Formal Off-season Activities in your League(s)

[Cult of Dionysus]

Like many of you, I'm struggling to make it through the doldrums of dynasty league football. Other than NFL Free Agency and the NFL Draft, there's precious little action that the NFL delivers. And that has gotten me thinking about the structure of most dynasty leagues.

Unless you are in a salary cap league, it is very likely that you will have only one formal off-season activity. Namely the rookie (or perhaps rookie/FA) draft. To my mind, that is structurally insufficient and probably leads to many of us looking for startups, simply to fill the 8 month off-season with some formal action.

So two questions to you all:

First, how many formal offseason activities do your leagues have?

Second, how many off season events could a league actually have? What's the most that we can come up with?

[lukkynumber13]

Great question. I don't have any answers, other than to employ the use of a chat app (we use Telegram app in 2 of my 3 leagues which is great for camaraderie)

In terms of formal stuff tho, I'm interested to hear what others have to say

[clarion contrarion]

Although I did not do it this year in the past I did an NCAA hops bracket contest with the prize being a supplemental 1st to the winner and a supplemental 2nd to 2nd place . Just to get the group chatting and paying attention before draft season kicks in .

[ChuckCecil26]

Agree this is a great question. I don't like the doldrum months either.

In the FFPC format, dynasty rosters have to be cut from 20 to 16 (kicker and DST among the players rostered) every spring. The cutdown deadline this year was midnight PST on March 15. As a result, there was a frenzy of trade activity as owners had to make decisions on the 4 players they had to release. Those decisions were being considered at the same time that NFL teams were deciding who to keep or let walk. And as a formal offseason activity, it aligns with the real life football decisions that are in the headlines every day at that time of the year.

So there were some 2-1 deals. Draft pick trades (7 rounds to play with). Lots of round bump trades i.e. trade a bottom of the roster player like Charles Sims and a 6th round pick for rookie/FA pick 3.01. Just a bunch of activity. Makes NFL free agency more fun to follow too as guys like Burkhead go from the roster bubble to Must Hold Status.

In short, the doldrums were stirred up by the fact that every team was motivated by the March 15 deadline and that encouraged message boards posts, on-the-block updates, trade offers and general discussion.

[lukkynumber13]

Although I did not do it this year in the past I did an NCAA hops bracket contest with the prize being a supplemental 1st to the winner and a supplemental 2nd to 2nd place . Just to get the group chatting and paying attention before draft season kicks in .

Wow that's great!

[moishetreats]

We also do our off-season rules discussion around now. Post Superbowl is too soon, and this ramps up interest (and trading) pre-NFL Rookie Draft.

[mudster]

With the exception of only two members, our whole league works in the same department at work. Trading is shut down during our leagues playoffs but starts back up week 17. Trade talks run wild at work and we've probably had 20 trades go off so far. We also have an NFL draft party and contest. With the contest, everyone picks the 1st 32 picks of the draft in order and gets points for how close they were. Never thought about giving away draft picks away though...love that idea.

[lukkynumber13]

With the exception of only two members, our whole league works in the same department at work. Trading is shut down during our leagues playoffs but starts back up week 17. Trade talks run wild at work and we've probably had 20 trades go off so far. We also have an NFL draft party and contest. With the contest, everyone picks the 1st 32 picks of the draft in order and gets points for how close they were. Never thought about giving away draft picks away though...love that idea.

Man, that's awesome! I wish I worked with people who were into fantasy football, let alone dynasty!

[DynastyBuilder515]

We also do our off-season rules discussion around now. Post Superbowl is too soon, and this ramps up interest (and trading) pre-NFL Rookie Draft.

We do this as well. The other off season activity we have is division winners from prior years draft new divisions closer to the start of the season. End of July time frame.

[Cult of Dionysus]

For your run of the mill leagues, I would advise as follows:

Close down FAAB / waiver after the season ends. Have a Free Agent draft in early April. Followed by a Rookie draft in late May. Then, open up FAAB / waivers after the Rookie draft. Then have a roster cut down in early August. That alone would generate 4 distinct league events. If you have IDPs, then you can double the drafts by having a Free Agent and a Rookie draft for each side of the ball.

Of course, if you go with a salary cap league, you can add additional events. Franchise tagging, auctions, restricted free agents, possibly roster raiding...

[Cowboysfan33]

Unfortunately, I work with mainly NCAA basketball fans, which I'm not much of a fan other than March Madness. Hardly any of the NFL fans that I work with are into dynasty leagues so I'm usually having to explain the differences between re-draft and dynasty leagues. So, I do mostly online leagues where I don't know most of the other owners, it's still really fun though. I would love to play in dynasty leagues that had all of those offseason events, that would take alot of this offseason boredom away.

[Cult of Dionysus]

In my USFL Superflex, we have franchise tagging, franchise relocation and rule change voting in March. After two months of hiatus, this is how we ease back into the new season. Then we have a Free Agent auction in April, which is the first really significant league event of the season. One month later, right after the NFL Draft, we have our Rookie draft. By the time that finishes, we are nearly into June. That's when we hit a bit of a lull... It isn't until mid-August when activity starts to resume. We have a 2nd Free Agent auction just before Week 1. That's because we only do Waivers during the season. No off-season Waivers at all. In a perfect world, we'd have some kind of formal event sometime in the middle of summer.

One type of even that could be used in salary cap leagues is some kind of "roster raiding" program. Basically, the idea is that there's a period of time when teams can "raid" other rosters. One idea is that each franchise has one "raiding shot". A raider designates a player that is on another team and the two owners then have an auction (starting at that players existing salary). Perhaps another wrinkle is that no franchise can be "raided" more than once per season. And perhaps franchises can use their "raiding shot" either OFFENSIVELY or DEFENSIVELY. Meaning if franchise A tries to raid Franchise B, Franchise B can block the attempt by A by using their "raiding shot". Now franchise B can no longer be raided, but also can't "raid" another franchise, and franchise A is without a "raiding shot" and has no way to block a raid on its roster (though it can of course always outbid a raider).