NFFC Rules Survey Going Out This Week

[King of Queens]

Your post had me curious so I wanted to check on a random team to see how many times I had Thursday players as conditonal bids on Wednesday night. I checked my best primetime team. The number was 17 times. 17 times this season I had a Thursday player in as a conditional bid on Wednesday. Staggering number. Over once a week. Would be far more of a hinderance than I even had thought. Would be really really bad to not be able to do that anymore.

Since you have the data, how often was a Thursday night player in your Top 3 and Top 5 conditional/primary bids for the week? I'd be willing to bet that it is less staggering of a number.

[Cocktails and Dreams]

Your post had me curious so I wanted to check on a random team to see how many times I had Thursday players as conditonal bids on Wednesday night. I checked my best primetime team. The number was 17 times. 17 times this season I had a Thursday player in as a conditional bid on Wednesday. Staggering number. Over once a week. Would be far more of a hinderance than I even had thought. Would be really really bad to not be able to do that anymore.

Since you have the data, how often was a Thursday night player in your Top 3 and Top 5 conditional/primary bids for the week? I'd be willing to bet that it is less staggering of a number.

Not sure, would need to go through again and too busy with props to do that right now. However, I am not sure it matters. The point is still there. I wanted each and every one of those guys underneath the primary bid for who I was dropping. If I have no idea if I will be able to acquire the guys above him, I have no idea if I should bid on the Thursday guy or not, even though I want him over who I am dropping. You should never be in a position to have to pass on a Thursday player you want more than the guy you are dropping. That is exactly what would have happened in those scenarios you don't deem to be important. I do deem them to be though so we obviously differ. I want to be able to do faab without guessing on who I will get and who I wont. Far more than the "benefit" created by more fresh injury information that everyone would get.

[Sandman62]

I'm more and more seeing Cocktails' point and I hope everyone else is before deciding.

If we switch to two periods (Wed. for Thurs-only players, then the rest on Fri.), we really will often have to do two full research passes because we can't just blindly bid on Thurs-only players without weighing them against weekend players.

The best case scenario is that after doing our research (by Wed.) of the entire NFL pool for the position we want, if we decide to bid on just Thurs. players or just weekend players, then this could end up being our only FAAB process for the week.

However, if we decide to bid on a Thurs. player, then we have to check before Fri. night to see if we got them. If not, then we have to do the whole process again on Fri - and of course, there are two more days of news to digest by then, so we need to review the entire NFL pool for that position again. Ugh!

I think that could be worse than bidding on Wed. with limited news. At least now, we only have ONE full FAAB per week.

[King of Queens]

To me, the whole conditional bid "issue" would only apply to impact players from Thursday games. Face it: for every Andre Brown, there are at least 10 complete shots in the dark. I would define impact as being in the Top 3-5 pickups each week. Go back and look at your Bid History -- how often did this happen in 2012?

[Sandman62]

Funny you should say that Glenn; I just did. And you're right, sort of. In my Classic, there were only two times that I bid on a Thurs. player conditionally. But he doesn't have to have been an "impact" player to cause a problem; he just had to not be my first choice.

A couple/few weeks ago, I bid on LRob, but with two other WRs above him. I ended up getting one of them. If the Wed. bidding were for Thurs-only players, I'd have had to either bid just on my 3rd choice, or skip him and gamble that I'd get one of the other two on Fri.

But you're right that, in the grand scheme, none of these players ended up mattering. But what if I'd gotten Danario Alexander instead of Streater? Neither of them would be possible if I'd have successfully bid on LRob on Thurs.

[CALI CARTEL]

Splitting the waivers into two will artificially inflate the prices on Thursday, as teams will go heavy after anyone in that game that is decent, in an effort to not get shut out on Friday.

There is no alternative to this, you absolutely CAN NOT go to a Thursday-only FAAB Period. If this was a Waiver Claim thing, that'd be totally different, but when the bids are involved EVERYONE has to be available for the main run of waivers each week, if people out there can't understand that, then that's their problem, but Greg PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE TO A THURSDAY-ONLY system, it's a huge mistake.

An extra 2 days of news would be great, but everyone is on the same footing on Wednesday, it's not to any particular person's advantage. The Thursday Games are the problem, but it's not a fix to completely isolate the game from the rest of the week.

[kjduke]

Chad's view, as is mine, is from the perspective of owning multiple teams. However, given that the NFFC is a business, it is better to set things up in a way that encourages multiple team ownership. It costs a helluva lot more to go out and acquire, retain and provide service to twenty customers that own one team than it does to find one customer who will own 20 teams. That said ...

I like the system as is - most work can be done on Wednesday with minimal effort on Friday. Friday is a nice backstop to replace a late injury. Going back to one period is, I think, bad for the game. Having a limited Wednesday and full Friday creates additional complications, as Chad pointed out, and more work for multiple team owners.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Splitting the waivers into two will artificially inflate the prices on Thursday, as teams will go heavy after anyone in that game that is decent, in an effort to not get shut out on Friday.

There is no alternative to this, you absolutely CAN NOT go to a Thursday-only FAAB Period. If this was a Waiver Claim thing, that'd be totally different, but when the bids are involved EVERYONE has to be available for the main run of waivers each week, if people out there can't understand that, then that's their problem, but Greg PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE TO A THURSDAY-ONLY system, it's a huge mistake.

An extra 2 days of news would be great, but everyone is on the same footing on Wednesday, it's not to any particular person's advantage. The Thursday Games are the problem, but it's not a fix to completely isolate the game from the rest of the week.

There is no choice for one FAAB period, plain and simple.

I will look at the Pros and Cons to see if we can evenly show the pluses and minuses of each option and add them to the survey. Like the other questions we asked before, it would take a big majority for us to change the rules. We're not looking to make drastic rules changes with any of the points we're inquiring about, but if our players really see a problem with anything we will consider looking into it further. Tom and I have our thoughts on each of these and we're looking for validation from our players.

[BillyWaz]

I see both sides of the coin, and have not been "burned" by "less information" on Wednesdays.

It's all speculation regardless of when it is done, but I do understand how an extra two days can help, but how much would it have really helped this year? It might have hurt on people who blew a lot of money on a player that was irrelevant two days later (Shaun Hill?), but if someone becomes relevant between Wednesday night and Friday night......you can still bid on them.

As for impact players this year, there simply haven't been many. That however is not a reason to switch anything. The minute you do, you will have a year like 2010 where it was Michael Vick, Stevie Johnson, Brandon Lloyd, and Jacob Tamme, etc.

I'll play either way.....but I had 17 teams to manage and made it work just fine "as is" this year under the current setup.

[King of Queens]

I went back and looked at every Wednesday's FAAB run for each of the 35 Primetime leagues. I figured this would be the most relevant, as these leagues are almost always competitive and the pool is usually deeper than a 14-team event. I isolated all of the QBs, RBs, WRs and TEs that were picked up in 5 or more Primetime leagues in a given week, and then determined how many of those players were slated to play on Thursday night. Here's what I found:

Week 2 (Bears at Packers)
22 players
0 Bears or Packers

Week 3 (Giants at Panthers)
29 players
3 Giants (Andre Brown, Ramses Barden, Rueben Randle), 0 Panthers

Week 4 (Browns at Ravens)
31 players
2 Browns (Jordan Cameron, Chris Ogbonnaya), 1 Raven (Jacoby Jones)

Week 5 (Cardinals at Rams)
22 players
3 Cardinals (Kevin Kolb, Michael Floyd, William Powell), 0 Rams

Week 6 (Steelers at Titans)
31 players
0 Steelers, 1 Titan (Jamie Harper)

Week 7 (Seahawks at 49ers)
28 players
2 Seahawks (Doug Baldwin, Russell Wilson), 0 49ers

Week 8 (Bucs at Vikings)
20 players
1 Buc (Dallas Clark), 0 Vikings

Week 9 (Chiefs at Chargers)
15 players
0 Chiefs, 1 Charger (Ronnie Brown)

Week 10 (Colts at Jaguars)
24 players
3 Colts (T.Y. Hilton, Laurent Robinson, Dwayne Allen), 0 Jaguars

Week 11 (Dolphins at Bills)
14 players
0 Dolphins, 1 Bill (Scott Chandler)

Week 12 (Texans at Lions, Redskins at Cowboys, Patriots at Jets)
17 players
1 Texan (Garret Graham), 0 Lions, 0 Redskins, 1 Cowboy (Lance Dunbar),1 Patriot (Julian Edelman), 2 Jets (Bilal Powell, Chaz Schilens)

Week 13 (Saints at Falcons)
17 players
0 Saints, 0 Falcons

So for the entire season, including a busy Thanksgiving, a total of 23 Thursday players were picked up 5 or more times on Wednesday night. 23 out of 270 pickups is 8.5%, which on the surface is still significant. However, let's look at how many of these guys were actually IMPACT free agents on the week in which they were picked up:

Andre Brown (Wk3) - 28.0
Ramses Barden (Wk3) - 22.8
Rueben Randle (Wk3) - 1.4
Jacoby Jones (Wk4) - 3.7
Chris Ogbonnata (Wk4) - 2.8
Jordan Cameron (Wk4) - 2.5
Kevin Kolb (Wk5) - 13.6
William Powell (Wk5) - 5.7
Michael Floyd (Wk5) - 2.7
Jamie Harper (Wk6) - 6.1
Russell Wilson (Wk7) - 6.1
Doug Baldwin (Wk7) - 3.5
Dallas Clark (Wk8) - 7.0
Ronnie Brown (Wk9) - 12.3
Laurent Robinson (Wk10) - 15.7
Dwayne Allen (Wk10) - 5.1
T.Y. Hilton (Wk10) - 3.0
Scott Chandler (Wk11) - 5.0
Julian Edelman (Wk12) - 13.7
Bilal Powell (Wk12) - 13.3
Lance Dunbar (Wk12) - 5.9
Garrett Graham (Wk12) - 4.7
Chaz Schilens (Wk12) - 3.8

From this, we see that only 6 -- 4, excluding Thanksgiving -- Thursday-game players this year were "impact" pickups. Certainly not a staggering number by any means.