My Commish Rules

Subs

A Rule About Scoring

Just great! Your star running back gets injured on the opening drive of the game and puts up a big ol’ goose egg. Meanwhile, a mid-tier running back on your bench has a career day against a division rival. Wonderful. Congrats, you’ve found yourself squarely in the middle of fantasy football hell and now your perfect season is in jeopardy with a ton of worthless points on your bench. Remove this all too familiar hellscape from your league and call in the reserves with the Substitute Player Rule.

 

How It Works

Like the wise Hannah Montana once said “Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has those days.” We shouldn’t be punished for that and now we finally have a fail safe for those weekly lineup mistakes. The idea of this rule is simple: designate a player each week to serve as your “Sub” whose points can be called upon if a starting player underperforms on an epic level. This rule is one of those super easy ones to implement and there is no need for back and forth communication with owners, so long as you follow a few easy steps.

 

First, we suggest setting a point limit that a player would have to fall under in order to be eligible for a substitution each week. Depending on the scoring in your league this will differ, but it’s generally safe to say that if a player scores fewer than 5 points, they could be substituted. Next, we suggest limiting sub players to only within the starting player’s position group, i.e. WR can sub in for a WR. Finally, make sure each owner understands how to designate a sub player each week. A real easy way of doing this is to designate that the sub is the first player listed on their bench. From there, The Commish can easily check the final point totals after the final week’s game, determine whether a sub is eligible based on the minimum point criteria, and then check the bench to determine whether their sub player is an eligible replacement based on position.

 

Nuts and Bolts

  • Determine the specifications required in order to make a sub eligible, i.e. starting player’s minimum points scored (if any) and same position or any position.
  • Owner’s will designate a sub each week by placing that player in the top position on their bench.
  • Commissioner will review point totals after the final week’s games and replace one starting player’s score with the sub’s score (if necessary).

Change Ups

We wrote this rule to ensure easy implementation, but it also limits the effect of the rule from week to week. If you want to make the most of this rule, drop the position pairing that must take place, and look only at point totals. Any one player who does not score the minimum set by your league can then be replaced with the sub player’s points. Or drop the point requirement altogether! The sub can then replace the lowest point total scored by any starting player, so long as the sub has scored more. This rule has a ton of flexibility, which is one of the reasons we like it so much.

 

Related Rules

Connect Four

We sat down with everyone we could find at MyCommishRules HQ (all two of us) to answer a very important question: Why are coordinated touchdown celebrations increasing in recent years? […]

Read More »

El Capitan

Morgan. Crunch. Planet. We all have a captain in our hearts. In the NFL, being captain means wearing a tiny little badge and calling heads or tails. Exhilarating. Now try to […]

Read More »

Hot Streaks

From DOWNTOWN! He’s on fire! Sometimes when you’re in the zone, you feel unstoppable. Think Ken Jennings on Jeopardy or Bobby Flay on The Iron Chef or Cersei on[…]

Read More »

You're the Commish.
Make your own rules.