Fantasy in the Time of Corona

The irony is we were supposed to be drafting in person this year.

Imagine it—a celebration of our 10th anniversary season with a reunion in Austin or elsewhere. Unfortunately, the elusive live draft remains so. Because no one is traveling, let alone doing much of anything in person in 2020.

The truth is this year has been less akin to fantasy than a nightmare. Millions of cases. Hundreds of thousands lost. Many more out of work or otherwise affected by a pandemic with more staying power than Tom Brady into his 40s. This year, both are particularly pervasive in Florida.

Obviously, when it comes to things that actually matter, sports are an afterthought. Health. Work. Toilet paper. We all know that’s the important stuff. And jokes aside, I hope all of you and your families are healthy and doing well.

But sports can also be a welcome diversion. In a world where we mask up every time we leave the house, spend our days six feet apart and wash our hands more regularly than Gray checks the waiver wire, playing fake football can feel like a splendid return to normalcy.

I’ll admit when the NBA abruptly cancelled its season in March and college basketball quickly followed suit (RIP March Madness), I didn’t think football would be happening this year. But then 135 days after Rudy Gobert first became sports’ patient zero, Dr. Fauci threw out the first pitch (if that’s what you call it) on not just the MLB season but a broader return to professional sports. Shortly, thereafter the NBA built a bubble in Orlando, where the first official points were scored, strangely enough, by Rudy Gobert. And now it seems like the NFL is fully intent on having its season too, science be damned. And if there’s football, then you know there’s going to be fantasy football. After all, a virus needs its host.

And so perhaps the kickoff to our 10th season is not the celebration we all imagined it might be. It’s certainly not the year we wanted. But if I can spend my Sunday mornings debating whether to start the Panthers or the Browns defense before ultimately choosing the wrong one, resulting in playful trolling, sympathetic emojis and perfectly curated GIFs on WhatsApp from good friends, that would be enough.

There are worst things.

How Will This Season Be Different?

So with that in mind, let’s talk about what fantasy football might look like amidst a pandemic.

Players will opt out. Players will test positive. Whole teams may be quarantined and have their games rescheduled or cancelled entirely. While the season may start on time, who knows whether or not it actually finishes?

Some of this has already happened. Earlier this month, 67 players announced they were opting out of the season. While over half of those names were linemen and defensive players, that list does include fantasy-relevant names like Damien Williams (RB, KC), Albert Wilson (WR, Mia) and Geronimo Allison (WR, Det)—all of which were drafted in our league last year. And while the deadline has passed for players to opt out, players can change their minds later in the season if they receive a new high-risk diagnosis (like diabetes or a heart condition) or if a family member is affected by COVID-19.

The NFLPA regularly provides updates and information on COVID-19 on their website.

In terms of positive tests, 64 players have tested positive for COVID-19 since reporting to training camp according to the NFL Players Association. With 80-man rosters during training camp this year, that’s 2.5% of all players. Not to mention the 107 players who tested positive during the offseason. Notably, that group includes likely first-round pick Ezekiel Elliott, who tested positive in mid-June.

And that’s just the beginning. Yes, the NFL will be playing without fans and has taken precautions in team facilities. If you’ve been watching Hard Knocks, you’ve no doubt seen some of those changes, which include frequent testing, proximity tracers, plexiglass dividers between lockers, prepackaged meals and outdoor weight rooms. The Broncos even have a disinfectant mist that players walk through on their way to the practice facility. This video from the Colts shows a good sample of what it looks like.

But because the NFL has chosen not to play the season in a bubble, we can expect the positive tests to continue. As a result, the NFL has created the new Reserve/COVID-19 list in anticipation of further positive tests throughout the season. So far this preseason, that list has included fantasy-relevant names like:

• Gardner Minshew (Jax QB)

• Matthew Stafford (Det QB)

• Justin Jefferson (Min WR)

• Kenny Golladay (Det WR)

• T.J. Hockenson (Det TE)

• Mason Crosby (GB K)

• James Washington (Pit WR)

• Jaylen Samuels (Pit RB)

But here’s an important distinction. Just because a player is placed on the Reserve/COVID-19 list does not mean that he has tested positive. Players that have been merely “exposed” to the virus may also be placed on that list. And because the NFLPA has negotiated privacy for its members, we will not know who among that group actually tested positive unless the player chooses to make that information public. Currently, the only players we know for certain have contracted the virus are ones who have publicly confirmed their positive test like Elliott.

Another wrinkle is that once you’re on the list and removed from team activities, the timelines are not as clear-cut for when you’ll be able to rejoin the team. And that’s because coronavirus is not like other typical football injuries. Whereas the protocol for a torn hamstring or concussion are pretty well known, COVID-19 is relatively new. And so far what we do know is that different people react differently. Some who were merely exposed and test negative will return relatively quickly. But for others, it will take longer, which means we can’t just expect a player placed on the list to return as normal after a short quarantine. Look no further than the case of Boston Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez who is now out for the season with myocarditis, a complication that is a result of his COVID-19 diagnosis.

In a best-case scenario following a positive test, an asymptomatic player can return to the team after a minimum of five days and two consecutive negative tests. But that return can be delayed as long as symptoms persist. According to league protocol, symptomatic players must remain out for a minimum of 10 days, including 24 hours since symptoms last occurred.

Given all these wrinkles, it’ll be interesting to see how this impacts strategy this season. For example, should you avoid a player with high-risk comorbidity like stud Ravens TE Mark Andrews who has Type 1 Diabetes? Or should you embrace players who have already tested positive for COVID-19, recovered and are therefore possibly immune? Assuming he’s fully recovered, this could push Ezekiel Elliott to the first pick. And finally, should you avoid players in NFL markets where the spread of coronavirus is particularly pervasive? The chart below from the NFLPA ranks the concentration for every NFL team, just in case you needed another reason to avoid Miami Dolphins.

Heat map of 14-day average of daily cases per 100,000 people in NFL markets via NFLPA.

And that’s just the beginning. No doubt more unanticipated twists and turns are forthcoming. After all, it wouldn’t be 2020 without them.

Proposed Rule Changes for 2020

So given all those uncertainties, how should we best prepare for fantasy in the time of corona?

Fundamentally, this season is going to be different. We need to be prepared. As they say, the best defense is good offense. Or is it that the best defense is not the one JT drafts in the 10th round but rather the one Gray inevitably snakes off the waiver wire in Week 2? (Too soon? Miss ya, JT.) Either way, it’s best to be prepared with contingencies in place for what is certain to be an unusual season.

So given that, I’ve been in conversation with our commissioner and defending league champion about some possible rule changes that I’d like to bring to a vote.

Rule 1. What to do in the event of a shortened season?

While there’s a pretty good chance that come 8:20PM ET on September 10, the Texans will be kicking off the season with a game against the Chiefs, who knows if we’ll make it all the way to December 28 (the final day of the fantasy playoffs) without an interruption or even a cancellation of the season?

In the event of a shortened season, we need a plan in advance for how we will crown a champion. Specifically, at what point do we decide enough games have been played to declare the season “official?” And if the season is cancelled after that point, how do we decide who wins the championship absent a playoff?

To help us make a decision, I dug back through the record books to see if there was anything league champions (nine of them in total) had in common. Specifically, I looked at three factors: (1) points, (2) record and (3) TW%. Then for each factor, I looked at how often the eventual champion ranked within the top 3, top 2 or led the league in that statistic over the course of the season. Here is that data visualized in three different charts.

The first thing you’ll notice is that not all champions are frontrunners. Last season’s champion, Gray, for example, scored a league-low 59 points in a Week 1 loss to Nick. But as the season progresses, the cream rises to the top and eventual champions are more likely to rank higher among all three metrics. Gray, for example, finished second in scoring and third in wins and TW% last year.

So if we can figure out the point at which that shift happens, we can possibly identify a good cutoff point for declaring the season official. After looking at the data, I was surprised to find that it was a little sooner than I expected.

The biggest jump in the data for all three metrics occurred at the exact same time—Week 6. As you can see, it’s not uncommon for eventual champions to rank outside the top-3 in scoring, wins or TW% as late as Week 5. For example, most champions (67%) still rank outside the top-2 in scoring and TW% after five games. And one third weren’t even within the top-3 in wins or TW%.

But after Week 6, those numbers change dramatically. You can see the peaks visually in the chart. Most notably, every single champion has been within the top-3 in scoring and wins, and all but two have been within the top-3 of TW% by Week 6.

So while it may seem weird to say we know enough after less than half the regular season is complete, the numbers would suggest otherwise. We might not be able to identify exactly which team will win it all. But we could probably narrow it down to a group of three based on historical patterns. To be safe, let’s call it seven games or just over half the regular season.

So now that we’ve identified seven games as the earliest possible cutoff point, which of the three metrics is the best for predicting the eventual champion and therefore determining a champion? I’d say the data is pretty inconclusive.

In the aggregate, scoring is the best. The champion almost always ranks within the top 3 of scoring from Week 6 on. There’s only been one exception, which is Greco who dipped in and out of the top tier down the stretch in 2012 before winning it all. But at season’s end, TW% is the best with 78% of champions ranking within the top 2, which is better than the rate for top-2 finishers in scoring or wins. And finally, if we’re looking at just the leaders (top 1), wins is perhaps the most predictive metric at any single point in time given that 44% of teams with the best record in Week 10 have gone on to win the whole thing. But I’d argue that’s pretty random, and even still, that’s less than half of all champions.

So which is it? Points, wins or TW%? As much as I love TW%, I’d argue for points. TW% takes a little longer than the other metrics to become predictive. (Two champions weren’t even within the top 3 by Week 8.) And wins is too random as we all know. Although those blue waves look mighty fierce, the chart is a little biased considering wins is what helps determine who makes the playoffs. So of course, the league leaders in wins are more likely to win it all. But points seems like not only the best solution given the data but perhaps the most fair.

So, here’s the language I’m offering up for the official rule change:

In the event of a shortened season, all team owners will be refunded their league entry dues (less their share of any distributed weekly prize money) and no champion will be crowned if fewer than seven total weeks have been completed.

If the season is cancelled after at least seven weeks, the team owner with the most total points scored for the season will be crowned champion. Second and third place will also be awarded on the basis of total points with wins, head-to-head record, TW% and a coin flip serving as sequential tiebreakers. Any undistributed weekly prize money will be refunded evenly among all team owners.

Finally, if the season is cancelled at any point during the fantasy playoffs, non-playoff or eliminated teams will not be eligible. For example, if the season is cancelled after the league leader in points is upset in the first round of the playoffs, the team with the second-most total points (assuming they too have not been eliminated) would be crowned champion. And so on.

I’ve put all proposed rule changes up for a vote on the Facebook page simply because they have a really convenient poll feature that allows for conversation and for us to see who has and hasn’t voted. I’ll include links here for each as we go through them. Like this one:

Vote here.

Rule 2. Adjusting roster settings to preempt the COVID chaos

In addition to the possibility of a shortened season, bench depth is likely to be tested like never before. Given that we expect more players to test positive and/or be placed on the Reserve/COVID-19 list throughout the season, having a deep bench capable of replacing starters when they unexpectedly miss time is more important than ever. In fact, it might be the key to who wins this season.

To address that added volatility, we have a few options: we could add more bench spots, add new Injured Reserve (IR) spots or do both.

Let’s start with bench spots. You may not think about it much, but roster size and by extension the raw number of players rostered has a big impact on the competitiveness of a fantasy football league. It’s why 12-team leagues like our own are inherently more challenging than standard 10-team leagues or especially their pillowy soft 8-team younger brothers. With 16-man rosters, having two extra teams means there are 32 fewer players available in free agency for everyone else.

So for every extra bench spot we add, that’s another 12 fewer players available in free agency. A bigger bench makes finding adequate replacements on the waiver wire way more difficult for everyone. And if the benches are too small, you have the opposite problem. Ask anyone who’s ever played in a league with a three or four-player bench—your starters are way less valuable if RB1-level production is sitting there for your opponent on waivers.

It’s a total Goldilocks situation. You want enough bench spots so that team owners can stockpile their favorite sleepers and avoid dropping valuable players during the bye weeks but not so many that the waiver wire is completely devoid of any talent. I would argue that’s our normal homeostasis with seven-player benches: a few RBs, a few WRs, and a backup QB, TE or D/ST if that’s your thing.

But we know that balance is going to be disrupted this season. So it stands to reason we might potentially add a bench spot or two. Perfect for team owners who might not normally handcuff their RBs or draft a backup QB to do so.

I just want to make sure we don’t go overboard. If you look at the amount of scoring coming from free agency in recent years, it seems like we might have become such good drafters that there is less available on the waiver wire than ever before. In fact, three of the lowest scoring seasons from free agency in league history have all occurred within the last four years. The one blip? That’d be 2017 when waiver wire wonder Alvin Kamara helped lead Brandon to a league-record 508 points from free agency and a championship.

Last season, teams averaged a historic low 13.8 ppg from players acquired through free agency.

Plus, keep in mind that every additional bench spot means another round of drafting. And I kind of feel like we’re already scraping the bottom of the barrel by the time we get to Round 14 anyway. To be honest, I’m already anticipating a run on backup defenses and TEs that leaves a veritable wasteland on the waiver wire for team owners who like to stream those positions.

Given all of that, I think it’s reasonable to add anywhere from 0-2 spots to the bench this year.

But perhaps the better alternative to adding bench spots is adding IR spots. This allows team owners to keep players placed on the Reserve/COVID-19 list on their roster without having to burn a valuable bench spot. Not familiar with IR? Here’s more from ESPN. Essentially, it’s an extra spot on your roster just for injured players. If a player is designated as Out (O) or Injured/Reserve (IR), you can move him to your IR spot, which will open up a spot on your bench for a replacement player. Then when your player returns to health, you can activate them by dropping the temporary replacement or another player of your choice.

I like it because it allows you to keep starters who may return to your lineup after a short quarantine without having to waste a roster spot on an inactive player. Plus, it keeps the pool of available free agents relatively full and prevents lineups from becoming bloated with sleepers and handcuffs.

Given the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 this year, I feel like it’d be reasonable to add anywhere from 1-3 IR spots this year.

So that’s 0-2 bench spots and 1-3 IR spots. In the interest of starting the conversation, I’m just going to throw something out there and put it up for a vote.

For this season only, I propose we add:

• 0 bench spots

• 2 IR spots

Feel free to weigh in. But in my opinion, our league is already plenty deep. I don’t want to take away from the available pool of free agents any more than we already do or make the draft even longer. If a key RB goes down due to a positive test, it might mean a mad scramble to the waiver wire to grab his replacement. But I’d rather that than the alternative. Adding IR spots just feels like the better fix considering that’s what we’re likely to see—more players on the Reserve/COVID-19 list.

Vote here.

Rule 3. In case of unpredictability, break glass.

Finally, there are more scenarios that are likely to play out that we just can’t predict. For the most part, we should be able to handle positive tests the same way we would any other injury.

For example, let’s say you’re trailing by just a handful of points going into the Monday night game and the only player left to play for either team owner is your first-round RB. But then, unexpectedly, he tests positive hours before the game. Should you be allowed to substitute in a player from your bench who’s already played?

I’d say no. An injury is an injury and a late breaking test result is no different than an ankle injury during practice. But what if something truly unprecedented happens?

For example, what happens if the entire Monday night game is unexpectedly cancelled after a spree of positive test results? At that point, you can’t even plug in a bench player or pick up a random flyer. Should you be able to retroactively plug another bench player into your lineup? If so, which one? Or should the whole week be thrown out?

I honestly don’t know what the answer is. And I don’t want to have to proactively enumerate all the possibilities here. (This post is already long enough.) Let’s just come up with a strategy for how we would handle any unexpected issues.

In the event of an unforeseen circumstance, any team owner can bring the issue with a proposed solution to a debate in the group chat. Changes can then be made retroactively to the results by the commissioner if agreed upon by a majority of team owners. Specifically, this requires seven votes out of 12 team owners.

Vote here.

Looking Ahead

Despite the clustercuss that has been 2020, I’m optimistic that fantasy football will still go off without a hitch. Or at least, minimal hitches. And hopefully, if there are a hiccups, the due diligence that we’ve just taken will keep everyone on the same page.

So, in a year devoid of anything normal, let’s keep at least one tradition alive. Let’s draft virtually and tinker with our lineups neurotically. Let’s celebrate when we nail that one sleeper pick we totally saw coming and forgive ourselves all the busts we definitely didn’t. Let’s spend our Tuesday nights placing waiver claims in the minutes before our heads hit the pillow and our Sunday afternoons rooting on obscure names most people have never heard of. Let’s talk trash and gloat over wins but never forget to give each other the benefit of the doubt when debating rule changes or controversial trades. And most of all, let’s have fun. Even the coronavirus can’t take that away.

Speaking of which, perhaps it’s no coincidence that the name for the coronavirus comes from the Latin word “corōna,” meaning crown, so named for the fact that under a microscope, the virus appears to be surrounded by a halo or crown. And so for this season, one unlike any other in our history, may we all steer clear of one crown in our pursuit of another.