How has the covid chaos affected your league's activity this offseason? (1 Viewer)

Just wondering if existing leagues, particularly keepers/dynasties have been as active as normal. I've seen a mixed bag in mine, but generally it's been a little quieter than normal. In one regard I'd expect activity to be up with the lockdowns and people looking for something to do. On the other hand, with a lot of question if the season will run fully, or at all for that matter,  I could see some owners tuning it out completely. What are you all seeing in your leagues?    

More activity I think from the boredom

At least for most of the league

My league is dead.  No one wants to do anything till we are more sure what might happen.  Makes me soooo bored.

I've been incredibly active, getting rid of all guys who are either in their walk year this year or next, or will be hitting twenty-seven or eight in the process at RB. So far, given COVID, I've traded:

Drake
Gordon
Conner

I received McLaurin for Drake, a 2021 1st plus Edmonds (I had drake) and 2.04 this year for Gordon, and a second for Conner (who I had acquired for a better second earlier in the crisis. I ate the drop in draft order because I became convinced there was no season). 

It's weird. I think standing pat puts you a potentially great disadvantage in the market if you're fairly certain where that market is going. It's the same for assets that are players. I went with what I thought were scientific trends once CA and AZ went nuts with cases, CA after shutting down. It just didn't seem (or doesn't seem, I should say) that the year is happening. 

My league is not going to happen I don't think.. We have 24 teams split into two conferences. Our draft is usually at a bar, but that is out now and nobody wants to have it at their house. We are going to vote for a zoom draft, a few guys have already opted out.

I will be honest too, I really am  not missing sports like I thought I would when this all started. I have gotten a ton done around the house.

PennStater77 said:

My league is not going to happen I don't think.. We have 24 teams split into two conferences. Our draft is usually at a bar, but that is out now and nobody wants to have it at their house. We are going to vote for a zoom draft, a few guys have already opted out.

I will be honest too, I really am  not missing sports like I thought I would when this all started. I have gotten a ton done around the house.

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Kind of the same boat. I've been focusing on the NFL much less. But the hysteria around the Wuhan virus, warranted or not, has been interesting to see. I run a keeper league and I've been holding out on a variety of decisions to see how the NFL was going to lean. If we have a draft, people will have the option of participating online just like they do every year. For those who want to get together and have a traditional one, that's not going to be an issue, and we'll do it like we always have. 

But if everything gets cancelled... so be it. I agree with your sentiments. It would certainly make things easier in some respects. 

Both will certainly be cancelled.  Too many scenarios that make it unfair - maybe a player misses with COVID, maybe a team misses a game, maybe it stops after a few games.  It's sort of like taking a big vacation right now - you could try to do it but it won't be as fun as usual, to the point that it's not worth doing.

Mingooch said:

My league is dead.  No one wants to do anything till we are more sure what might happen.  Makes me soooo bored.

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Pretty much this, minimal discussion for some leagues. One 10 person league is set to go and have a Zoom draft if there is football still planned, but all of my larger leagues with more intricate rules are dead right now, maybe they will come alive in mid August if it looks more likely that we will have a season. 

As I've said in a few other Threads, I founded and run a $$$ Contract Dynasty League going into it's 20th Season. We usually wake out of dormancy around College Basketball's National Championship, as I'm addicted to NCAA Hoops, and it's hard to tear me away from that until it's over. The Conference Tournaments/Big Dance being canceled absolutely crushed me emotionally and took all the wind out of my sails. In the weeks leading up to the NFL Draft, in my State of the League Address, I told the League we were going into a 'holding pattern', until we had more information about the pandemic, and how the other major sports and the NFL were going to handle things. Similar to how we handled the work stoppage in 2011. Our RFA usually takes place in May, post-draft. I postponed it indefinitely, and sometime in June I started looking at the calendar, and working back from September 10th, started mapping out when I'd have to start making decisions with whatever information available...and prayed the NFL would start taking the bull by the horns and lay out a reasonable path to follow. I started putting together a framework of plans for a cancelled Season, various degrees of partial Seasons, etc. 

Well, the NFL pretty much crapped the bed on that one, and with the window starting to close , I addressed the League again on July 23rd. I explained that I had put an extensive concession plan together across multiple contingencies, but my confidence in a 16-week Season, allowing for a 13-week Fantasy Season/3-Week Playoff was at an all-time low. I presented them with an alternative: open the League for business/trading, RFA,  and the Rookie/Unrestricted Free Agent Draft (all normal 2020 things). We normally hold our Rookie/UFA Draft in August, right after the HOF Game. The remaining weeks in August, trades are made, Contract decisions and Rookie Taxi Squad decisions are pondered. leading up to Contracts/Cuts due the Tuesday before opening Thursday Night Football. I proposed that following the Rookie/UFA Draft, we 'punt' the 2020 Regular Season, with the exception of trading, put the League on ice until 2021. We're going into our 20th Season with a majority of original Owners, and have quite a history, and my greatest priority is on maintaining the integrity of the League, and I just saw no way we could have a 2020 Season that wasn't marred by an asterisk. We've spent the last week debating this, and the majority of Owners have been moved to support my position.

I will open the League for business/trading on Monday August 3rd (normally in May, after the NFL Draft), and conduct RFA (normally conducted in May/June) from 08/10-09/06. The final week of RFA is reserved for completing existing RFA Auctions, and always ends early. I'll piggyback the Rookie/UFA Draft into that last week, 08/31-09/02. Owners will have to announce whether they are keeping or dropping Rookie Taxi Squad Players who have run out of eligibility just prior to the Rookie/UFA Draft (those dropped enter the Rookie/UFA pool), as usual. Post Rookie/UFA Draft, everyone's Rosters are bloated - Players under existing Contracts, rights to RFA's not bid upon during RFA, as well as Rookie/UFA Draft Picks.

At that point, our usual 3-4 week break until Contracts/Cuts are due will just be extended until after the Super Bowl. Trading will be allowed all through the NFL Regular Season and NFL Playoffs, just as it would be in August leading up to Contracts/Cuts. After the Super Bowl, Owners will submit Contracts and Cuts, as usual, with one exception: I will allow every Owner to make their own decisions regarding whether existing Contracts 'toll' or not, to allow everyone to route their own path into 2021, and in fairness to all. The RFA pool will comprise all 1-year contract Players who's Owners choose to let their Contracts expire, and all cuts will be classified as Unrestricted Free Agents, but populate the much-shallower-than-usual RFA pool - we did this last year as part of a process I engineered when we chose to contract the League from 16 down to 14 Teams after a few veteran Owners bowed out after the 2019 Season, and we dreaded the process of bringing in competent new blood and getting them up to speed on a limited timetable. Our 2021 Rookie/UFA Draft Order will be decided by conducting a lottery, and a separate lottery will be held for each of the 5 Rounds, and no Team will be allowed to 'win' more than once, in the interest of fairness to all.

I tried. Lord knows, I tried, to put together Concession and Contingency Plans for playing out the Season. Literal pages of text writing out guidelines of how we'd handle every possible scenario I could conceive, and the more I worked on it, the more depressing it became. Our League's major tenets are competition based around fairness and fun, and I just didn't see a path forward into 2020 that didn't compromise all of those in some way, shape or form.

I've been browsing and lurking on several League Forums at The Huddle for the past 3 months, as well as the Threads here in the Pool discussing plans for 2020, and the gymnastics that Commissioners and Leagues are putting themselves through to try and get a Season in just baffle me. I play in a boatload of redraft Leagues and across several National High Stakes League platforms. Redraft Leagues are very forgiving of unique situations like the C-19 pandemic. One and done, water under the bridge and all that. Dynasty Leagues, IMO, are a different beast entirely, and things that threaten 'normal' continuity require intense scrutiny and thought, with respect to history and tradition. A 'damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead' approach, was just something I found distasteful, as I went through the calculus. I guess I'm just posting this more or less to present Dynasty League guys who are agonizing over playing out the Season, and dreading the headaches that are likely to present themselves throughout the process, with the alternative that we're choosing. We're possibly unique in the sense that we have a 2-decade history and play for a lot of money, and between preserving that history/integrity and putting out a product that would be worth the time and energy, and validate the expense, I just didn't see how it was possible to play out a meaningful 2020 Season.

HTH, and good luck moving foward!

Going into our 21st season with a 12 team league where 10 of the owners have been there since the start, and this season is already FUBAR. 3 owners have "opted out" (with a few more still "waiting to see what happens"), and the rest currently want to forge ahead. Which means I will have to realign divisions, arrange for an online/Zoom draft instead of our in-person draft, possibly include extra IR spots for just Covid (and hope the league software will have some sort of unique designation for Covid related player absences, otherwise I would have to police the IR basically every day)... this is shaping up to be about as fun as a root canal with no anesthesia. 

Our live draft was cancelled. Nobody is really talking about anything. We will have a zoom draft if the season happens. Given how baseball is going no one is thinking there will be a season or at least a full one. 

Sitting out the season. My interest in fantasy football has plummeted the last 3-4 years anyway. Only play best ball redrafts anymore. Really don't have any interest in playing this year. IMO Just gonna be more headache than it is worth (between schedules/payouts/possible refunds/angry league members/etc...)

It's going to be a shlt show if they don't find a way to bubble things perhaps in multiple locations. And that ignores possible field condition issues if that's done.

JMO Only way season happens is if they bubble things up and revise the schedule (either reducing # of games or having most teams play each other twice over 16 games)

My leagues are very quiet right now. 

Partly because the owners that would go all in for 2020 have legitimate reasons for not doing so now. 

I don’t have much enthusiasm for the season maybe will change. Doubt my redraft league happens, My dynasty league will to the extent possible but kinda wish it wasn’t, just doesn’t seem like it will be fun.

12 team keeper league and we are full steam ahead until we have a reason not to be.  Offline draft scheduled for Labor Day weekend as has been the case for 26 years.