Since we only had a truncated debate about it, and a slim majority seemed to be in favor of IR picks at the end of the draft, I suppose we’ll go with the middle course for this season and do that, and then hopefully a year from now we can have a fuller discussion about treating them like normal draft picks.
Since we’re doing a manual draft anyway, I think the easiest way to handle it would be to **keep **the players who are going to be IR-designated after the draft on the Yahoo page, and then after we finish with the normal picks we’ll run a supplemental round here in the thread, and then we’ll sort it out before the season starts with me manually editing the rosters to make it all work.
So, anyone in this position should make sure to announce who their IR keepers are before the draft, and it should be no problem to treat them just like any other IR player on Yahoo. That said, make sure before you declare that the player in question is actually headed to IR, and not just (say) the PUP list. It would be kind of a clusterfuck if it turned out you couldn’t use an IR slot on the player and so had no room on your roster; I guess you’d have to forfeit whoever you picked in the supplemental round(s).
That’s the final word from last year. I have a stake in this now, but I think just treating them like normal picks is alrightish if we were to re-open the discussion. It hurts enough to lose a guy in the preseason, that would provide a little relief. But sticking them at the end isn’t a big deal in any case.