The Lombardi Three
Bad news: Yahoo.com doesn’t support a points table format and a 4-week, 12-team playoffs.
Bad news: NFL.com does and we’re going back this season.
State your intentions. You in or out?
(that means pay your dues or bounce)
“At the end of the day, we’re all gonna die.” Said neckless, LA Rams Offensive Tackle, Andrew Whitworth, after the most unwatchable, uneventful, uninspiring Super Bowl in modern history. I won’t call it boring. Boring is too easy. Babies are boring. They haven’t travelled and they have no sense of irony. Saying something is boring is putting as little effort into your narrative as those two teams gave last Sunday. That Super Bowl was Virginia Cavalier walk-it-up-the-court basketball. That Super Bowl was the third hour of Monday Night Raw. That Super Bowl was basic bitches instagramming their food.
BigWhit77 is right, in the Tibetan-philosophy, Sylvia Plath-sense; we’re all gonna die, but is it too much to ask for football not to look like that before we go? The only glint of distraction was watching that human steroid, Julian Edelman, go full water-boy for four straight quarters. Surely that ball-hair beard was enough evidence to get him thoroughly drug tested after the game. Let’s not forget, the guy was suspended for four games at the beginning of the season for a failed drug test involving PEDs.
Try to imagine the difference in tone if theoretically a World Series MVP had been popped for PEDs and missed 40 games. You can’t, because it’s not possible. MLB players busted during the season can’t play in the postseason. Baseball drug cheats are met with pitchforks. Football drug cheats are met with shrugs. They aren’t even really considered cheats. To quote the Patriots #1 fan, and bitch-boy for Russians and billionaires: “Sad!” The only consolation will be watching the NFL retract his MVP trophy after they dipstick that cloudy piss. Also, Sylvia Plath was the original Masshole. BigWhit was trolling on a world-class level with that quote.
Yes, one of my lengthier rants, but our season’s final post needs to be sharp, in vogue, and on trend – the three rules of fantasy football league blogs. And my creative writing teacher always said it was good to start with a quote. Where it went from there is a result of the fact that I took creative writing in community college and I stopped paying attention after the first few classes. Luckily, it’s easy to wax poetic about loathing New England sports teams.
To bigger and better things…
Following a two-week layover in the neighbor’s backyard, The Lombardi Three trophy found its way home to the 2018 League Champion, REASON TO KERRIGAN.
RTK paid his dues, drafted well, and put in the work. His squad showed up on game day and routed the competition by more than 47 points. It wasn’t even close. RTK finished his third year with a 10-6 record and averaged 185.75 points through the post season. Congratulations my friend. Welcome to the club. *TL3 Logo has been updated to include seven stars, representing each of our seven seasons.
2018 League Leaders by Position
It’s worth mentioning that two teams, with the exception of WR, owned the 2018 league leaders at each position. One of these teams didn’t even make the playoffs!
Points Table Format
I want to leave everyone with something to think about in the offseason. Going forward we are going to play a Points Table format every four years. The next season being our eighth together, we will be competing in a 12-team playoffs over four weeks (Weeks 13-16) with the top four teams on BYE in Week 13. Tournament bracket will look like the following.
Regular season and playoff standings will be determined by your head-to-head record had you played each team in the league, each week. For example, if you score the most points in the league in Week 1, your Week 1 record would be 11-0, meaning you would have beaten each of the other 11 teams in the league. The next highest scorer would be 10-1, and so on. After 12 weeks, the total of each weekly record determines your playoff standings. Playoff competition returns to the standard head-to-head format.
I’m not sure how the setup or the schedule will look on Yahoo yet, but the weekly matchups wont really matter much as you are competing against everyone in the league each week. Had we done this in 2018, the results would have been vastly different. Especially for those teams that suffered significant bad breaks throughout the season, simply based on the randomness of scheduling, e.g., Christian’s Brothers. CB would have made it to the finals and Reason to Kerrigan wouldn’t have made it out of the first round.
The previous three seasons (2015-2017) were also analyzed based on a Points Table setup. The results were mixed.
2019 Constitutional Amendments
I am implementing the following Constitutional Amendments in 2019 to apply the four-year Points Table format, and implement a protection clause for an issue that we almost encountered this season.
Hear ye, hear ye, as The Lombardi Three Commissioner I enact the following amendments to our Constitution.
19.1 – Four Fists: Every fourth season will be played in a Points Table format. Regular season and playoff standings will be determined by your head-to-head record had you played each team in the league, each week. Playoff competition returns to the standard Head-to-Head format. In the case of a 14-team league, only the top 12 teams make the playoffs.
19.1.1 – ANTISO: When playing under the Points Table format, the $/win payout is removed from the Available Winnings.
19.1.2 – Chocolate Gold: When playing under the Points Table format, the payout for Regular Season Highest True Coach Ranking is replaced with Regular Season 3rd Place Bonus.
19.1.3 – Cobra Kai: When playing under the Points Table format, each team makes the playoffs, therefore there is no Consolation Bracket winner. This automatic position in the draft is removed and the guaranteed draft pick positions shift up.
19.2 – Magnum: At the end of the regular season, if a team scores the most points in the league and fails to qualify for the playoffs based on head-to-head matchups, that team automatically qualifies for the bottom seed in the playoffs, replacing whatever team currently occupies that position.
Again, things to chew on in the offseason. Congrats once more to Reason to Kerrigan. Looking forward to clinking trophies in a couple of weeks on a victory tour through Northern Virginia’s brewscape.
Cheers to everyone this summer. Travel safe.
-The Commish
The final week of our seventh season is upon us. This time next week, there will be a new champion. A fitting final as our league has, still, never had a #1 or #2 seed win the championship. What can I say? The masses love an underdog, and they have a special fondness for the expiration of their corporate overlord.
This will be the third time in our seven years that the #6 and # 8 seeds faceoff, and the fifth time the #6 seed gets a shot at the title, however, the #6 seeds are 1-3 in the last four title matches.
Reason to Kerrigan (#6) enters the finals on a hot streak averaging 188.30 points per contest. This is tremendous considering our weekly output hit a new low each of the last three weeks. As a league, we hit bottom in Week 15 at a measly 1,703.30 points. This is our lowest output of the last 95 weeks. You’d have to go back to 2012 to find a collective performance this low.
It seems RTK was the only team immune from this lack of production across the league. He blew through the #3 and #2 seeds and set a new single-game WR record in Week 14 when Amari Cooper put up 49.70 points on 10 catches for 217 yards and 3 TDs.
The Brady Bundchen (#8) sneaks in to the finals averaging 148.43 points in the playoffs, and a steady 148.31 through the last seven weeks. He squeaked by the #1 seed in the final one minute and seventeen seconds of Week 14 when Dalvin Cook scored a meaningless, garbage-time TD late Monday night in Minnesota’s loss to Seattle. Davante’s Inferno squandered his third straight #1 spot in the first week of the playoffs putting up his lowest output of the season by more than 16 points. (insert tiny violin)
The Brady’s met the season average in Week 15 to knock out Trouble Hunter (#5), but little did he know that Bagel Time gifted him a boon of Monday night bounty (and laterally jinxed his lady friend) by texting psalms and salutations before the results were in. Bagel Time texts are the fantasy football kiss of death. He voodoo’d and hoodoo’d his own team all season with his bullshit premature digital ejaculations. The way things look, TBB will need some black magic to compete with RTK, so text away Bagel – I’ll send you Brady’s number.
The League Dues table has been updated to show the current locks on cash. Bagel Time is the only team left with a chance to cash on wins. BYE weeks do not count towards your win %. We set this standard at the conclusion of the 2016 season. See the PAYDAY post.
That said, anywhere from 4 to 11 more wins will be added to the Wins column at the conclusion of Week 16. As we add Wins to the column, this eats away at the % of Remaining for bonuses. I have included what the Playoff Champ Bonus will be based on each potential scenario.
4: Bagel Time loses. The other 4 teams in the playoffs will add a single win to their totals. (Playoff Champion Bonus = $176)
11: Bagel Time wins. We add all 8 of Bagel Time’s wins to the total, plus the other 3 winners in the playoffs add a single win to their totals. (Playoff Champion Bonus = $166)
So, for those of you already in the cash on Wins or a Bonus, you are kinda rooting for Bagel Time to lose. #DrawbridgeUp
I don’t know what you four are seeing online, but once again, I see no ‘consolation brackets’ via Yahoo. Not really sure what I’m doing wrong here. Either way, I’ve become really proficient at counting and drawing little brackets offline, so here you go. With the results that close in Week 15, Tanny and Filthy will have to sweat it a couple more hours as Stat Corrections trickle in. #PuckerUp
Christian’s Brothers (#9) is one of the best teams in the league and his season has been nothing short of tragic. He is averaging 195.53 points per over the last two weeks, and a league-leading 182.08 over the last six weeks. He’s won 5 straight over this same span and STILL didn’t make the playoffs. Had his schedule been a hair different, he could easily be one game short of perfect on the season and a lock in the playoff finals. This has got to be the biggest calamity, the baddest beat, the utmost misfortune I’ve ever seen go down in all our years of this fantasy fatuity. We have to fix this, and I have an idea how.
Next season will be filled with terms like “rotisserie” and “points table” and “12-team playoffs” and “protection clause.” More to come…
QB – Tannehill4President (Jared Goff, 53.95 points, Week 4)
WR – Reason to Kerrigan (Amari Cooper, 49.70 points, Week 14)
RB – Christian’s Brothers (Christian McCaffrey, 43.70 points, Week 12)
TE – Trouble Hunter (Zach Ertz, 40.50 points, Week 10)
K (TIE) – The Brady Bundchen (Stephen Gostkowski, 22.00 points, Week 6) and Davante’s Inferno (Ka’imi Fairbairn, 22.00 points, Week 15)
DEF – SKOLya’gain (Baltimore, 61.50 points, Week 6)
LB – Reason to Kerrigan (Bobby Wagner, 31.45 points, Week 13)
Single Game – Reason to Kerrigan (234.30 points, Week 8)
Win Streak (TIE) – Davante’s inferno (+5 Weeks 5-9) and Wanted Dez or Alive (+5 Weeks 5-9) and Whitey Ford’s Team (+5 Weeks 10-14)
Week 14 was a BYE. Here’s who you are matching up against in the final two weeks.
The final details on the regular season have trickled in and the books are in balance. I’ve run the numbers on 13 weeks of results and present the following:
Regular Season Champion – Davante’s Inferno (25% Bonus)
Regular Season 2nd Place – Whitey Ford’s Team (5% Bonus)
Regular Season True Coach Ranking – Schoolya’gain (5% Bonus)
The Regular Season True Coach ranking is a carryover from our time on NFL.com. This ranking is tabulated throughout the season and measures your performance across three (3) categories – your point differential* in fantasy points between your starting and ideal lineup each week; how you breakdown weekly if you played all teams each week; and your overall W/L standing. *For our time on Yahoo.com, I replaced point differential with Total Points. It ends up being the same results and the math is much easier. Schoolya’gain finished 1st, 3rd, and 1st, respectively, and repeats as the Best Coach two years in a row.
SKOLya’gain
Davante’s Inferno
Trouble Hunter
Whitey Ford’s Team
Bagel Time
Christian’s Brothers
Reason to Kerrigan
Wanted Dez or Alive
The Brady Bundchen
Tannehill4President
Filthadelphia
UnLockin’ Yo Schtuff
Davante’s Inferno
Whitey Ford’s Team
SKOLya’gain
Wanted Dez or Alive
Trouble Hunter (1)
Reason to Kerrigan (1)
Bagel Time (2)
The Brady Bundchen (2)
*Christian’s Brothers (3)
*Tannehill4President (3)
*Only one of the last two teams can cash out, and they need to win the Consolation Bracket Playoffs to do so. This will guarantee half their dues back and the #4 pick in next year’s draft. Of course, Filthadelphia or Unlockin’ could #RunTheTable and kill both of their chances to cash.
QB – Tannehill4President (Jared Goff, 53.95 points, Week 4)
WR – SKOLya’gain (Tyreek Hill, 47.05 points, Week 1)
RB – Christian’s Brothers (Christian McCaffrey, 43.70 points, Week 12)
TE – Trouble Hunter (Zach Ertz, 40.50 points, Week 10)
K – The Brady Bundchen (Stephen Gostkowski, 22.00 points, Week 6)
DEF – SKOLya’gain (Baltimore, 61.50 points, Week 6)
LB – Reason to Kerrigan (Bobby Wagner, 31.45 points, Week 13)
Single Game – Reason to Kerrigan (234.30 points, Week 8)
Win Streak – Davante’s inferno (+5 Weeks 5-9) and Wanted Dez or Alive (+5 Weeks 5-9)
Eat your cereal with a fork and do your homework in the dark.
-HHH
There are two weeks left in the regular season and two teams left vying for the regular season championship title. Will Davante’s Inferno hit the metaphorical turkey* with his third regular season title, or will bunkmate SKOLya’gain win two in a row to rattle the league standings and grab the #1 spot in the playoffs? Think you’re in the running Whitey? Think not. There’s only two ways this plays out, and only one of the aforementioned teams is going to take the top spot.
*This was a poor illustrative stab at the 3-strike bowling turkey and an obvious fondling of this week’s thanksgiving day sacrament. Not my best content, but I’ll make it up to you with a free Bench Swap if you (1) go bowling on thanksgiving day, (2) with a family member, (3) roll a turkey, and (4) provide evidence for all of the above on said day. I want a fucking newspaper in that photographic confirmation, hostage-style. This is real.
Week 13 Schedule
Getting back to how this regular season plays out – please remember how we set up the schedule as a 12-team league, as outlined in the Constitution.
Week 1 is Rivalry Week – the schedule is manually set to rematch the team you played in the final game last season.
Weeks 2 through 12 – the schedule is randomly set by Yahoo to play each of your 11 opponents over this 11-week span.
Week 13 – the schedule is manually set to play the team directly next to you in the league standings, e.g., #1 plays #2, #3 plays #4, and so on.
Quite ironically, in Week 12, the current #1 and #2 teams in the league standings will duel. Here’s how this plays out:
Scenario 1: Davante’s Inferno wins, and SKOLya’gain loses. Davante’s Inferno locks in the regular season championship and #1 spot. IF Whitey Ford’s team also wins his matchup in Week 12, he ends up facing Davante’s Inferno in Week 13, but whatever the outcome of that matchup is, the standings won’t change.
Scenario 2: SKOLya’gain wins, and Davante’s Inferno loses. This will further lock both teams in the #1 and #2 spots, and create a rematch in Week 13, where SKOLya’gain can appropriate the regular season championship in a sweep.
Alternate scenarios exist where both SKOLya’gain, and Whitey Ford’s Team both lose a game, and the 4 teams at 6-5 can make a play at the #2 spot in the playoffs. There are 6 teams only a game apart, so this is still anyone’s game. No matter what your head-to-head record is with someone, the tiebreaker for teams with the same record is total points. That is what will determine your final standings in the playoffs.
C.R.E.A.M.
Cash Rules Everything Around Me, except when other asset classes provide higher risk-adjusted yields. NO ONE’s season is over. Everyone has at least three wins, and there are five more games left, including the playoffs. That means EVERYONE still has an opportunity to cash ($3/win for all records at or above .500). Even if you don’t yield eight wins and a cash out, you can still win the consolation bracket and a guaranteed #4 spot in the draft next season. There’s plenty to keep playing for.
Le’Veon Bell
Die slow you overprivileged fuck.
League Leaders
QB – Tannehill4President (Jared Goff, 53.95 points, Week 4)
WR – SKOLya’gain (Tyreek Hill, 47.05 points, Week 1)
RB – Reason to Kerrigan (Alvin Kamara, 43.10 points, Week 1)
TE – Trouble Hunter (Zach Ertz, 40.50 points, Week 10)
K – The Brady Bundchen (Stephen Gostkowski, 22.00 points, Week 6)
DEF – SKOLya’gain (Baltimore, 61.50 points, Week 6)
LB – SKOLya’gain (Cory Littleton, 20.00 points, Week 7)
Single Game – Reason to Kerrigan (234.30 points, Week 8)
Let’s do this.
Trade 1: Two teams swapped first round draft picks (Kareem Hunt #8 overall, for Julio Jones #11 overall) to better their rosters at those positions. This was a good example of a win-win trade. Each team got something they needed, for a small price. Both gained in the end.
Advice: This is the trade scenario you should look for – where one team has a shortfall, and you have an available asset to offer. Both teams need to feel they are gaining in one position, without sacrificing another.
Trade 2: Let me tell you this, I’m gonna start at an 11. Then I’m gonna take it to about a 15 real quick! One team doled out their top WR1 (Brandin Cooks) for…I don’t know…an untested, hammed up RB in a two-back set (Corey Clement), and a bye-week WR at best (Nelson Agholor), both from the same team – meaning both going on BYE at the same time leaving empty spots to be filled.
I’m going to open a discussion thread on this one, as I’m curious of everyone’s take on this trade. I see this as a big loss for one team playing in a PPR league who just traded away a WR1 on an NFL team whose QB just broke the all-time passing yards record, and a huge freebie for another team who now has two of the top fifteen WRs in the league. I guess time will tell on this one.
Advice: Announce your willingness to trade someone to the league (i.e., put them on the trading block), before making a deal, and let the offers come in. I guarantee you will receive very reasonable offers this way. Also, don’t accept the first lowball offer (pause) counteroffer, and utilize future draft picks with the option as leverage.
The Strength of Schedule looks at the differential between your actual W/L results and the W/L results if you had played each of the other 11 teams in the league that week. Ideally, each of us would be right down the middle, i.e., the top six scores each week would all win their matchups. Unfortunately, the top six results aren’t always matched up against the bottom six results.
Looking at the full data set, Davante’s Inferno looks to have had the easiest schedule to date, but DI hasn’t won any games in the lower 1/3 of the weekly results. DI’s just been bouncing around the middle landing gut shots. To be fair, DI lost a big one in Week 4 to one of only three teams that could have beaten him – ironically against his arch rival in the post GBJ era, Christian’s Brothers.
These two teams have faced each other three times in their last 5 matchups, counting last season. DI is up 2-1 in this 5-week span with a League Championship in tow. And wrote a hit play and directed it, so he’s not sweating it either.
I want to break this down further as Week 6 provided some great examples of wins and losses outside of the top-half/bottom-half metric. This is where the dagger digs the deepest. *You can click in the image below to expand it in to another browser tab.
Grabbing a win or dropping a loss in the meat of the weekly results is expected. But dropping a game after putting up 180+ is a stab in the fucking heart. This has happened six times already this season, and twice in Week 6. Luckily the pain has been evenly spread and no one team has absorbed this damage more than once.
What does this mean? This means that the swings in the SOS results are mostly happening in the middle 1/3 bracket. This means that you don’t need to look for that knockout punch (that huge waiver wire grab, or breakout performance); you just have to grind it out in the middle and exchange body blows to pull out a victory.
Keep profiling your players and their matchups, plan ahead for BYE weeks, and nickel-and-dime your expendable positions (K, DEF, LB) each week in order to gain an advantage inside. That’s when you will pick up wins in the middle.
I like this chart. Not really sure what we can get out of it, but I like it. There’s a slight correlation, but really nothing you can get out of it at this point. I guess the lesser the gap between your number of wins and number of remaining drafted players is an indication that you are doing more with less; or maybe it means you drafted like shit. I’ll work on this one and apply some more factors.
It is clear that almost half the league has already dropped, lost, or traded away 40% or more or their drafted players. Only three teams have retained their original top eight draft picks – only one of which is in the top half of the league standings, proving these results truly are a mixed bag.
QB – Tannehill4President (Jared Goff, 53.95 points, Week 4)
WR – SKOLya’gain (Tyreek Hill, 47.05 points, Week 1)
RB – Reason to Kerrigan (Alvin Kamara, 43.10 points, Week 1)
TE – Christian’s Brothers (Travis Kelce, 29.90 points, Week 2)
K – The Brady Bundchen (Stephen Gostkowski, 22.00 points, Week 6)
DEF – SKOLya’gain (Baltimore, 61.50 points, Week 6)
LB – Whitey Ford’s Team (T.J. Watt, 18.00 points, Week 5)
Single Game – Bagel Time (226.75 points, Week 4)
I’m off to lift weights and drink a couple thousand beers with PJ, Tobin, Squee, Donkeydong Doug, and Matt Damon. The pain begins in Week 8. #TheJuiceReturns
No chicken dinners this year. We had two squads with a glint of fortune going in to the 4:00 games, and Reason to Kerrigan was still full of optimism heading in to the Sunday night matchup, but lost his bid to the promised land when the Lions and Matt Patricia embarrassed the Patriots. Patricia and Belichick did still exchange the customary thanksgiving dinner hug after the game.
Reason to Kerrigan
Davante’s Inferno, Unlockin’ Yo Schtuff
Bagel Time, SKOLya’gain, Trouble Hunter
Tannehill4President, Whitey Ford’s Team
The Brady Bundchen
Filthadelphia
Christian’s Brothers, Wanted Dez or Alive
Of note:
Please don’t take management’s drills on participation personally. I’m critical because I care. I’m also really bored with the cloyed week-to-week nature of most of our fantasy football habiliments. So to incentivize us further I offer the following Constitutional amendment to our Ball Gazer rubrics. This new amendment awards participation and provides an alternate opportunity to earn a Bench Swap, outside of the current rule set, for high-performing Ball Gazers. The 70% benchmark is based on getting at least 11 picks correct, on average, over each of the three weeks. This cumulative percentage was only achieved once throughout our tenure (last season by Trouble Hunter), so this is no turkey shoot.
13.5.4 – Sonic Tents: At the conclusion of Week 3, any team that has not already earned a Bench Swap, but has correctly picked 70% of the winners over the first three weeks of the regular season earns a Bench Swap. All three weeks of Ball Gazer submissions must be accounted for in order to qualify.
A consolidated table of 2018 Results is below. Till next year Gazers…
I only received 8 out of 12 Ball Gazer submissions in Week 2. I guess I‘m back to the drawing board on my motivational manifesto You Are a Pink Starburst. I recommend everyone start rationing their fucks so they have some left to give next week.
This seagull gives no fucks.
Ball Gazer Results (15 games)
10-4-1
Davante’s Inferno
9-5-1
The Brady Bundchen, Unlockin’ Yo Schtuff
8-6-1
Filthadelphia, Whitey Ford’s Team
7-7-1
Tannehill4President
6-8-1
Reason to Kerrigan, SKOLya’gain
0-15
Bagel Time, Christian’s Brothers, Trouble Hunter, Wanted Dez or Alive
Of note:
Davante’s Inferno, Reason to Kerrigan
Bagel Time
SKOLya’gain, Trouble Hunter, Whitey Ford’s Team
Unlockin’ Yo Schtuff, The Brady Bundchen
Tannehill4President
Christian’s Brothers, Filthadelphia, Wanted Dez or Alive
Between the Falcons, Saints, and Titans, we were all busted by Miller Time on Sunday. Of note:
A Tie is not a win. Additionally, this was addressed last season in the league Constitution when we encountered an unscheduled Week 1 BYE in Miami due to weather. History almost repeated itself yesterday with the Titans-Dolphins weather delays. We have already modified the language in the Constitution to defer to a Win % (in lieu of number of wins) if such an instance like postponed games, or a Tie, occurs.
Keep a weather eye out this weekend as Hurricane Flo rolls on to the east coast. Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, and Atlanta are all at home. Should be interesting. If any of those games are postponed, I will update win percentage requirements and send a note out on expectations.
This will be addressed via Constitutional Amendment. At the beginning of the season, we did a roll call to engage owner’s intent and encourage maximum commitment. Do know, that there are a handful of very active fantasy owners chomping at the bit to play in our league. As league commissioner, I already think there is an undesirable level of league vivacity (trades, communication, participation). If this is just another league in your annual fantasy portfolio, that’s cool, but please assess your level of investment. In the meantime, as League Commissioner, I enact the following Constitutional Amendment, applicable at the conclusion of Week 2.
13.5.3 – Spicoli: No shirt, no shoes, no dice. Any team that does not participate in the previous week’s Ball Gazer submission does not receive the advantage of Amendment 13.5.1 – Shrinking Balls. For the next week’s submission, the previously non-participating team will be obligated to meet the previous week’s win requirements. This penalty will carry over to the final week until participation is realized. Learn it, know it, live it.
Final Notes:
In the spirit of Constitutional Amendments, I realized this year that there are some unspoken rules of the game, that apparently need to be vocalized.
We traditionally drafted on Labor Day weekend over the years to gain maximum insight and avoid any issues with preseason injuries, roster cuts, team trades, etc. Most importantly, to avoid injuries. However, drafting over Labor Day interrupted many owners vacation and travel plans. To address that, we decided to accept some risk and do the draft a week earlier, typically after the conclusion of Preseason Week 3.
Over the years I have played fantasy football, if a drafted player gets injured during preseason play, the team owner has courtesy rights to that player’s backup or handcuff, if and only if that player is still a free agent. This is a civil courtesy we extend to each other, to counter the risk in early drafting, and to keep the league competitive at the start of the season. Once the regular season begins, it is survival of the fittest. Until then, let’s keep this competitive and fair. As League Commissioner I enact the following Constitutional Amendment.
18.1 – Courtesy Flush: If any drafted player is injured during preseason play, and will miss a significant amount of time (minimum 3 weeks), the owner of the injured player has first right of refusal on that player’s undrafted backup or handcuff. This amendment is void during regular season play.
Til’ Thursday then. Keep your ear to the grindstone and keep an umbrella on you.
-The Commish
The Lombardi Three 