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With 2 weeks in the books already, there has been a slew of injuries to major players. Smith, Galloway, Winslow, Duece, Davis, James, Holmes, Dunn.... I am sure there are more that I can't think of off the top of my head...

I had lobbied against lowering the size of the rosters form 20-18 cause I love depth. Now tell me, how many owners wish we did have a roster of 20? It would be easier to handcuff our starters and give us flexibility of managing our roster while maintaining deadwood on the bench. I feel sorry for a team that has a couple injuries and the byes coming up, I bet they really want an expanded roster.

It's been slow so I thought I would throw this out there..... Let the fun fly.

I agreed with you months ago, and I still agree with you now. 18 is too few. But, if you increase it to 19 or 20, then there won't be too many (if any) valuable FA pickups throughout the year. 18 man roster is a problem.

I think the bigger problem is league size. 14 teams is too many. The talent is too dispersed. A lot of team are already starting R.Anderson and some other no-names at RB....and it's only week 2!!!

I thought these two issues would be problems, but they are really being magnified due to all of the early season injuries.

[ September 23, 2004, 08:14 AM: Message edited by: Gordon Gekko ]

Im not sure - it's 6 of one, half dozen of another. Yes, If roster sizes were 20 there would be the opportunity to handcuff your studs to their replacements. There is already no trading and to add a watered down FA pool increases the weight of one's draft as the most important factor in winning their league.

My preference is to have to work at it a little - prepare for your draft, conduct your draft and make your team better via the trade and FA. Since trading is not an option FA is the only other way.

An 180 man roster makes this league more competitive with potentially more parody.

Sorry - I meant an 18 man roster makes this league more competitive . . .

I'm for a 14-man roster. Then there would be plenty of free agents available and lots of good competitive bidding every week. A roster of 20 puts the entire season on the draft because with 20 there is absolutely no depth in the free agent pool. 18 rounds were plenty enough to handcuff your studs. The problem I had was grabbing my backup before someone else did. I look at it this way, we have the same problem every head coach in the NFL has. If we have a good backup we play him and if we don't we go try to pick one up. And be careful, Gordon, Richie Anderson may be starting in Dallas pretty soon and be a hot commodity.

I like the 18 man roster but if I had to vote for changing it I would like to see it go to a lower number (like 16).

As mentioned by some others above, if you go to a 20-man roster they might as well not give us any FA money because there won't be anyone left out there to grab (aside from a K or TE when yours is on a bye week).

That being said I am pretty comfortable with the 18-man roster that we have because it does give an advantage to those teams that went that extra yard to figure out who the 2nd and 3rd back/receiver on each team were in some cases.

I find this debate interesting because I just received two different e-mails this morning on this subject for our baseball contest. One person wants fewer reserves in the NFBC so that there are more available free agents each week and one guys wants a larger reserve roster because of all the injuries in baseball this year. Then I come to this thread and see Phil and Gordon again asking us to expand the number of players drafted from 252 to 280. I hate to say this, but FAAB would be irrelevent with 280 players gone.

I understand how you'd like to handcuff RBs, but with eight reserve spots you should still be able to do that. As for 14 teams vs. 12 teams, I agree it is tougher and when injuries strike it makes it even tougher yet. But that was the point all along with the NFFC, to make this contest tougher and to use many different strategies while filling your 18-man roster.

I enjoy this debate Phil and I'm glad you started this thread. But in less than two hours we've had votes for 20 players, 18 and 16. Just what I expected.

That's ok, Greg, if my vote for 14 is irrelevant. But you wouldn't see $900 bids on Week 1 with 14-man rosters.

Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:
Then I come to this thread and see Phil and Gordon again asking us to expand the number of players drafted from 252 to 280. Na, I'm not in favor of increasing player count to 280. I was driving at the bigger issue which was # of teams/league.

Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:
As for 14 teams vs. 12 teams, I agree it is tougher and when injuries strike it makes it even tougher yet. But that was the point all along with the NFFC, to make this contest tougher and to use many different strategies while filling your 18-man roster.You bet it's tough. It's probably not much fun for owners who have three or more players on bye weeks and have three or more players hurt (questionable to out). When things aren't fun, that's when it takes a turn for the worse. I'm not saying it's not fun, what I'm saying is that it can be more fun than it is.

I understand you want to differentiate yourself from other events, but is having the standard 12 teams/league so bad? 12 teams/league and 20 man rosters seems to work.

Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:
I enjoy this debate Phil and I'm glad you started this thread. But in less than two hours we've had votes for 20 players, 18 and 16. Just what I expected. All votes "opinions" are not created equal.

[ September 23, 2004, 10:47 AM: Message edited by: Gordon Gekko ]

I'm going to hold judgement on the number of teams issue until the end of the year. Let's see the distribution of league winners. My early assessment, however, is indeed what I suspected before the draft.

The drafters in the late positions seem definately to be in a lose/lose situation. The choices are to take a RB who is clearly inferior to those taken in slots 1 to 7 (injuries aside) or take take a high ranked WR to level the advantage. The problem with 14 teams, however, is that there are NO RBs available late in the 3rd round. For example I had targeted Warrick Dunn for my RB in round 3, who had an ADP of late 4th round but was gone before my pick at 3.12. That left those who tried this strategy with RBs like Wheatley, Dayne, Minor, Williams, etc.

So the choices for the late slot folks is to take a mediocre RB in rounds 1 or 2 or get no RB at all. That allows them to get a very good WR and a marginal RB. That's not a recipe for success. RBs like Barlow, Rudi Johnson, Corey Dillon, Fred Taylor, etc, cannot compete with Priest, LT, Ahman, Shaun, Deuce, Edge, Portis and maybe Jamal (again, injuries aside). So where is the late drafter to find the equalizer? By guessing who will get hurt?

In a 12 team league many strategies become viable. You can go RB/RB/WR or RB/WR/RB from early slots and get 2 good RBs. The late drafters can go WR/WR/RB and get 2 stud WRs and a RB that will put up some points. RBs available late in the 3rd round would include guys like Dunn, Martin, Barber, Staley. Okay, maybe not great, but at least better than having Wheatley as your RB1.

Yes, injuries can take the advantage from the early drafters, but do I want to pay big bucks and hope for injuries to happen to others so I can start their backups?

The only other solution is to widen the WR advantage. Maybe 2 points per reception for WRs will change the dynamic.


This year may not truly show the advantage because of the large number of injuries but I don't feel that 14 team leagues create a situation where you can win from any draft psoition. I do believe you can win from any draft position in a 12 team league.