For those of us who consider ourselves fantasy football lifers and could no sooner cut out fantasy football from our diets than water – this fake game brings quite a bit of very real fun and entertainment. But that doesn’t mean the game is perfect. Fantasy football’s treatment of injuries is, ahem, a black eye. The real-life implications of a person suffering an injury should always be paramount – and no fantasy football managers should benefit when injuries happen. So, for those willing to try something a little different in the name of empathy – here are five out-of-the-box rule changes to keep everyone in your league pulling for great health all around.
Share the Burden of Season-Ending Injuries
There is simply nothing worse about being a fan of professional sports than watching an athlete you admire – and a human being – suffer a serious injury. Torn knee ligaments, concussions, and broken bones happen too often in football, and it’s miserable to watch. While the focus should be on the person and the people close to them, fantasy football encourages managers to think quickly about the implications for their rosters. Even as the player is carted off the field, we’re already thinking about who’s next on the depth chart.
What if, when a player on a fantasy roster suffered a season-ending injury, the manager of that team had the opportunity to draft a player from another team who plays the same position? Any player currently lower in the position rankings would be available for re-drafting. The shuffle would continue, white elephant style, until every team in the league has re-drafted, or one team declines to re-draft. Fair? No. You know what else isn’t fair? Season-ending injuries.
Eliminate Running Back Handcuffs
In most scoring formats, running back is the most important position in the game of fantasy football. That structure has bred the handcuff strategy: the practice of holding onto a backup running back in the event that a starting player gets injured. Holding onto a handcuff player can actually encourage hopefulness that the starter gets injured, and that’s messed up. Let’s do away with running back handcuffs altogether. If a player currently ranked as a top 10 running back is set to miss a game due to injury, the league should hold an auction draft for the backup – whether they’re rostered or not – using a pre-established season budget. That way, there’s no benefit to holding players unless they’re seeing the field.
Calm Down the Waiver Wire
Fantasy football sometimes rewards fast reactions, and that’s why the first thing a manager does after seeing news about an important player getting injured is look at the waiver wire for that player’s replacement. Let’s make this process a little more human. If an injury to a starter causes a backup player’s stock to rise – say, if more than one team wants to claim the former backup off the waiver wire – then all interested managers should be required to write a note of apology to the starter and submit it, along with their waiver claim, to the commissioner, who can decide the most worthy team.
Take Away the Advantage of In-Game Injuries
In-game injuries are terrible to watch. In the realm of fantasy football, they often lead to a loss for the manager with the injured player, since no substitutions can be made after kickoff. Thus, in-game injuries create one of the biggest advantages in fantasy – and really, no one should benefit when injuries happen. Let’s level that inconsistency. If a manager rosters a player who suffers an in-game injury, they should be able to score the player’s projected point total for that game, so long as they write an encouraging message to the injured player on social media and post a screenshot to the league’s message board.
Expand Injured Reserve Spots
Certain leagues allow rosters to include an Injured Reserve spot for a valuable player who isn’t playing because of an injury. Why don’t we take this idea a little further and do away with dropping players as soon as they experience an injury? Let’s give managers an unlimited number of IR spots. The only limitation is that, in order for me to place a player on IR, that player must have already been on my roster when the injury occurred. That means there’s no way to stockpile injured players and benefit later. With an unlimited number of IR spots, managers could add new players via the waiver wire and still hold on to their sidelined players, without having to make injury-related cuts. Reactivating a player from IR would mean releasing a player from the active roster, but at least we wouldn’t be kicking players to the curb for getting hurt.
Okay, so maybe not all of our ideas are winners. How will you be cheering for health in your league this year? For more fun articles on sports and entertainment, make sure to check out The Davis blog.