No waivers rule

[Sandman62]

It doesn't make any sense to do FAAB in the playoffs, IMHO. I am not facing the 9 guys in your league who didn't make the championship round, so why should their actions affect how much I can earn? One league could let Todman go unclaimed to an owner who has $1, while other leagues could have people bidding $50. In regular season this is perfectly fine since you are facing those owners for $6000, but it's not acceptable in playoffs. One guy could decide he only needs 1 QB for the final two weeks of consolation playoffs, so he lets McCown/Cutler/Wilson/Kaepernick/etc. go and suddenly a primetime champion team can pick him up and boost their roster?

Way too many variables involving people who have something to play for and who don't.

I don't mean to come across stubborn here; I'm just still confused. Are you talking about the other 9 owners in the league (those who didn't make the playoffs) also still being able to pickup players? I can't see why that would be allowed.

Regarding the rest of your points about the differences in player availability across different leagues... aren't all those variances still possible in week 13, while all 12 teams are still playing? So that the 3 playoff teams from each league might've had different ease/difficulty in obtaining free agents for their playoff run.

[Coach JP]

I'm assuming consolation round teams get to add/drop players as well, since they are still playing for money. You either have to let all grab free agents or none at all. People in consolation have just as much right to get FA's as they are still playing for cash. It'd be even worse if just the championship round teams had access to the free agents. Free meals!

And it's fine with what you say about week 13. Week 13 is still the regular season, if you pick up someone that will benefit you before the championship round.. kudos!

[Glenneration X]

Waivers in the Overall Championship rounds could create too much of an uneven platform due to variables between leagues. I don't know an Overall that allows waivers in the Championship rounds and I don't believe I'd personally want waivers in the Championship rounds. It's a bad idea.

[Sandman62]

I'm assuming consolation round teams get to add/drop players as well, since they are still playing for money. You either have to let all grab free agents or none at all. People in consolation have just as much right to get FA's as they are still playing for cash. It'd be even worse if just the championship round teams had access to the free agents. Free meals!

And it's fine with what you say about week 13. Week 13 is still the regular season, if you pick up someone that will benefit you before the championship round.. kudos!

Ahh, I was assuming only championship round teams would be able to pickup players, not consolation.

While I see your point about them also "playing for money", in comparison to the championship round, it's really not MUCH money. Plus there are a TON of teams vying for few prizes. Would it be a valid solution to limit FAAB to championship round teams?

[Sandman62]

Waivers in the Overall Championship rounds could create too much of an uneven platform due to variables between leagues. I don't know an Overall that allows waivers in the Championship rounds and I don't believe I'd personally want waivers in the Championship rounds. It's a bad idea.

Exact same point can be made about the very concept of having an overall championship at all. Lots of variables from league to league for 13 weeks make for a potential uneven playing field in the championship round.

[Glenneration X]

Waivers in the Overall Championship rounds could create too much of an uneven platform due to variables between leagues. I don't know an Overall that allows waivers in the Championship rounds and I don't believe I'd personally want waivers in the Championship rounds. It's a bad idea.

Exact same point can be made about the very concept of having an overall championship at all. Lots of variables from league to league for 13 weeks make for a potential uneven playing field in the championship round.

Very true. However, as noted previously, the potential addition of a Todman, a Cutler, potentially a Dennis Johnson or Matt Schaub this week could be a huge variable over such a small sample size as the 3 weeks of the Championship Rounds. Why should those who backed up their players or built the proper depth be in worse position than those who didn't?

[Coach JP]

I still don't think so Sandman -- we aren't picking from the same pools and different leagues have different pools. And you can't say 'well you had a chance to pick him up in the regular season', because injuries/benchings happen that make a player who wasn't viable to you in week 12, suddenly viable in week 15.

It's all relative anyway. This year, Henry got hit with bad luck. For all we know, last year if FAAB was enabled he might not have won $100k. As long as we're on the same grounds and we all have to deal with bad luck nothing really needs to be changed. There's not an option that is balanced. You'd only make the situation worse by adding more rules to it.

As far as the variables week 1-13, we sign up and play knowing these variables exist. The draft is an example of this in it's most basic form. Someone gets Jeffery round 15 one league, someone gets him round 10 in another. That's not 'fair' in the overall scheme of things, but you know what you're getting into and you credit that person for taking advantage of what they get at that time.

I go into the championship round knowing someone could have the most stacked roster ever thanks to a league that is poor in FAAB, but that's how it is. I can only worry about my league while the prizes are between my league, and when the big prizes come out I can only worry about my team vs the other teams in the competition.

[Sandman62]

Waivers in the Overall Championship rounds could create too much of an uneven platform due to variables between leagues. I don't know an Overall that allows waivers in the Championship rounds and I don't believe I'd personally want waivers in the Championship rounds. It's a bad idea.

Exact same point can be made about the very concept of having an overall championship at all. Lots of variables from league to league for 13 weeks make for a potential uneven playing field in the championship round.

Very true. However, as noted previously, the potential addition of a Todman, a Cutler, potentially a Dennis Johnson or Matt Schaub this week could be a huge variable over such a small sample size as the 3 weeks of the Championship Rounds. Why should those who backed up their players or built the proper depth be in worse position than those who didn't?

Ahhh, now I think I'm getting your points. The fact that there are only 3 teams per league vying for free agents = a bigger chance of successful bids. And with such a small window (3 weeks), we don't want a team to be able to boost their chances so much. Gotcha.

Of course, the counter point to "But some team with a bunch of holes can plug their holes and succeed" is "Maybe such a team DESERVES to be able to plug their holes, considering they made the playoffs (ignoring H2H low scorers) and just had terribly-timed bad luck of numerous injuries all crammed into a single week or two"? (When that happens in the regular season, there's time to recover.)

But I guess I can see how such a rule would allow playoff teams to perhaps skip adding depth heading into the championship round and take a bunch of shots at upside players (knowing they could always grab some backup if their depth was challenged by injuries).

Oh well, at least I'm not bitter.
Good luck this week to the teams who were fortunate to remain healthy.

[ForLoveOfTheGame]

One thing I think is possibly something to look at (probably no way to make this work) is that if you are playing heads up vs someone in your league and you have some injuries you get 0's in that match up. That's pretty rough considering that is just within your league and only effects 2 teams who have played with identical circumstances the entire year. You could easily lose bc you had injuries when adds weren't allowed (and maybe he had a bunch of injuries in weeks 1-13 so he could add as many players as he wanted). That part does bother me a bit. I'm playing a guy who has like AP, Gerhart and someone else (MJD maybe?) so last week he took an auto zero at RB2. Didn't seem very fair. Hell, he even backed up AP!

[Cocktails and Dreams]

It stings, and it stings BAD but I chalk it up to bad luck If I was in the top 10 on one of those teams I would be very sad

We were 4th overall in the Primetime after week 14, but in that game we lost:
Welker, Gronk AND GGraham (0 at TE week 15 & probably 16) and MJD. Plus we didn't get to use Bush week 14. Plus McCown lost his job before week 15. Then in week 15, we lost TWilliams.

Would what is on the wire right now help you fill in your gaps???

In our case, yes! We could pickup a TE like GGraham's NFL backup, Griffin, or Chandler or Ertz. At WR, we could get Welker's NFL backup, Caldwell, or RWoods, ASanders, Holmes, etc..

I like the no waivers rule. Forces you to think strategically about what positions you want to insure.

We did: before the championship round, we made sure to have a QB2 (and QB3, seeing there was a good chance McCown wasn't going to keep playing), a TE2 and K2.

And if you have 5+ people go down with injury in a couple weeks, odds are it's not going to be your year regardless of which free agents you pick up.

We scored 141 last week (200+ week 14) and are still in 24th place, just 21 points off 10th. How much closer would we be without a 0 from TE last week? Or without another TE 0 this week, and likely a WR3 0?

I don't see the issue with have FAAB during the championship round??? Every team would have the same opportunity to acquire players or to attempt to block opponents from doing so. What am I missing? Why do we not want to allow good teams, with diligent roster management, to recover from injuries? Don't most leagues allow FAAB during playoffs for this reason?

No, there isnt a single main event type race on the planet that allows them. Just contained leagues.