What do we do if there is no NFL 2020 season?

[CGW]

While this situation has historic numbers, its apples to oranges in comparison. Probably best for another thread to discuss. I don't know much about Chinese sports, but it'll be interesting to see what they are doing in 2 months.

[FantasyFreak]

This has not reached the levels of the great depression, not even close. Pure numbers aren't relevant, as there are simply more people now. Times are tough, but this isn't even close yet, and I don't expect it to be either.

The Great Depression lasted the better part of a decade. At it's height, unemployment hit 25%.

You've just hit 13-15% unemployment, depending on whose data you want to believe. It's not even been 3 months. Predictions by JP Morgan Chase are suggesting it could hit 20% in this 2nd quarter.

That blip on the graph around 2008 lets you know how serious this is - it dwarfs it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... 7-million/

It could well rebound quickly like this article is saying - if the Virus runs its course, or a vaccine is found. But those are all best-case scenarios. I would be hesitant about calling your shot early on this one.

Not really calling my shot, just saying that it's unlikely, given the current situation. Saying we're unlikely to come anywhere close to the Great Depression isn't exactly a hot take.

[FantasyFreak]

NFL and the PA has agreed to terms for virtual off season programs.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/13/spor ... index.html

[stoneghost28]

The season will happen. No way our country will stay closed that long. We sure as hell better hope not or we will be in a massive depression like the world has never seen most likely.

I was going to reply to this in the Joe Burrow thread, but it's probably better replied to in here. I hope this isn't too much of a downer. Context is everything:

https://www.gifng.com/wow/73953

That chart is now out of date, and that figure has, in fact, nearly tripled - cumulative applications for unemployment in the US were set to hit 17 million people as of Friday last week. (Source)

A "massive depression like the world has never seen" is unfortunately the new reality that we are now facing. If you don't believe me, just ask any of your friends in retail, manufacturing, or hospitality. The world has drastically changed, and for them especially, overnight.

I sure hope we get to keep sports during all of this - I would welcome any distraction. But the aftershocks of this are going to kick for years societally - even just based on the numbers alone.

No doubt, it's a horror show, and whats been done so far appears to be mealy mouthed attention to those who really need it (small businesses and the unemployed and those like my wife who've seen their incomes shaves in half by an inability to see patients (she's a PT) in these conditions) and massive attention to those who don't, but are huge lobbyists with tremendous reach into both parties, especially the Republican (Mega Corporations that will be fine). This is unprecedented, and it would be lovely if an easy bounce back was possible, but it isn't. We don't have examples from the past in how companies will react to this, and we do know that extended periods of unemployment of any length tend to push people into an endless cycle of difficulty in terms of getting hired again (often a year or two or more) and in these conditions, w/17 million filing, but also w/unemployment insurance programs overwhelmed and totally unable to handle the requests my guess is the # is much closer to 35-50 million trying to file/who have filed. How can you get these people back and employed since we know that every piece of this economic chain depends upon another piece? To rehire people companies have to believe they can make money by selling whatever their product is, but right now nobodies buying anything other than food, and apparently all the toilet paper and paper towels in the known universe. Nobodies spending a thin dime on anything else amongst the employed and with the unemployed it's definitively that.

It's difficult to figure if the better model is the European model where they just paid companies to keep people employed, or ours where we have an unemployment insurance system that gets cash into peoples hands quickly when its working, but isn't working effectively right now. The only way to jump start things is to have every single piece of the economy trusting that it will function, the employed, the unemployed, business owners, everyone, trusting that people will purchase again, trusting that people will start hiring again, trusting that you're safe and you can buy things beyond necessities etc, and it's hard to see that happening anytime soon. Scariest times of my lifetime (born in late '74).

[stoneghost28]

Testing for the virus has come a long way. Certainly the players and team staff can be tested up to 30 minutes before a game. What if the testing advances to where fans can show a test result from 24 hours before a game and be allowed in the stadium. Walgreen's and CVS are already talking of this. I think pre-season games should be like practice scrimmages. perhaps in a stadium, but maybe at practice facilities. Season starts in September, 5 months from now. There will need to be special precautions, but I think it can go on.

Testing absolutely hasn't come a long way. I was in urgent care, my 3 year old was in picu, and my wife was sick as well the weekend of the 21st, all with severe flu systems and they couldn't test us because "no tests". Eventually after two weeks of wrangling my wife pulled enough strings to track a test down for our 3 year old who kept getting worse and worse, but it took literally all 3 of us to be ill with influenza, 2 out of 3 of us to need hospitalizations, and my wife going full pit bull mode for days and days, and a doctor running out of the room to get better protective gear before they saw my son to find even a chance at a test. So testing is basically horse manure. I know a ton of people who have gotten badly ill and met some of the testing criteria (one work travelled to the Bay Area, and had symptoms), and it turns out we were hit with a separate strain of influenza a (you can have both), and we repeatedly got the same response from the various hospitals and contacts we found "You do not fit our testing model", which I took correctly to mean, "we have barely any tests and unless you hit several markers in terms of age, health and travel, we can't afford to waste one of our few tests on you". If this is what happened w/us, then it's clear testing is a total s show and we are very, very lucky social distancing is working for now, because if it wasn't, we would be screwed 10x worse than we already are w/no ability to trace the transmissions reliably.


The NFL seems the worst of all leagues in terms of playing just from the sheer size of rosters and coaching staff's alone. Baskeball rosters and staffs are what, 1/4 to 1/5 the size of NFL rosters and coaching staffs? Hockey, Baseball and Soccer teams are larger, than basketball, but like basketball their coaching staffs are also smaller, and so they're probably about 1/2 to 1/3 the size of personel for a game.

I tend to look at this in three ways:
#1 How big our the teams involved?
#2 Can the sport play in empty stadiums and be profitable w/tv revenue alone.

When I look at that, the NFL is a total s show in terms of #1. There are so many damn people involved, that it seems totally unfeasible, however in terms of #2 the NFL is best equipped to handle TV only experience as fans have basically been priced out of stadiums for years and the bulk of the money teams make are from tv deals, so empty stadiums don't really matter much beyond how much cash they generate from luxury boxes.

The only sports I can see as easily viable are Basketball and Soccer because in both cases they have more modest sized rosters, they can actually ship assistant positions off to sequestered locations like coaches boxes, and in the latter case, have plenty of experience playing in empty stadiums (UEFA soccer and International Soccer have featured 100's of games in empty stadiums over the years as a form of punishment for fan behavior issues and other problems, so they already have the pieces in place and the know how to carry out games in empty stadiums since they've done it countless times, and they generate such massive ratings, that the ticket revenue losses would be compensated by the tv revenue to some degree). Baskeball, I just imagine the smaller arena sizes, and the much shorter rosters make it possible to do it.

I'm also very curious about the various tournament ideas that are bubbling forward. You have UFC talking about buying an island for events, you have leagues talking about having the playoffs in the middle of nowhere (North Dakota was mentioned for some league), so that makes things really interesting. How would they do it and how would it be functional?

What scares me about the NFL and Fantasy is that it just doesn't seem feasible at all beyond the tv side because of how massive teams are. If you bring over two teams to play, how many individuals alone are involved before they make changes to isolate/shrink staff's? It wouldn't shock me if there were around 140-160 individuals if not more. Not exactly conducive to social distancing.

[stoneghost28]

One other note: How does this impact fantasy strategy?

I'd been fixated mostly on how this makes getting rid of my RB's sitting at prime or near prime to be mandatory. We may end up losing a season, or at least part of a season for the most valuable commodity in dynasty (other than a top QB in Superflex), bell cow RB's. I had already been trying to move my RB's that were at the age apex (26) or close because I do that as a matter of course. I don't want RB's on my roster typically if they're about to be FA's and are age 25-26. I prefer to carry them for four years and then move them on preferably when there's a quality RB class coming. I was already trying to move Cook (despite his very expensive price in dynasty start ups, I've found him nearly impossible to move in trades for even 80-90% of DLF Analyzer market value) and Aaron Jones, and added Fournette to the pile. Happily of the shares I had in those guys I was able to move 3 of 4, but am stuck with one of Cook, who I'm just gonna keep at this point since I can't sell him at 85% of his current market value on the Analyzer. I'm not giving him away so I'll just try and trade him in season.

It's also worth noting how this impacts rookie rb's. We could end up losing year 1 of a couple of bell cow's 4-5 year time horizon as locked in potential bell cows. That makes them less valuable to me, and it's mighty frustrating considering I did a great job of acquiring picks from teams in the blue chip zone of this draft(ended up acquiring 3 apiece of 1.01, 1.02, 1.03, 1.04, 1.05, 1.06, 1.07, 1.08 across my 11 leagues (+3 RSO/Keeper leagues) via tanking w/a couple of teams, and via trades with a ton of them). Now if there's no season, these rookie backs are a year older, and have a shorter time horizon before they hit that FA year and that RB aging cliff.

A couple of last notes: interesting to hear Matt Kelley speculate on how this could impact things for the '21 rookie draft (do guys red shirt? I could imagine WR's red shirting, I have a hard time imagining RB's red shirting, but clearly with Etienne and Hubbard, some RB's don't seem to understand how much age matters to NFL teams at the position, so maybe some of them do as well), as well as how could impact '20 rookies if there is a season, but no rookie mini-camps, or training camp. Does seem clear that if there is a season, the RB's should be largely okay, but rookie WR's could really, really, really struggle. It's much harder to grasp WR than it is to grasp RB as a rookie (and let's not even mention QB or TE where the learning curve is absurdly steep), and as a result rookie WR's could across the board be disappointments in '20 despite the quality of the draft.

[CGW]

The season will happen. No way our country will stay closed that long. We sure as hell better hope not or we will be in a massive depression like the world has never seen most likely.

I was going to reply to this in the Joe Burrow thread, but it's probably better replied to in here. I hope this isn't too much of a downer. Context is everything:

https://www.gifng.com/wow/73953

That chart is now out of date, and that figure has, in fact, nearly tripled - cumulative applications for unemployment in the US were set to hit 17 million people as of Friday last week. (Source)

A "massive depression like the world has never seen" is unfortunately the new reality that we are now facing. If you don't believe me, just ask any of your friends in retail, manufacturing, or hospitality. The world has drastically changed, and for them especially, overnight.

I sure hope we get to keep sports during all of this - I would welcome any distraction. But the aftershocks of this are going to kick for years societally - even just based on the numbers alone.

No doubt, it's a horror show, and whats been done so far appears to be mealy mouthed attention to those who really need it (small businesses and the unemployed and those like my wife who've seen their incomes shaves in half by an inability to see patients (she's a PT) in these conditions) and massive attention to those who don't, but are huge lobbyists with tremendous reach into both parties, especially the Republican (Mega Corporations that will be fine). This is unprecedented, and it would be lovely if an easy bounce back was possible, but it isn't. We don't have examples from the past in how companies will react to this, and we do know that extended periods of unemployment of any length tend to push people into an endless cycle of difficulty in terms of getting hired again (often a year or two or more) and in these conditions, w/17 million filing, but also w/unemployment insurance programs overwhelmed and totally unable to handle the requests my guess is the # is much closer to 35-50 million trying to file/who have filed. How can you get these people back and employed since we know that every piece of this economic chain depends upon another piece? To rehire people companies have to believe they can make money by selling whatever their product is, but right now nobodies buying anything other than food, and apparently all the toilet paper and paper towels in the known universe. Nobodies spending a thin dime on anything else amongst the employed and with the unemployed it's definitively that.

It's difficult to figure if the better model is the European model where they just paid companies to keep people employed, or ours where we have an unemployment insurance system that gets cash into peoples hands quickly when its working, but isn't working effectively right now. The only way to jump start things is to have every single piece of the economy trusting that it will function, the employed, the unemployed, business owners, everyone, trusting that people will purchase again, trusting that people will start hiring again, trusting that you're safe and you can buy things beyond necessities etc, and it's hard to see that happening anytime soon. Scariest times of my lifetime (born in late '74).

So let me ask this - how is it we have factories with thousands of people still working in reasonably close proximity in my area with no cases? How is it that Wuhan province has lifted its lockdown and now running manufacturing with thousands in confined spaces. They check temps and force sanitization daily, as well as require safety gear worn. Time will tell if there are severe secondary outbreaks. But if I factory of thousands can work with minimal interruption, how can the NFL not figure out a way to have 200 players and staff at a game in mostly open air environments?

Regardless of your experience, the US has ramped up testing incredibly over the past few weeks now that quicker testing is available. While I believe we need to test at a much higher rate now, in 5 months the NFL will have access to test every single player and staff as often as needed and get almost instant results.

I'm hopeful the NFL will have a season. Over the next 2 or 3 months we will begin seeing other sports open back up, which will slowly help others gain confidence. Again, the NFL makes a ton of money through television and marketing. They will try everything they can to get games played.

The current recession is always the worst. Its the same people said in 2008, 2001, et . Recency bias is real. In about a year we will know if this is truly the worst. It may be, or it could be a blip in the radar if the trillions added to the economy end up being effective and getting people back to work sooner than later. I'd imagine none of us (if anyone period) are qualified to predict depth of recessions.

[FantasyFreak]

So let me ask this - how is it we have factories with thousands of people still working in reasonably close proximity in my area with no cases? How is it that Wuhan province has lifted its lockdown and now running manufacturing with thousands in confined spaces. They check temps and force sanitization daily, as well as require safety gear worn. Time will tell if there are severe secondary outbreaks. But if I factory of thousands can work with minimal interruption, how can the NFL not figure out a way to have 200 players and staff at a game in mostly open air environments?

Regardless of your experience, the US has ramped up testing incredibly over the past few weeks now that quicker testing is available. While I believe we need to test at a much higher rate now, in 5 months the NFL will have access to test every single player and staff as often as needed and get almost instant results.

I'm hopeful the NFL will have a season. Over the next 2 or 3 months we will begin seeing other sports open back up, which will slowly help others gain confidence. Again, the NFL makes a ton of money through television and marketing. They will try everything they can to get games played.

The current recession is always the worst. Its the same people said in 2008, 2001, et . Recency bias is real. In about a year we will know if this is truly the worst. It may be, or it could be a blip in the radar if the trillions added to the economy end up being effective and getting people back to work sooner than later. I'd imagine none of us (if anyone period) are qualified to predict depth of recessions.

The Bundesliga, (the biggest soccer league) in Germany, and home to some of the best players in the world. is planning on restarting in early May under government regulations, FWIW.

[JoshGordonsDealer]

So let me ask this - how is it we have factories with thousands of people still working in reasonably close proximity in my area with no cases? How is it that Wuhan province has lifted its lockdown and now running manufacturing with thousands in confined spaces. They check temps and force sanitization daily, as well as require safety gear worn. Time will tell if there are severe secondary outbreaks. But if I factory of thousands can work with minimal interruption, how can the NFL not figure out a way to have 200 players and staff at a game in mostly open air environments?

Regardless of your experience, the US has ramped up testing incredibly over the past few weeks now that quicker testing is available. While I believe we need to test at a much higher rate now, in 5 months the NFL will have access to test every single player and staff as often as needed and get almost instant results.

I'm hopeful the NFL will have a season. Over the next 2 or 3 months we will begin seeing other sports open back up, which will slowly help others gain confidence. Again, the NFL makes a ton of money through television and marketing. They will try everything they can to get games played.

The current recession is always the worst. Its the same people said in 2008, 2001, et . Recency bias is real. In about a year we will know if this is truly the worst. It may be, or it could be a blip in the radar if the trillions added to the economy end up being effective and getting people back to work sooner than later. I'd imagine none of us (if anyone period) are qualified to predict depth of recessions.

The Bundesliga, (the biggest soccer league) in Germany, and home to some of the best players in the world. is planning on restarting in early May under government regulations, FWIW.

Germany also has handled the whole situation a helluva lot better than the USA up until now.

[CGW]

Not a big soccer fan, but any sports will be welcomed right about now!

[RB6]

So let me ask this - how is it we have factories with thousands of people still working in reasonably close proximity in my area with no cases? How is it that Wuhan province has lifted its lockdown and now running manufacturing with thousands in confined spaces. They check temps and force sanitization daily, as well as require safety gear worn. Time will tell if there are severe secondary outbreaks. But if I factory of thousands can work with minimal interruption, how can the NFL not figure out a way to have 200 players and staff at a game in mostly open air environments?

Regardless of your experience, the US has ramped up testing incredibly over the past few weeks now that quicker testing is available. While I believe we need to test at a much higher rate now, in 5 months the NFL will have access to test every single player and staff as often as needed and get almost instant results.

I'm hopeful the NFL will have a season. Over the next 2 or 3 months we will begin seeing other sports open back up, which will slowly help others gain confidence. Again, the NFL makes a ton of money through television and marketing. They will try everything they can to get games played.

The current recession is always the worst. Its the same people said in 2008, 2001, et . Recency bias is real. In about a year we will know if this is truly the worst. It may be, or it could be a blip in the radar if the trillions added to the economy end up being effective and getting people back to work sooner than later. I'd imagine none of us (if anyone period) are qualified to predict depth of recessions.

The Bundesliga, (the biggest soccer league) in Germany, and home to some of the best players in the world. is planning on restarting in early May under government regulations, FWIW.

Germany also has handled the whole situation a helluva lot better than the USA up until now.

Yep. Apples to bowling balls.

[FantasyFreak]

So let me ask this - how is it we have factories with thousands of people still working in reasonably close proximity in my area with no cases? How is it that Wuhan province has lifted its lockdown and now running manufacturing with thousands in confined spaces. They check temps and force sanitization daily, as well as require safety gear worn. Time will tell if there are severe secondary outbreaks. But if I factory of thousands can work with minimal interruption, how can the NFL not figure out a way to have 200 players and staff at a game in mostly open air environments?

Regardless of your experience, the US has ramped up testing incredibly over the past few weeks now that quicker testing is available. While I believe we need to test at a much higher rate now, in 5 months the NFL will have access to test every single player and staff as often as needed and get almost instant results.

I'm hopeful the NFL will have a season. Over the next 2 or 3 months we will begin seeing other sports open back up, which will slowly help others gain confidence. Again, the NFL makes a ton of money through television and marketing. They will try everything they can to get games played.

The current recession is always the worst. Its the same people said in 2008, 2001, et . Recency bias is real. In about a year we will know if this is truly the worst. It may be, or it could be a blip in the radar if the trillions added to the economy end up being effective and getting people back to work sooner than later. I'd imagine none of us (if anyone period) are qualified to predict depth of recessions.

The Bundesliga, (the biggest soccer league) in Germany, and home to some of the best players in the world. is planning on restarting in early May under government regulations, FWIW.

Germany also has handled the whole situation a helluva lot better than the USA up until now.

That shouldn't surprise anybody, that statement could be applied to most areas.

[stoneghost28]

I was going to reply to this in the Joe Burrow thread, but it's probably better replied to in here. I hope this isn't too much of a downer. Context is everything:

https://www.gifng.com/wow/73953

That chart is now out of date, and that figure has, in fact, nearly tripled - cumulative applications for unemployment in the US were set to hit 17 million people as of Friday last week. (Source)

A "massive depression like the world has never seen" is unfortunately the new reality that we are now facing. If you don't believe me, just ask any of your friends in retail, manufacturing, or hospitality. The world has drastically changed, and for them especially, overnight.

I sure hope we get to keep sports during all of this - I would welcome any distraction. But the aftershocks of this are going to kick for years societally - even just based on the numbers alone.

No doubt, it's a horror show, and whats been done so far appears to be mealy mouthed attention to those who really need it (small businesses and the unemployed and those like my wife who've seen their incomes shaves in half by an inability to see patients (she's a PT) in these conditions) and massive attention to those who don't, but are huge lobbyists with tremendous reach into both parties, especially the Republican (Mega Corporations that will be fine). This is unprecedented, and it would be lovely if an easy bounce back was possible, but it isn't. We don't have examples from the past in how companies will react to this, and we do know that extended periods of unemployment of any length tend to push people into an endless cycle of difficulty in terms of getting hired again (often a year or two or more) and in these conditions, w/17 million filing, but also w/unemployment insurance programs overwhelmed and totally unable to handle the requests my guess is the # is much closer to 35-50 million trying to file/who have filed. How can you get these people back and employed since we know that every piece of this economic chain depends upon another piece? To rehire people companies have to believe they can make money by selling whatever their product is, but right now nobodies buying anything other than food, and apparently all the toilet paper and paper towels in the known universe. Nobodies spending a thin dime on anything else amongst the employed and with the unemployed it's definitively that.

It's difficult to figure if the better model is the European model where they just paid companies to keep people employed, or ours where we have an unemployment insurance system that gets cash into peoples hands quickly when its working, but isn't working effectively right now. The only way to jump start things is to have every single piece of the economy trusting that it will function, the employed, the unemployed, business owners, everyone, trusting that people will purchase again, trusting that people will start hiring again, trusting that you're safe and you can buy things beyond necessities etc, and it's hard to see that happening anytime soon. Scariest times of my lifetime (born in late '74).

So let me ask this - how is it we have factories with thousands of people still working in reasonably close proximity in my area with no cases? How is it that Wuhan province has lifted its lockdown and now running manufacturing with thousands in confined spaces. They check temps and force sanitization daily, as well as require safety gear worn. Time will tell if there are severe secondary outbreaks. But if I factory of thousands can work with minimal interruption, how can the NFL not figure out a way to have 200 players and staff at a game in mostly open air environments?

Regardless of your experience, the US has ramped up testing incredibly over the past few weeks now that quicker testing is available. While I believe we need to test at a much higher rate now, in 5 months the NFL will have access to test every single player and staff as often as needed and get almost instant results.

I'm hopeful the NFL will have a season. Over the next 2 or 3 months we will begin seeing other sports open back up, which will slowly help others gain confidence. Again, the NFL makes a ton of money through television and marketing. They will try everything they can to get games played.

The current recession is always the worst. Its the same people said in 2008, 2001, et . Recency bias is real. In about a year we will know if this is truly the worst. It may be, or it could be a blip in the radar if the trillions added to the economy end up being effective and getting people back to work sooner than later. I'd imagine none of us (if anyone period) are qualified to predict depth of recessions.

We have competing anecdotal evidence, which in the end is largely worthless. The Chinese #'s are total horse bleep, so there's no point in using them as a reference. Germany is interesting, so is Sweden, so are the nations we were closest too, Spain and Italy amongst others, I'm curious with what started happening in Singapore recently when they opened a bit and saw a dramatic rise. Time will tell. In terms of your anecdotal piece, I imagine it's a byproduct of the flattening we've seen from social distancing, we'll see how things go from here. I'm hopeful as well that the NFL will have a season, I'll be miserable if it doesn't come back, but there are more important things. As for the economic disaster we're seeing, 2001 was a tech crash caused by irrational exuberance with tech stocks and the internet, see the looney super bowl commercials for ridiculous companies circa 2000/2001 (back then I worked in the financial industry before leaving for teaching). '08 was a disaster on the scale of the Great Depression largely averted due to lessons learned from the Great Depression credit crunch so to speak. We have no equivalent to this, maybe they figure out how to open the economy up and we're fine, but I'm skeptical, w/no prior examples in history, total gridlock in government and a complete incompetent at the top of our govt in the White House in an election year, it's truly scary indeed (oddly analogous to the Spanish Influenza Epidemic 100 years ago when Wilson stroked out in the midst of it and was largely useless as well-heard interesting reference to theories that the stroke might have been connected to Spanish Influenza, something I'd never heard before).

Hopefully testing gets better, it couldn't get any worse than March, but having lost the ability to test effectively in March I get the sense they will focus more on testing to see what people have developed antibodies. Time will tell, would be awesome if things were much better in terms of the picture of this by May/June, and I do wonder when is the drop dead month for various leagues starting up again or just entering the playoffs, and the NFL itself. At what point would starting compromise the health of players (they do need training camp if not preseason).

[FantasyFreak]

First player tests positive.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap300000 ... or-covid19

[thebeast]

Back to where this thread started...

If there is no NFL season then I plan to separate into two draft for the leagues I commission. The players drafted this year will be in the 2020 rookie draft and our draft order for that draft won’t change.

For 2021 rookies I will probably use an auction process that is tied into full season FAAB.

And that is what I think the NFL should do too for the 2021 draft assuming there is no 2020 season, they should have some type of auction with each team getting a budget switch tie breaker going to whatever team had the higher pick in 2020.