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When your season ends due to other owners not paying attention (1 Viewer)

Judge Smails

Footballguy
2 examples this week.  Five 7-6 teams fighting for last 3 playoff spots.  One owner, who has a bye with a win, doesn't pay attention to Cook being active and named as the starter.  Several people texted him with Shefter tweets etc but he didn't answer until 2 minutes after kickoff. Too late.  He plays Mattison (2) and Sutton (0) with Cook's 38 points on the bench.  He loses - would have won with Cook's points.  Cost him the bye and me the last playoff spot.  Pissed off.  Not only do we play for rings and pride but there is decent money here - first place is 5-6K. And my team is on fire right now - great chance I would have won it all.

The other guy has Henderson still in his lineup even though he was ruled out with COVID.  I mean, it's said in big red letters "IR" next to his name on our site the last 2 days.  He could have picked up any COVID replacement (no other healthy RBs on his bench) but still hasn't as of tonight.  So his only option is to choose from the MNF game vs the entire slate of games he had.

It's happened all year.  Another guy played Ridley even though he didn't make the trip for the game and was ruled out.  Just careless

Sort of done with owners not paying attention.  I'm commish next year and it will be a $100 fine every time this happens. I know it's only FF and everyone is busy but c'mon.  It doesn't affect just you - it affects the whole league.

 
Having same problems in my leagues. People not paying attention, showing apathy, etc., whatever you want to call it, it's tanking. I'm fed up with it myself, ready to just throw people out next year, but you'll probably just replace them with someone else who'll do the same thing. 

 
As commissioner in my league, this also irks the he11 out of me. Our stakes aren't nearly as high, but I cover a lot of the costs to make it as competitive and fun for everyone as possible. And I do it on the stipulation that anyone who has a team will promise to fight with a complete lineup each week, no matter how bad their team sucks. It's a friends and family league, but my assistant commissioner and I won't let anyone in that doesn't agree. We still get one or two we have to pester, but we get it done. For league as high stakes as yours, I absolutely agree with fines and anything else you can imagine.

I know most commissioners don't want to go this extra babysitting step, but I don't mind offering everyone my help. If you forsee an issue like the Dalvin Cook situation, let me know IN ADVANCE if you aren't sure you'll have the time to check it. I will fix it for them if they've got work, church, vacation, whatever. Just send me a message and put in your lineup you'll use if he's out, but tell me you want him in if he's declared active. I'll get him into your lineup. My daughter works on Sundays and can't monitor the inactives, so we talk about it and I make the necessary adjustments for her. If your worried about people crying foul, post the contingencies beforehand on the message board. Maybe it won't work for everyone, but it works pretty well for our league. We've only had one inactive started all season.

I wish you all luck. There aren't many things I loathe more than this issue as a commissioner. 

 
Sounds like you need best ball or commish powers to make common sense starts like this on behalf of the person lol. Everyone shoukd field a full lineup at all times.

Also, I hope head to head next year is truly dead and everyone adds a median game next year so there's two games a week, minimizing the sting of no credit when your team blows up to only lose to.someome.who had a tad more 

 
100 dollar fine :lmao:  How could you possibly enforce that? I’d laugh until the end of time if you sent me an email saying I was fined a 100 bucks. 
 

That sucks and while everybody should take it serious enough not everybody does. Especially when they are out of the running. Just the way it goes. 
Then you'd be out of the league.  Fines are relative.  $10 fines may be appropriate in smaller $ leagues.  When we are playing for $6K it's not enough.  Has to have some teeth in it.  

 
You can't fine guys. Just go to them in the off season and explain to them that if this was a casual free yahoo league, whatever. But you're playing for money so pay attention to your team. If they can't handle that, then vote them out. Get someone in there that wants to play. 

 
I am 100% in your corner, Judge.  I absolutely despise absent owners.  I don't care what your excuse is - you submit the best lineup you can every week, regardless of your record.  I am leaving a redraft league I have been in for 5 years because the commish decided to become an absent commish.  For the first 4 years he did a great job, staying on people who got lazy, and even barred a few from returning the following years when they became absent.  But this year it's him.  The commish needs to protect the integrity of the league at all costs, and mine just started Elijah Moore against a team fighting for a playoff spot.

Owners should all have to agree the commish can remove inactive players and start whoever is projected best to fill that spot.  Now, I am not talking about picking up someone off the wire, just the highest guy on their bench.

Judge, I have a problem with your first scenario though.  The Mattison/Cook/Sutton owner may have thought Cook was only gonna get a few carries, kind of like how Darrell Henderson was active and Sony got the entire load.  If he assumed Cook was gonna be a decoy, you can't do anything, no matter how it affected you.  But if this guy decided not to care about his lineup this week, that's a different story.

 
I was having an issue in our dynasty league when owners would get careless at the end of the season.  Implemented a rule that if you have an illegal lineup you move to the back of the rookie draft every round (trades that occurred before the violation does not affect the other owner).  Things changed pretty quickly  :lol:

 
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is there a rule about this? Is this discussed at all during the off season or even within in-season communications? I kindly start reminding everyone around week 10, it is mostly affective, but there is always an incident here and there. Sometimes our life's take precedence over our hobby. 

A 100$ fine though .... 🤣😂🤣 

 
This guy that played Mattison, he gets no respect for a reason.. sheesh.
There were discussions here in the Shark Pool that the Vikings might be super cautious with Cook and limit his carries, especially if they got up  early on the Steelers, or that Cook could take one shot to the shoulder and be done for the night.

I'm not saying the guy did not try to tank or was not apathetic but it's not like there not reason for concern.

For me,  I was definitely rolling the dice with Cook once I heard he was active, but I didn't have any good alternatives. Sometime having a crappy bench pays off!

 
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We kicked a longtime owner out after he set an illegal lineup for like 7 weeks in a row despite SEVERAL warnings. When I asked him at the end of the season he had no excuse but was also pissed to be kicked out. Sayonara sucker.

Needless to say, in the years since then we've had an occasional hiccup from other teams but nothing as blatant as that.

FYI in your situation above, the Cook thing wouldn't bother me because it wasn't known he'd play until Thursday and sometimes people don't realize who plays in the Thursday game plus the guy set a legal lineup. How can you fine him for that? The Henderson guy obviously has no excuse.

 
One of our leagues we started this year was a small prize for 1st but last place has to take everyone out to dinner. Every team at the bottom is setting legal lineups, making pickups, etc. It's a great incentive.

 
One of our leagues we started this year was a small prize for 1st but last place has to take everyone out to dinner. Every team at the bottom is setting legal lineups, making pickups, etc. It's a great incentive.
I like this rule, but most of my leagues are random internet leagues so wouldn't be able to do that in those.  For the ones I do know the other people I love that rule.  Had some issues in both "friends" leagues and I think that would keep them motivated or at least I got something out of someone else giving up.

 
2 examples this week.  Five 7-6 teams fighting for last 3 playoff spots.  One owner, who has a bye with a win, doesn't pay attention to Cook being active and named as the starter.  Several people texted him with Shefter tweets etc but he didn't answer until 2 minutes after kickoff. Too late.  He plays Mattison (2) and Sutton (0) with Cook's 38 points on the bench.  He loses - would have won with Cook's points.  Cost him the bye and me the last playoff spot.  Pissed off.  Not only do we play for rings and pride but there is decent money here - first place is 5-6K. And my team is on fire right now - great chance I would have won it all.

The other guy has Henderson still in his lineup even though he was ruled out with COVID.  I mean, it's said in big red letters "IR" next to his name on our site the last 2 days.  He could have picked up any COVID replacement (no other healthy RBs on his bench) but still hasn't as of tonight.  So his only option is to choose from the MNF game vs the entire slate of games he had.

It's happened all year.  Another guy played Ridley even though he didn't make the trip for the game and was ruled out.  Just careless

Sort of done with owners not paying attention.  I'm commish next year and it will be a $100 fine every time this happens. I know it's only FF and everyone is busy but c'mon.  It doesn't affect just you - it affects the whole league.
Did he not pay attention, or think that even if activated he'd have a small role coming back from a Separated Shoulder so soon?

As a Viking fan, I watched pre-game and still felt that even though he was activated and listed as the "Starter", it would be more of a 50/50 mix at best with Mattison. Glad I was wrong :)  

But I hear you on the other points..
We have some owners who seem to make their line-up decisions on Friday or Saturday and don't check back in before games. Lost track how many times I've looked at the Matchup scores during gameday to see players who were ruled out early Sunday still on teams rosters. 

 
You ever think that the guy didn't play cook for a reason?   He didn't want you in the playoffs 
I have seen this strategy used in FF leagues before.  You pick your lineup based on the potential outcome and playoff implications.  Who do you want to keep out / let in playoffs? 

 
Sounds like most of us have similar issues. After years of dealing with owners who took their eyes off the ball, we passed a rule that the commissioner (me) could adjust a lineup if an injured or bye week player was in there.

I wanted to go a step farther and have a team lose a draft pick (or drop to the end of rounds) the next year if it happened after a warning, but didn’t pass.

 
I can't tell you how many guys I've started that haven't played the last 2 or 3 years. All the Thursday games you have to make a decision and im not around to see if player x is playing. I'll then set my lineup Friday or Saturday and get home Sunday afternoon to find out a couple of my guys ended up not playing.  I don't have time to check Sunday mornings for all my Questionable/gt decisions. And frankly I don't care that much anymore.  They would do me a favor kicking me out at this point 

I used to never have that happen but I just don't pay attention enough anymore

 
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I can't tell you how many guys I've started that haven't played the last 2 or 3 years. All the Thursday games you have to make a decision and im not around to see if player x is playing. I'll then set my lineup Friday or Saturday and get home Sunday afternoon to find out a couple of my guys ended up not playing.  I don't have time to check Sunday mornings for all my Questionable/gt decisions. And frankly I don't care that much anymore.  They would do me a favor kicking me out at this point
Why don't you just leave the league then if you don't care anymore?  Why do you want them to boot you instead?

 
Thursday games sneak up on everyone, even the most hard core fantasy players. 

No one predicted what Cook was to do. He could’ve just have easily had a 8-24-0 night. 

 
Why don't you just leave the league then if you don't care anymore?  Why do you want them to boot you instead?
They won't. It's all the same guys I've been playing with for over 20 years.  It's only 100 bucks. So I start out excited to hang out and after like the 4th week meh.   I was going to quit this season but won it all last year so felt obligated 

I started in 94 think I'm just meh at this point

 
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I can't tell you how many guys I've started that haven't played the last 2 or 3 years. All the Thursday games you have to make a decision and im not around to see if player x is playing. I'll then set my lineup Friday or Saturday and get home Sunday afternoon to find out a couple of my guys ended up not playing.  I don't have time to check Sunday mornings for all my Questionable/gt decisions. And frankly I don't care that much anymore.  They would do me a favor kicking me out at this point 

I used to never have that happen but I just don't pay attention enough anymore
With cellphones and app notifications I still don't see how this is possible no matter how busy you are.

 
2 examples this week.  Five 7-6 teams fighting for last 3 playoff spots.  One owner, who has a bye with a win, doesn't pay attention to Cook being active and named as the starter.  Several people texted him with Shefter tweets etc but he didn't answer until 2 minutes after kickoff. Too late.  He plays Mattison (2) and Sutton (0) with Cook's 38 points on the bench.  He loses - would have won with Cook's points.  Cost him the bye and me the last playoff spot.  Pissed off.  Not only do we play for rings and pride but there is decent money here - first place is 5-6K. And my team is on fire right now - great chance I would have won it all.

The other guy has Henderson still in his lineup even though he was ruled out with COVID.  I mean, it's said in big red letters "IR" next to his name on our site the last 2 days.  He could have picked up any COVID replacement (no other healthy RBs on his bench) but still hasn't as of tonight.  So his only option is to choose from the MNF game vs the entire slate of games he had.

It's happened all year.  Another guy played Ridley even though he didn't make the trip for the game and was ruled out.  Just careless

Sort of done with owners not paying attention.  I'm commish next year and it will be a $100 fine every time this happens. I know it's only FF and everyone is busy but c'mon.  It doesn't affect just you - it affects the whole league.
No offense, but I don't care how hot your team is, you didn't have a great chance at winning it all. So much luck involved and you didn't even make the playoffs, and even if you had you would have had to win essentially 3 coin flips in a row- those aren't great odds.

That said, this stuff bugs me big time as well. Kind of surprising there's that much apathy with those stakes, but all you can do is make and enforce rules for next year. It's not that difficult when it comes to inactive players, but for a Cook situation I'm not sure there's much you can do- it's already been said but there was a legitimate debate on who was the better start between he and Mattison and he was far from the only guy to make that decision.

One thing we implemented a few years ago is a contingent starter, so people don't have to be glued to the internet just before kickoff- send out an email saying if so and so doesn't play (has to officially be inactive), start so and so in their place. Of course, that still requires a little effort, but at least they can send that email out at any point during the week.

 
With cellphones and app notifications I still don't see how this is possible no matter how busy you are.
Ok you can judge me because I don't operate like you but my activities my phone is not present. 

 
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Happens every year.

One owner left D. Waller in his lineup and forgot to start a defense. Lost and because of this let a hot 6-7 team squeak in (which I now know will beat me in the semis).

Another owner was going to leave K. Allen and D. Johnson in with Covid. I texted him and he made the change.

Another owner, already with a bye, mysteriously left A. Mattison in his lineup even though Cook was active and he had better options. Have a feeling he was trying to influence the playoff seeding.

Even myself...with a bye in hand, there were a couple of teams on the outside looking in that I most definitely wanted to lose. If I lost my game, one of them could have been out. I contemplated benching both J. Jones and the SEA D for R. Penny and the KC D respectively. I didn't. I would have scored more LOL. But I won anyway and both of those other hot teams got in the playoffs.

Bottom line: The majority of people who engage in this hobby don't really give a ##### as much as you are I do. And their mental health is most likely much better off.

 
Thursday games sneak up on everyone, even the most hard core fantasy players. 

No one predicted what Cook was to do. He could’ve just have easily had a 8-24-0 night. 
Yeah this.  With work and kids activities in the evening Thursday nights are an absolute pain.  Factor in Cook wasn't even supposed to play earlier in the week I don't fault the Cook/Mattson owner.  

 
2 examples this week.  Five 7-6 teams fighting for last 3 playoff spots.  One owner, who has a bye with a win, doesn't pay attention to Cook being active and named as the starter.  Several people texted him with Shefter tweets etc but he didn't answer until 2 minutes after kickoff. Too late.  He plays Mattison (2) and Sutton (0) with Cook's 38 points on the bench.  He loses - would have won with Cook's points.  Cost him the bye and me the last playoff spot.  Pissed off.  Not only do we play for rings and pride but there is decent money here - first place is 5-6K. And my team is on fire right now - great chance I would have won it all.

The other guy has Henderson still in his lineup even though he was ruled out with COVID.  I mean, it's said in big red letters "IR" next to his name on our site the last 2 days.  He could have picked up any COVID replacement (no other healthy RBs on his bench) but still hasn't as of tonight.  So his only option is to choose from the MNF game vs the entire slate of games he had.

It's happened all year.  Another guy played Ridley even though he didn't make the trip for the game and was ruled out.  Just careless

Sort of done with owners not paying attention.  I'm commish next year and it will be a $100 fine every time this happens. I know it's only FF and everyone is busy but c'mon.  It doesn't affect just you - it affects the whole league.


In my main league we all have side bets with each other from 5 to 20 dollars per game for the whole season. Because of that nobody ever stops trying no matter what place your team is in as you have $$$$ on the line every week.

 
Yeah this.  With work and kids activities in the evening Thursday nights are an absolute pain.  Factor in Cook wasn't even supposed to play earlier in the week I don't fault the Cook/Mattson owner.  
I played Mattison this week, on purpose.  Then again, I'm an idiot.

 
You sure he wasn’t paying attention? If you’re that red hot, maybe he didn’t want you in the playoffs. Especially since he answered right after the game started. 
Well, if he won he would have had the bye and a guarantee into the semifinals and $.  Now he has to play in the first round and potentially make 0.  So yeah, I'm sure that wasn't the case.

 
FYI there were owners in this very forum debating whether or not to play Cook
Owner already stated he would have and wanted to play Cook.  The decision was Mattison or Courtland Sutton in the flex and he would have done Mattison for insurance.

It's over.  We'll deal with via rules for next year.  

 
There's a guy in our league who was in 1st place mid-season despite a bad team - just got lucky in the scheduling, winning low scoring weeks.  Since ~Week 7 he's been in a spiral, dropping down the board.  Currently sitting in 6th and with one more loss would get jumped by the 7th place team (me).  

Of course Mr. #6 is playing against #12 this week, who left Hurts and Goedert on bye in his lineup.  Easy win for #6, and I'm shut out of the playoffs after being third in total points on the year. 

Hate inattentive owners in redraft. 

 
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There's a guy in our league who was in 1st place mid-season despite a bad team - just got lucky in the scheduling, winning low scoring weeks.  Since ~Week 7 he's been in a spiral, dropping down the board.  Currently sitting in 6th and with one more loss would get jumped by the 7th place team (me).  

Of course Mr. #6 is playing against #12 this week, who left Hurts and Goedert on bye in his lineup.  Easy win for #6, and I'm shut out of the playoffs after being third in total points on the year. 

Hate inattentive owners in redraft. 
I would never ever want to play in a league where this was acceptable.  That owner would have to be booted.  After his lineup was fixed for the integrity of the league.  

 
Owner already stated he would have and wanted to play Cook.  The decision was Mattison or Courtland Sutton in the flex and he would have done Mattison for insurance.

It's over.  We'll deal with via rules for next year.  
It's an interesting admission. I'm a Cook owner (and Viking fan) who had zero confidence starting Cook after seeing his shoulder collapse on a nothing play 10 days prior. I chose not to trust it, and paid the price... it just reeked of Viking desperation. I wouldn't want to write the rule that outlaws my ability to make the (in retrospect bad) decision I made.

 
I would never ever want to play in a league where this was acceptable.  That owner would have to be booted.  After his lineup was fixed for the integrity of the league.  
I already complained to the commish about how this is directly impacting playoff seeding, but he won't manually go fix the guy's lineup to replace the bye players (he has Freiermuth and Cousins on the bench) for two reasons: 

1. This guy in 12th place didn't replace Derrick Henry until a week after his injury, so commish doesn't want to now manipulate the guy's lineup and "set a precedent" at playoff time, when he didn't do it before to cover Henry on IR.

2. The commish is the guy in 6th getting the free win

 
The Cooks issue is one that nobody can do anything about. There was valid injury concern and a game time decision b/c of TNF. Maybe it was a savvy move to knock you out, Judge, maybe not. At least that hat looks go on you, though. 

Bye / IR starters are the worst. Add some language to the bylaws that allow the commish to fix invalid lineups. Boot routine offenders. I'm currently in a rebuild with a team I took over this season and a bit upset that my artful tanking just took a big hit this week from the 2 teams below me in the standing, which featured 5 & 3 starters that were IR, non-starters (Drew Lock WTF?) or on bye weeks. This particular league does not have any rules to prevent/punish this garbage. I'll be submitting a request for such rules.

 
100 dollar fine :lmao:  How could you possibly enforce that? I’d laugh until the end of time if you sent me an email saying I was fined a 100 bucks. 
 

That sucks and while everybody should take it serious enough not everybody does. Especially when they are out of the running. Just the way it goes. 


Then you'd be out of the league.  Fines are relative.  $10 fines may be appropriate in smaller $ leagues.  When we are playing for $6K it's not enough.  Has to have some teeth in it.  


You can't fine guys. Just go to them in the off season and explain to them that if this was a casual free yahoo league, whatever. But you're playing for money so pay attention to your team. If they can't handle that, then vote them out. Get someone in there that wants to play. 


is there a rule about this? Is this discussed at all during the off season or even within in-season communications? I kindly start reminding everyone around week 10, it is mostly affective, but there is always an incident here and there. Sometimes our life's take precedence over our hobby. 

A 100$ fine though .... 🤣😂🤣 


We had an issue with this and we voted in a rule that fines a team $15 ($200 buy in) if you play a guy on bye or that has been ruled out by Tuesday/Friday for their game.   I tried getting this put into our rules a couple times.  The first time I wanted a $50 fine and it got voted down but they agreed to a $15 the second time.  The $15 is more than it costs to acquire a free agent (our free agents cost $5 or $10 real money).

Fines can work but I agree that a bigger fine would be better.  There really is no excuse if you play a guy on bye or that has been ruled out a day or two ahead of their game.  It takes 2 minutes to scan your roster and see their status.  

 
I know that some websites have an 'auto-pilot' feature that sets your optimal lineup each week, preventing some of these issues for absentee owners.  I don't think it goes as far as adds/drops to fill lineups but it does adjust for most lineup issues if activated.  Some folks in my league have contemplated using something like this for our dynasty league to try and prevent the yearly 'tank-a-thon' that occurs, which can also affect playoff seeding and draft slot.  Not sure how. when, or if it would even be justified to essentially take over someone's team at any time, but something needs to be done to address many of the issues listed here in this thread.  I hate to see apathy impact others seasons or future builds, however, I also don't care for such draconian measures.  

 
We have rules preventing tanking in dynasty, and in the process of that as commish I run reports 2-3 times a week and am very interactive with owners reminding them about legal line-ups. In our league you can only start a player on Bye/out (but not on IR) if you have no other active options on your bench. Then 30 minutes before the first Sunday game if they haven't swapped players out, I will do it from the commish function and send them a formal note. 2 consecutive formal notes or 3 in a season and they lose their team. Yes it means I have to be uber vigilant and keep on things but we haven't had a single player start who was on bye/out/COVID unless there was no other active options. I have even had to do this to teams I'm playing that week. Now if a guy has a LEGAL line-up (and one that is not clearly trying to tank according to the rules) I'm not going to micromanage who they play as we are all adults, and we clown the crap out of them if they get it wrong. 

Of course this is only regular season, once we get into playoffs its on you if you screw up at a chance for money. 

In terms of Cook - I have gone through that with Hopkins, AJ Brown and Barkley - players who came off an injury I was very hesitant to swing for the fences if they were on a pitch count and left them out for a week so I could see both sides of it. 

 
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