From their help center:
Why can't I change my lineup if I drop or trade away my Thursday player?
Answer: If you started a player in your Thursday game and then trade or drop the player after his game you will not be able to re-submit your lineup.If you submitted the player as a starter and have now dropped them you will still receive the points for that week, but cannot make lineup changes with the newly acquired players as that would be allowing you to submit your lineup from a Roster + X (the newly acquired players).
If you received a player in a Trade that played on Thursday, after the game, you cannot start this player as the deadline has passed.
If your league wants to allow this kind of thing, your commish can submit the lineup for you and it shouldn't stop him. But generally this would be what they say in the FAQ, abuse of the roster limit by starting multiple players out of 1 roster spot. I wouldn't do it if I was commish and the rules didn't specifically say it was allowed.
This. A commish can always go in and manually "fix" a lineup.
It's not an issue that I have a huge concern over unless it's intentionally done to rig a game late in the season.
It would work like this:
It's Friday and Team A trades away Tom Brady, who played the night before and was in A's lineup, to B for Devonta Freeman and Antonio Brown, who play on Sunday and then get inserted into A's lineup upon arrival.
So Team A could use Brady, Freeman and Brown all in that same week's lineup. Of course, that means Team B could use none of them that week.
So Team A's opponent faces a bit of a juggernaut that week but all weeks thereafter he has a Brady-less lineup. But Team B's opponent kinda gets a pansy that week because B can't use Brady, Freeman or Brown. But B's opponents for each week thereafter face a Brady led Team B.
So is the impact on the league from that one week really that much in terms of throwing off the competitive balance of the league? Isn't it more likely that the net shift of those players from team to team over the remainder of the season will have a greater impact in terms of shifting around fantasy points? Now imagine that Brady gets hurt 2 weeks later and is done for the season. Team B is now without Brady, Brown and Freeman for the whole of the remainder, which definitely creates a competitive shift based on the what B's opponents have to face over the remainder of the season.
I think it's unlikely that these same two teams could cooperate and benefit from the NFL Thursday night schedule so as to actually collude throughout the season.
Would it bother me to see them collude to influence even one game? Yes. So if this deal happens late in the season and it knocks someone out of the playoffs or somesuch I would look at it closely. But this early in the season, it may just be that Team B is willing to go without using any of the players for one week because he is convinced that having Brady for the rest of the season is what he needs to better his team and make a championship run.
So at this point in the season it doesn't really ruffle my feathers absent some other indication of collusion or improper gamesmanship.
I always thought this was a form of roster sharing. The team trading the Seahawks now gets another potential player to start while also getting the benefits of the Seahawks points.
