Week 14 Byes

[OhCruelestRanter]

With the schedule dropping today, byes will continue into Week 14. Mercifully, no byes in Weeks 15-18, so a 3 week playoff structure is still possible without extending into Week 18.

For 12 team leagues, I don’t see this as an issue- you can have 3 divisions of 4 teams, and now you can play everybody in your division twice and every body else once, and start the playoffs in Week 15-17.

What are those of you in 10, 14, and 16 team leagues doing?

[tresskid84]

In the 16 tm league I commish, we already did doubleheaders to play everyone once. Also, I had decided already to push the playoffs to 15-17 (and now I'm glad I did). Gonna need to switch our double-header week though, as it was scheduled for week 14, and we try to avoid bye weeks for it.

[Shankopotamus]

It's so dumb that they don't take a week off mid-season

[mild]

Bad luck to anyone counting on Colts, Pats, Eagles, or Dolphins who still have to play a Week 14 playoff game I guess.

We do two week semis and finals in ours, so its probably going to go that way from the sounds.

[jcc6fd]

Bad luck to anyone counting on Colts, Pats, Eagles, or Dolphins who still have to play a Week 14 playoff game I guess.

We do two week semis and finals in ours, so its probably going to go that way from the sounds.

Same here. Looks like we either need to explore a 3 week playoff format (1 week semi and 2 week final) or be okay with the first semi final week including teams on bye.

[M-Dub]

It's so dumb that they don't take a week off mid-season

The problem with this is that they’d be leaving money on the table by taking an entire week off with no TV games. What would be ideal is if they had half the teams on bye in, say, week 8 and the other half in week 9. They’d still have eight games each on those two weeks, and fantasy leagues could just treat it as one week.

[M-Dub]

Bad luck to anyone counting on Colts, Pats, Eagles, or Dolphins who still have to play a Week 14 playoff game I guess.

We do two week semis and finals in ours, so its probably going to go that way from the sounds.

You could have week 16 count as both the last week of the semis AND the first week of the finals.

Personally, I’m just over trying to come up with creative solutions to extend the playoffs, only to have the NFL move the goddamn goalposts on us every year. I’m pushing for an 11-week regular season of double headers where we play a balanced 22-game schedule with every team playing each other exactly twice. That leaves six weeks for the playoffs: two weeks each for the first round, semifinals and championship. It sucks to have to navigate bye weeks in the playoffs, but if you have to, that means you at least you got the benefit of not having to deal with that player’s bye during the regular season. And as long as each playoff round is two weeks, you’ll at least have those guys for one of the weeks, so you don’t have to worry about getting bounced after just one down week. It’s not ideal, but it beats trying to cram the playoffs into three weeks because the NFL only cares about stupid fluky redraft leagues.

[SteelLake]

Bad luck to anyone counting on Colts, Pats, Eagles, or Dolphins who still have to play a Week 14 playoff game I guess.

We do two week semis and finals in ours, so its probably going to go that way from the sounds.

You could have week 16 count as both the last week of the semis AND the first week of the finals.

Personally, I’m just over trying to come up with creative solutions to extend the playoffs, only to have the NFL move the goddamn goalposts on us every year. I’m pushing for an 11-week regular season of double headers where we play a balanced 22-game schedule with every team playing each other exactly twice. That leaves six weeks for the playoffs: two weeks each for the first round, semifinals and championship. It sucks to have to navigate bye weeks in the playoffs, but if you have to, that means you at least you got the benefit of not having to deal with that player’s bye during the regular season. And as long as each playoff round is two weeks, you’ll at least have those guys for one of the weeks, so you don’t have to worry about getting bounced after just one down week. It’s not ideal, but it beats trying to cram the playoffs into three weeks because the NFL only cares about stupid fluky redraft leagues.

Yuck. Bye weeks in playoffs?

Do what our league does (we actually have been doing this with 1 double week, now no double week).

3 divisions of 4. Play every division team twice, everyone else once. Balanced!

Every 3 years, reshuffle divisions, based on how successful teams were in previous 3 years (have ranking system based on championships, then playoffs, then record), and go 1, 6, 7, 12... 2, 5, 8, 11... 3, 4, 9, 10

So, even if a division gets stacked, doesn’t last long

[thebadferret]

What are those of you in 16 team leagues doing?

4 Divisions in 2 Conferences (so 2, 2)
You play your division rivals twice = 6
You play the other division in your conference once = 4
You play two teams from the two divisions of the other conference one = 4

Equals 14 games and you can be sure that you play every team at least once every 2 years.

[Bronco Billy]

14 team league with 2 divisions.

2 games against division opponents, 1 against every nondivision opponent. We will be able to play doubleheaders on nonbye weeks 1-5 (1 division and 1 nondivision opponent) and single games weeks 6-14 (nonD on week 7 definitely and 1 of either week 9 or 10). 6 teams in the playoffs with Division winners getting byes, playoffs weeks 15-17.

19 game regular season, no bye week DHs. Not ideal with the backloaded NFL byes but it works out pretty well.

[Pac_Eddy]

I don't like having byes as late as week 14. With a 17 game schedule, NFL teams may be resting starters for two weeks at the end of the season if they have their seed locked up.

[dustyroads]

I don't like having byes as late as week 14. With a 17 game schedule, NFL teams may be resting starters for two weeks at the end of the season if they have their seed locked up.

The only thing I can think that may counteract this is now only one team per conference gets a first round bye; so unless a team has run away with it, they may still be competing for that bye late in the season. But otherwise, yeah the teams don't have a ton of incentive to risk injuring their starters the last two weeks now rather than one.

[Bronco Billy]

I don't like having byes as late as week 14. With a 17 game schedule, NFL teams may be resting starters for two weeks at the end of the season if they have their seed locked up.

The only thing I can think that may counteract this is now only one team per conference gets a first round bye; so unless a team has run away with it, they may still be competing for that bye late in the season. But otherwise, yeah the teams don't have a ton of incentive to risk injuring their starters the last two weeks now rather than one.

I think you’re underestimating this. There’s a huge difference between playing at home or on the road, and playing the last team in as opposed to a higher seed. For teams having a road playoff game, there’s potentially a large difference between playing the weakest division winner and the second or third best division winner.

As close as teams are record-wise, especially getting into the lower seeds, I don’t see that many teams being able to coast through the last 2 games of the season

[M-Dub]

Bad luck to anyone counting on Colts, Pats, Eagles, or Dolphins who still have to play a Week 14 playoff game I guess.

We do two week semis and finals in ours, so its probably going to go that way from the sounds.

You could have week 16 count as both the last week of the semis AND the first week of the finals.

Personally, I’m just over trying to come up with creative solutions to extend the playoffs, only to have the NFL move the goddamn goalposts on us every year. I’m pushing for an 11-week regular season of double headers where we play a balanced 22-game schedule with every team playing each other exactly twice. That leaves six weeks for the playoffs: two weeks each for the first round, semifinals and championship. It sucks to have to navigate bye weeks in the playoffs, but if you have to, that means you at least you got the benefit of not having to deal with that player’s bye during the regular season. And as long as each playoff round is two weeks, you’ll at least have those guys for one of the weeks, so you don’t have to worry about getting bounced after just one down week. It’s not ideal, but it beats trying to cram the playoffs into three weeks because the NFL only cares about stupid fluky redraft leagues.

Yuck. Bye weeks in playoffs?

Do what our league does (we actually have been doing this with 1 double week, now no double week).

3 divisions of 4. Play every division team twice, everyone else once. Balanced!

Every 3 years, reshuffle divisions, based on how successful teams were in previous 3 years (have ranking system based on championships, then playoffs, then record), and go 1, 6, 7, 12... 2, 5, 8, 11... 3, 4, 9, 10

So, even if a division gets stacked, doesn’t last long

I appreciate your suggestion, but my issue isn’t with the fantasy regular season. As I said, we can play a balanced schedule in just 11 weeks. The issue is that there aren’t enough bye-less weeks at the end of the NFL season to accommodate a longer fantasy postseason, which is a priority for my league. Also, playing some teams once and other teams twice isn’t balanced. If everyone plays everyone else the same number of times, that’s balanced, and it eliminates the need for divisions.

[MEuRaH]

Pretty much ever league I run or every league I'm a part of is 14 or 16 teams or 32 teams, etc. Our playoffs used to be from week 13 through week 16. Never had a problem. This new schedule...... bah

We're in the middle of discussing what to do. I think we should move everything back two weeks. Having the championship game on week 18 is not ideal, and if NFL players are benched week 18, that'll disrupt the championship game. I get it.

If we push the playoffs back just one week, we can avoid that scenario above, but then we'll also have four teams on a bye week during the first round of the playoffs. I hate this even more, but there are multiple owners who say "you have 6-7 months to prepare for that moment" and would rather have this happen than to have the scenario above happen.

Having the playoffs during week 14 definitely will disrupt the playoffs for multiple owners, vs a championship game on week 18 that will maybe disrupt things for one or two owners. Maybe.

There's no perfect answer to this yet.... yet....