For some leagues this didn’t present much of a problem as the NFL conveniently reworked the schedule for the Texans, Ravens, and Bengals. Other than some last-minute lineup changes and maybe losing some key contributors for an early bye week, many leagues weren’t impacted. However, judging by the message board discussions and some questions, not every league had measures in place to deal with the last-minute postponement.

The most common problem for leagues was the late notice that the NFL gave before cancelling the game. The announcement wasn’t made until Saturday evening. Most die-hard fantasy players spend some part of their Sunday mornings checking for last minute injuries and any tips for whom to start. These players certainly had plenty of notice to adjust their lineups or pick up replacement players if necessary. However, there are still those leagues for the more casual players that require lineups to be submitted prior to Sunday and many leagues that don’t allow unrestricted free agency claims. How could leagues like this deal with the situation caused by Hurricane Ike?

Let’s start with the assumption that you played in a league where you couldn’t make transactions to react to the game change. This was the case in the league I run where weekly player bids close at 9:00 PM on Friday. We had an owner who wasn’t carrying a backup tight end to Owen Daniels. In addition our league also has a significant penalty for starting a bye week player at a required position. (This was enacted to prevent owners from benching players on Monday night to avoid a negative score). In this event I decided that the owner in question would not be given any special consideration in regards of adding an additional player to cover for Daniels. We have 17-player rosters so not having a backup for each position is a risk an owner decides to take. In my opinion this situation was no different than if Daniels had been a late game scratch due to injury. It’s unfortunate, but he chose not to carry a backup by choice when our roster size easily allows for backups at each position. However, I did waive the bye week starter penalty. The intent of this penalty is to prevent owners from benching players on Monday Night, not to punish players for having a fluke situation rob them of a starter.

So is this the answer for all leagues? I’m not sure. I’ve played in leagues with very little bench depth, maybe only 5-6 players. In these leagues, rotating players on and off of waivers is sometimes a necessity to field a lineup. What are some solutions in this situation? The easiest solution is to allow an emergency pickup off the waiver wire prior kickoff. This wouldn’t give the impacted player a huge advantage, because the claim is still being made prior to kickoff, it’s just bending the league’s rule to accommodate a freak situation. Another option is to leave the week 2 result open until the game is actually played in week 10. I’m not crazy about this option because no one really wants to wait eight weeks on a win or a loss. And as we’ve discussed, there is always the option of making no special consideration as this is a situation that’s very similar a last minute inactive player and we all have to deal with that without any sympathy from our competitors.

Well enough talk about the weather, let’s take a question.

Q) I'm the commish in a PPR league that Pre-Draft talked about switching from redraft to keeper. My issue is that some people only want one keeper while others want as many as six. I thought that three was a good number, but am now stuck. It’s a really young league and I want to make sure everyone would stay (it's tough to get new people for an existing keeper league).

A) I think if you are transitioning from a total re-draft league to a keeper league, the thing to do is start with one or two players the first year. As you mention, the ability to find new owners can increase with the number of keepers.

You really need to have smart committed owners to get beyond 3 keepers to a dynasty league. I've been running my league for 10 years now and about 5 years ago we went to a single keeper player. In addition, we added a secondary keeper who can be kept from the last 5 rounds of the draft (a development type player). I can send you the specific rules if you'd like. We also cap keepers at 3 year contracts so the longest you can keep a particular player is 3 season.

If it’s a really young league as you describe, I'd start with one or two, and set some good rules restrictions on what you have to sacrifice to keep a player (typically early round draft picks) and how long they can be kept. I'm afraid if you get up to three or more you'll have some owners with stacked teams and some with mediocre teams who don't see any way of improving and may bail on your league.

That’s it for session IV. As always feel free to send in your questions and I’ll answer them as quickly as I can. Next week I’ll discuss a scoring error that’s causing a bit of a problem in my league and how we’ve dealt with that situation.