in the season you hold the draft, and how many rounds the draft will be. To limit detrimental losses to the top teams you can also put a limit on number of players drafted from each team. Once the limit is reached in the draft, that team’s remaining player pool will be removed.
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