Commish Questions

[joelamosobadiah]

Allrighty, I'm setting up a new keeper league and wanted some opinions:

1. How many keepers is good for a 12-man league? I'm thinking 3

2. Why is there the option in a keeper league to NOT have the draft snake for the first 2-3 rounds????? How does this help?

3. I am thinking of setting up the roster requirements so that we use a team defense, but we also have ONE DB/LB/DL. Do you think that this is a good idea?

Please let me know what you more experienced commishes/players think about these questions

(BTW, if you want to join this league, click the link in my sig)

[mattb47]

1) Yes, 3 is a pretty good number. It depends on what kind of league you want to have.

If you want a league that has a big turnover from year to year (less likely for good teams to stay really good) then go with a number like 2 keepers. It will allow more players to be available each year.

4 or more keepers really puts a big emphasis on the initial draft because your core of players stays the same from year to year. This also allows teams to build more for the future, because you have more spots to work with.

3 is a little of both, enough talent gets thrown back each year to make things interesting and you still get to keep a good number of guys each year.

You'll also want to decide rules as far as keepers go. Do you want to do it where everyone has to keep 3, or they can keep less than 3 if they so choose? Also, if you say they can keep 3 or fewer, do you simply lose a 1st round pick if you keep one guy, 1st and 2nd if you keep 2 and so on? Or do you lose the round that the player kept was chosen in? All things you'll have to work through.

2) If you think about it. When you run a 3 keeper league, the first few rounds are dramatically more important than in normal leagues because you can potentially keep your first 3 draft picks. So the guys picking early in a snake draft get high picks in 2 rounds as opposed to those picking at the bottom of the first only get high picks in one round. This is probably why there is the option of not having a snake draft.

I like what we did in a keeper draft here on the cafe, we had an initial draft that was 6 rounds long early in the off season. We set before that we would be able to keep 4 players from this initial draft and then we would throw everyone back in and have another draft. We did 4 keepers for the initial one for the very reason of not giving those with high picks in the first too large of an advantage. But for every year after this first one, you are only permitted to keep 3 or fewer players, so we started with 4 to make it fair, and then moved to 3 after this season. Just some thoughts.

3. I think if you're going to use IDPs, it's best to use more than 1 IDP spot. Just one doesn't make a difference at all really because there are enough good IDPs for everyone to have one. I think if you're going to do this it should be no less than 3 or there's no point in including it. And I don't see a problem with having both a team defense and defensive players. I personally like IDPs a lot, brings a new dimension to the game and makes things more interesting....especially for the draft.

[Matthias]

Allrighty, I'm setting up a new keeper league and wanted some opinions:

1. How many keepers is good for a 12-man league? I'm thinking 3

Three is a good number. Although I would also suggest you think about doing it as an auction where keepers become more interesting: you don't just automatically keep 3 guys, but the best value guys. If nothing else, you might want to consider some restrictions: no more than 1 guy from the first 4 rounds and no more than 1 guy from rounds 5-8, or something like that.

2. Why is there the option in a keeper league to NOT have the draft snake for the first 2-3 rounds????? How does this help?

Because a snake draft is predicated upon the idea that the people at the end of the draft deserve compensation for their bad luck of the draw. In a keeper league, however, there is at least some reason to believe that there's a reason that the people at the beginning of the draft are in the front of the line. Sure, it's possible that someone had great keepers and finished last, but it's more likely that someone with great keepers did well. So the idea that you have to level off for a bad draft position doesn't apply since you're also trying to level off for having bad keepers.

Edit after reading mattb's post: I would do the initial draft as a snake. When thinking about not snaking the first round or two, I think that is generally for years subsequent when people already have their keepers.

3. I am thinking of setting up the roster requirements so that we use a team defense, but we also have ONE DB/LB/DL. Do you think that this is a good idea?

No opinion. Never done IDP. Other people here probably have an opinion, though.

[joelamosobadiah]

Thanks for the opinions guys, this is really helping me out. anybody else??

[joelamosobadiah]

bump, anybody else?