Conditional Lineups: Why so unpopular? (1 Viewer)

I'm not talking about Best Ball, which seems to be the common answer. I LIKE having to pick a lineup. I LIKE evaluating who should perform the best and trying to put that player in. And Best Ball roster construction is radically different. I like best ball for some groups, but most of us prefer lineups for our main leagues.

I'm talking about not having to try to read the ridiculous tea leaves left by today's NFL coaches. I'm talking about night shift workers not having to wake up on 3 hours of sleep to evaluate whether or not that Q player is actually, you know, playing. Or not having to place an inferior option into a lineup just because the Q player plays in a game other than 1 PM. What about when your best backup plays on Thursday night, well before you have any reliable info for your normal starter playing on Sunday? WHY ARE WE MAKING THIS HARDER THAN IT HAS TO BE? This is fixable without going to best ball.

IN one of my leagues this week, the Lynch owner was at an actual NFL game and could not get access to swap Lynch out. In his case, he actually had a later option but simply couldn't gain internet access with his phone in the stadium. Another owner had and would have played Rawls, but didn't have a single player in his lineup that played RB or WR after the 1 PM start times. IE: Both owners were hamstrung by a condition outside their control and made the "correct" decision based on reports available at 1230PM (That Lynch was playing.), but the INCORRECT decision based on updated info at 330 PM.

I would argue that a simple conditional lineup rule should be utilized in most leagues, with simple rules. If a player is Q, owners can submit a conditional swap (before 1 PM games) in case the player is INACTIVE. "Swap Chris Johnson in for Lynch if Lynch inactive", or swap "Rawls in for CJ Anderson if Lynch inactive".

IImplementing such a rule is not a huge burden on commissioners if the rules are kept simple; Q players only, and swap only if inactive. The submission is to be made before any affected players team plays. Most owners can and will still make their own switches, but if the swap in player plays earlier, that's simply not possible without a commissioner.

Let's not pretend that the situation evens out over the year, because some teams play more late games than others. Owners with key players on West Coast squads face the problem more often than others.

I think the fact that no site I know of automates that is a barrier. Also, this is one more complexity to explain to the casual player, so is only likely to be seen in leagues populated by hardcore players who are active every Sunday. (I realize the fact that we all post here means that's common for many of us...I wish it was for me. It isn't for most FF players.)

As a former commish of casual players, I don't want to deal with the every-week-or-two email firestorm when some owner thinks he's won late Monday night only to have me wake up and put in the conditional starter Tuesday morning.

Personally, I like the idea, but I want a hosting site that will do this for me, and clearly display the selections.

Also, the setup might not be as simple as it sounds...especially with flex positions.

Arodin said:

I think the fact that no site I know of automates that is a barrier. Also, this is one more complexity to explain to the casual player, so is only likely to be seen in leagues populated by hardcore players who are active every Sunday. (I realize the fact that we all post here means that's common for many of us...I wish it was for me. It isn't for most FF players.)

As a former commish of casual players, I don't want to deal with the every-week-or-two email firestorm when some owner thinks he's won late Monday night only to have me wake up and put in the conditional starter Tuesday morning.

Personally, I like the idea, but I want a hosting site that will do this for me, and clearly display the selections.

Also, the setup might not be as simple as it sounds...especially with flex positions.

Click to expand...

The lack of automation is a problem, but not exactly a hug burden. And the submission should be made widely public: a thread on the league message board so that EVERYONE can see it and will know the player would be swapped out.

Also, a limit could easily be used to prevent it becoming too burdensome or abused. A limit of one such submission per team per week would limit it while meeting the intent.

I think it's ridiculous to have to decide on Thursday whether or not your guy going on Monday is going to play just because your best backup plays Thursday. That's NOT what makes submitting lineups fun...it's just an un-necesary headache.

Been doing it in my homer for about 8 years.

Hankmoody said:

Been doing it in my homer for about 8 years.

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Has it shown itself to be overly complicated or a PIA to implement?

My local league allows this to be set by each team once per week.

The caveats are that both players must start after the stipulation is made.

Also, one cannot change the players from those slots after the declaration is made. That is, if you name a 1:00 Sunday player as your injury backup for a MNF player and that player lays an egg, you cannot sub oyut the MNF player for a slightly better late-Sunday option, to avoid the possibility of getting egg on yer face.

It is not an issue I recall seeing, but it is a conceivable possibility. Once either player in the stupilation's game has started, the two players are locked in those roles. Commish has to enforce manually. Not too hard. But having the rule helps make it clear.

Another big thing is that the substitution only comes into play if the named player is inactive. I had actually named such a backup for John Brown a few weeks back. Though he was active, I do not believe John Brown set foot on the field. Big goose egg.

But it is a pretty decent rule. It has been around for 20 years.

Still, every year, somebody wants to name two injury emergency players in a week. I have to tell them no.

I used to score the games on paper and then in Excel. Administering the injury backups is hardly a burden.

I like this...I may try it in my most serious league next season.

renesauz said:

Hankmoody said:

Been doing it in my homer for about 8 years.

Click to expand...

Has it shown itself to be overly complicated or a PIA to implement?

Click to expand...

Posts to message boards:

DNP: J. Hill if E. Sanders doesn't play.

Matthews if Floyd DNP

I as commish will go change lineups some time when I feel like it. Easy peasy. We accept email also.

Good idea. I'd like to give this a shot in my leagues next year.

Arodin said:

I think the fact that no site I know of automates that is a barrier. Also, this is one more complexity to explain to the casual player, so is only likely to be seen in leagues populated by hardcore players who are active every Sunday. (I realize the fact that we all post here means that's common for many of us...I wish it was for me. It isn't for most FF players.)

As a former commish of casual players, I don't want to deal with the every-week-or-two email firestorm when some owner thinks he's won late Monday night only to have me wake up and put in the conditional starter Tuesday morning.

Personally, I like the idea, but I want a hosting site that will do this for me, and clearly display the selections.

Also, the setup might not be as simple as it sounds...especially with flex positions.

Click to expand...

I'm a huge, huge, huge evangelist of conditional lineups. I went out on a limb and implemented them on the dynasty league I started in 2007. I anticipated it being a huge burden on me as a commissioner, so I put in a bunch of safeguards. You know what, though? The rule has been in place for 8 years. People make use of it every week. And I only have to administer maybe 2-4 swaps a year, tops. I was really in a panic over nothing.

I would strongly, strongly recommend leagues start using conditionals. It just makes life so. much. easier. I went out of town on vacation with family over Denver's bye week. I was on the road when Dion Lewis was declared inactive. In two of my leagues, I had to eat the zero. In the third, he was automatically replaced with the next man up.

I agree with Rene that we should be making this less stressful, not more. I don't want to be chained to my laptop at 11:50 every Sunday. I don't want to be scouring injury reports on Thursday afternoon trying to predict what's going to happen on Monday. In fact, with Thursday games every week now, (they weren't when I started my old dynasty league), some sort of conditional lineup system should be nearly mandatory, in my opinion.

Consider: Say my quarterbacks are Ben Roethlisberger and Nick Foles. Foles plays on Thursday and Ben is on Monday Night. Obviously I want to start Ben, but Ben's in the concussion protocol. By Thursday, we literally do not know whether Ben is going to play. We don't have a clue. It depends entirely on advancing through the protocol, and we can't possibly know whether he's doing that until he actually does that.

So do I bench my starting QB for a crappy backup? Do I roll with him and risk him being ruled out? What if it's a deep league and there's no other help on the wire? Thursday / Sunday and Thursday / Monday decisions used to be a once or twice a year concern. Now they're literally every week. That's garbage. Why are we making ourselves sweat this out when we could just eliminate so much of our stress up front? Do we really want teams to win matchups solely because of the order the NFL scheduled their games?

The way my league handles it is simple. You declare a starter and a backup. You can declare anyone you want, whether they're on the injury report or not, (I remember the week Mike Sims-Walker was a surprise game-day inactive for missing curfew). You can declare as many players as you want. I submit conditionals on every player in my lineup, just in case- because I was the guy who started Mike Sims-Walker that week, and I lost that game by a tenth of a point.

As soon as either player plays, both players lock. If your starter is inactive, you get his backup. If he's active and doesn't play a single snap... tough luck. For positions where you start more than one player, you can do "batch conditionals". E.g. "Start: RB1, RB2; Conditional: RB3, RB4". If either RB1 or RB2 sits, you get RB3. If both sit, you get RB3 and RB4. If you'd rather not do batch conditionals, that's fine, too- I had Le'Veon Bell handcuffed with DeAngelo Williams, and I always put those two paired up in their own separate conditional request.

Again, it seems like it would be a lot of work, but from experience, they almost never get called in. And a little bit extra commissioner overhead, for me, is well worth the massive stress reduction. I can spend 10 minutes a year changing lineups, I can spend 5 minutes a week posting my backups, and then I can go about my life. I can go to brunch with the family Sunday mornings. I can maybe even catch a game live now and then. I can enter Friday not having an ulcer over whether I made the right call on my Thursday starts. Again, it seems like a total no-brainer.

For what it's worth, Australian (AFL) fantasy football has pretty much this feature built in as standard. You move bench players into "emergency" spots (1 for each position) and if any of your starters fail to take the field then you get the score from the relavent emergency player instead. Pretty simple.

Thanks Adam.

This seems like a hard sell for some leagues for some reason. A lot of people seem to equate it with best ball as if it takes skill out, and some commissioners seem to think it's too much work/effort.

I'd be more than fine with limiting guys to one or two backup submissions weekly and only related to Q players, but not necessarily to just the specific change. For example, this past week I had Rawls on the bench in one league. I would have started him had I known Lynch was out. At 1230 PM, all indications we had said Lynch was playing. Looking at my squad, I didn't have a single viable players other than Rawls in a 4 PM or later game. Whether or not I played Rawls was not dependant strictly on Rawls, but on Lynch. I was forced to choose a 1 PM option instead, and Rawls went off for 40 points when Lynch DNP. I still won my matchup, but lost out on 30 points that could make a difference in playoff seeding. A lot of guys accept this as a normal aspect of fantasy football, but it doesn't have to be.

I make bad calls all the time, we all do. THAT's what lineups are about, and I wouldn't want to change that aspect. But misjudging what a player will do is quite different from having to read tea leaves hours or days in advance regarding whether a guy plays at all. Some commissioners will take conditional submissions on a limited basis if asked early enough, but usually for specific reasons like vacations. I'm trying to talk my leagues into adopting some sort of standardized method to allow one or two conditional players a week linked solely to whether or not a specific player is active. IE: "If Lynch DNP, sub Rawls in for (other RB)"

We've had this rule in my main league since the year after Corey Dillon kept being a GTD for the Pats - and they had a lot of 4pm/SNF/MNF games that messed with that particular owner. That league went for it pretty easily, but we are all friends of around the same age (30's back then), so the concept of not being chained to our home computer (pre-smartphone and pre-NFL.com/inactives) to try to figure out who was playing made sense for all of us.

I had more resistance in my dynasty league - the guys don't know each other as well, and we range in age by about 30 years I think. Had to scratch and claw to get it in there.

Our rule is pretty similar to the chain above, with two exceptions:

1. You can only make changes if your own player is inactive. So if you have Rawls, but not Lynch, you still have to make that call whenever your other guy is starting. We contemplated this, but decided that wasn't the spirit of the rule. No one has complained about it, so we'll probably leave it be, but I don't think it is a bad twist.

2. In my main league, you can only be wrong three times per year. It is rare that anyone hits this cap.

The rule makes playing better.