Hey, now, don’t make me the victim …
Guys. Clearly the answer is to kneecap Ryan Lindell.
A plan we can all get behind.
First, this isn’t a seasonal, redraft league. In most leagues you can say “if you can’t make the draft, don’t join this league”, but you can’t do that here. We have to decide to a draft date and stick with it - and there just might not be a date that everyone can attend.
But that’s okay, because we’re doing a short draft and if you’ve only got 3 picks, you just pre-rank 36 players and that covers your whole draft. You still may get screwed this way - for instance if the draft shakes out in such a way that you land 2 QBs when you only really wanted one - oh well, that’s just how autodrafting works sometimes.
But if you don’t know that it’ll automatically fill empty slots, and you don’t make a kicker part of your pre-rank list, you can reasonably expect it not to draft a kicker with your first pick. And that’s the standard I’m going by here. He couldn’t make the draft (and he did say he probably wouldn’t be able to after we changed the date, but since it’s a short draft and easy to pre-rank, that seemed fine), and he can’t just abandon the league because of that, so he does the reasonable and responsible thing and pre-ranks 36 players in good faith.
And he got screwed by an unforseen circumstance, missing out on the primary parity mechanism in our league for an entire year. It has the potential to piss him off about the season and sour him on the league. We need to keep everyone happy - or at least satisfied they’re getting a fair shake - in a dynasty league, we want everyone around and involved for the long term. And not even just that - I view this as a friendly competition, and so you guys are my friends and not my enemies. I don’t gain satisfaction when you guys are somehow screwed by an injustice, and in fact I want everyone to be happy and satisfied.
The difference, as you asked, between this and other instances of people getting screwed by autodrafting, is that Retrovertigo went through every reasonable step he could in order to have his wishes carried out. He notified us that he probably couldn’t attend the draft, but with only 3 picks anyway, autodrafting would probably be adequate. He pre-ranked 36 prospects ensuring that he’d have an entire draft’s worth of picks hand-selected. And he didn’t get screwed by the sort of thing that is just the nature of autodrafting, like picking up 2 QBs - he got screwed by something he wasn’t aware could happen.
To highlight the difference with Ellis Dee - he simply overslept, and didn’t pre-rank his players to cover him in the event that he wouldn’t attend the draft. So Ellis didn’t take every reasonable step he could to have an acceptable draft outcome, whereas Retro did.
So I think some sort of compensation works on every level - fairness for the league, since this is the primary parity mechanism, long term health of the league - keeping people satisfied that any injustice was rectified - and simply on a personal level, I emphasize with Retro and don’t want to see him getting screwed in this way because I don’t view this as being deserved or his fault.
I vote waiver bucks this season but no compensatory picks next season.
Do what you want, I’m new to this league, but the fact that it’s a dynasty league makes even more confused as to why special measures need to be taken. He had 3 picks, that’s not going to impact many teams. Those of us drafting 1-3 really weren’t benefited by the cock-up and I’m not really feeling that it’s particularly fair to punish us in the draft next year by awarding extra picks.
And, I understand that the kicker thing was a surprise, but not keeping a kicker or a defense is a risk inherently. Would we be making a stink if all the autodrafters gobbled up all the kickers leaving someone without one?
I understand that life happens and that people have conflicts and that drafts aren’t the most important thing in the world, but if you can’t make it to the draft you need to steel yourself to the possibility that everything could get screwed up. If you feel responsible because you altered the draft time I understand, but perhaps there’s a lesson there. Schedule the draft when everyone can show up, a dozen people can find a time to get together, it’s not impossible.
Like I said, it’s not that big of a deal. One pick doesn’t mean much in a league, doubly so in a dynasty league. By extension, it doesn’t matter that much if you make an exception or not, it’s not going to have a big impact either way. I’m not going to complain regardless of what you do. I’m just pointing out that I disagree with the premise that the people who missed the draft, regardless of what measures they took, are in any way aggrieved. Beggars can’t be choosers, and all that.
That’s all I’m gonna say on the topic. Feel free to bump their FAAB or give them a sandwich pick next year (are they gonna have to drop an additional player?), it’s cool, I just think it’s much ado about nothing.
I personally benefited from the autopicks ahead of me (I never in a million years expected Mike Williams to fall to me at 11) so I kind of feel guilty about it. I have no problem giving each of them picks at the end of the 1st round next year just because I feel like I came out like a bandit.
Those of us who drafted ahead of the autopicks gained no benefit, though, so maybe put their sandwich picks after us.
But you are gonna be pick #12 when you win the league this year Ellis!
I didn’t benefit either, unless somebody was going to take Devin Aromashadu. I don’t care, though I think compensatory picks should go at the end of the first round, not the beginning.
Everyone agrees on that; the term “sandwich” refers to them being sandwiched between the first and second rounds.
Mmmm… compensatory sandwich…
That’s a valid point, in that the top 2 teams didn’t benefit as much as the ones behind them, but it’s a relatively small imbalance.
No, I think that’s a forseeable problem with an autodrafter and it comes with the territory. What actually happened wasn’t forseeable unless you’ve experienced it before - if I hadn’t seen it work like that, I would’ve expected the autodrafter to pick guys straight from my list.
I didn’t alter the time of the draft, I’m not the commish of this league, so it isn’t personal guilt. I have no stake in this - I stand to gain nothing by trying to advocate for this. I just want the best utilitarian outcome - the outcome that compensates the people who got screwed while doing minimum harm to everyone else. If I felt like Retro had been negligent and screwed himself it wouldn’t bother me but I felt like he did everything he reasonably could. I mean - what else could he do here? Ditch his money league draft? He already said he wouldn’t be able to make it a while ago, but it wasn’t seen as a big deal since it’s relatively harmless to autodraft 3 picks.
I don’t understand why you feel that it means even less with a dynasty. We’re talking about a pick that could’ve amounted to a starter for the next 6+ years, so that seems to make it even more significant.
In what way is Retro a “beggar” in this situation? He already had a money league scheduled and informed us. He could’ve demanded that we reschedule the draft just for his benefit, but is he acting as less of a beggar in that situation? Would that alleviate him of fault?
Fair enough.
Out of curiosity, what do you guys think of the Zach Milller + Bernard Scott for Jermichael Finley trade?
I’m kind of regretting it. Cedric Benson is gonna do something to fuck up, and Scott looks like a capable replacement and in the Bengals’ future plans. He might end up being worth more than any tight end.
Plus, Zach Miller is pretty good. He’ll be a solid top 8 TE every year, especially with a decent QB now.
Not sure if just having the best TE over the next 5 years is worth it. What do you think?
Quite frankly, I think it was forseeable and therefore negligent. We have all always known that autodrafters always fill all starting slots first no matter what, which is one of the reasons we all know that autodrafting sucks. Autodrafting always gets you a defense in the ~8th and kicker in the ~9th because it fills starters first.
I find the “he couldn’t possibly have known, he was wronged” argument is getting way over the top. Last season I had slept through the start of the All-Pro or keeper league draft and was way pissed, so was bound and determined not to sleep through the start of the dynasty league. I knew if I did, it would fuck over my entire team for years. Sadly, that stress kept me awake for hours, so I didn’t end up falling asleep until a couple hours before the draft. For a normal person’s schedule, it was the equivalent of starting the draft at 3am. I deliberately didn’t prerank to force myself to get up no matter what, which did actually work. When I woke up a half hour into the draft, if I had preranked I would have just gone back to sleep.
Just give him some waiver money and call it lesson learned.
I think you got hosed. Finley is way overrated. 
On the other hand, even if Benson does screw up, there’s no guarantee that Scott gets 20 carries a game.
You guys laughed at me when I drafted Derek Anderson, but Leinart just got released. Anderson is wonky and erratic, but when he has exceptional WRs dragging down his errant passes, he can be pretty damn good. Anderson to Fitz is gonna be interesting this year. And he’s only 27. Solid pick for a 4th round, last-pick-of-the-draft flyer, IMO.
It sounds like you don’t even need Rodgers anymore so you should trade him to me.
I didn’t laugh. I was going to draft him but I was already carrying three QBs.
With Brandon Jacobs busted down to backup, I’m in the market for an RB upgrade. Pretty much everyone on my bench is a trade possibility.