Fantasy Football: COVID-19 tips, advice to help your league

How should your fantasy football league navigate COVID-19 this season?

The presence of COVID-19 will make 2020 a challenging year for football. The swirling cloud of uncertainty that has shrouded the NFL’s season also looms large over a full fantasy football season.

There are plenty of ways the NFL season could go haywire, which would throw major wrenches into fantasy football leagues. Luckily, there are actions you can take to avoid these potential wrenches — and it’s more than just following the great Patches O’Houlihan’s advice.

Here are some suggestions to help protect your fantasy football season from COVID-19. They’re broken into three categories: Roster Insurance Policies, Season Cancelation Plans and General Guidelines.

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Fantasy Football: COVID-19 roster insurance policies

Extra Bench Spots

This one is a fairly obvious change and it’s one that many leagues have already made. Adding extra bench spots allows for more roster flexibility in the event of multiple players catching COVID-19. Depending on the website you use, you may be able to add bench spots during the season if the COVID-19 cases start to pile up.

IR Spot

This is another mainstream adjustment, though many leagues already have one. I know I’ve always vouched for an IR spot in fantasy leagues to help alleviate the stress of injuries on rosters. Pairing this with extra bench spots could help free up a roster spot if your team becomes a COVID-19 hotbed. I wouldn’t recommend more than one IR spot to begin, though. Like bench spots, this could be something to monitor as the season goes on.

Protected Drops

Protected drops are essentially a temporary extension of your roster. When a certain number of players on a team’s active roster come down with the coronavirus, that team is awarded one protected drop. This means they can drop any player with COVID-19 and no one can pick him up. Potential issues could be a lack of communication because this requires some oversight from commissioners.

Of course, commissioners could just add a bench or IR spot midseason if their league allows it. In the case that it doesn’t, though, it may be smarter to add some roster insurance. Is this the best method? No — but this season could require some outside-the-box thinking.

Team QB

Most fantasy sites give leagues the option of drafting Team QBs instead of individual players. Essentially, you’d draft the team instead of the quarterback. For example, if you want Patrick Mahomes, you have to draft the “Kansas City Chiefs Team QB.” This may help with COVID-19 because it guarantees that you will always have a quarterback on your roster.

It could also add some more fun to your league because Team QBs tend to score more points than individual players. If you have the “Washington Football Team Team QB” and two quarterbacks play in one game, then you get the combined points. And yes, the only reason I used that example was so I could say “Washington Football Team Team QB”.

Second Defense/Special Teams

Look, I get many people aren’t too enthusiastic about defenses in fantasy football. But hear me out: Defenses are less vulnerable to coronavirus cases in fantasy football. A second defense could allow for more consistency on your roster. Even if you lose all your running backs, at least your D/STs would likely still be intact. One or two missing players shouldn’t make too much of a difference for fantasy purposes.

Fantasy Football: COVID-19 season cancelation plans

Set Weeks for Money Distribution

No one wants their money to go to waste. Unfortunately, there are already concerns about how leagues will distribute their winnings if the season were to be canceled. It’s sad that this is a possibility, and it makes it much harder on fantasy leagues to prepare for this worst-case scenario. A simple solution would be to divide the league up into sections. There are ample possibilities to separate the ranges of weeks but here’s a solid basis to begin with.

• The first section consists of early weeks where every team would get full refunds if the NFL season ended.
• The second section of weeks would consist of later weeks where 50 percent of the winnings are given to the winner/runners-up while the rest go back to the league. This ensures some fairness to the better teams but also acknowledges that the season wasn’t done yet.
• The third section of weeks would be the final weeks where it’s far too late in the fantasy season to just scrap it entirely. There’s no reason an undefeated team and a winless team make the same amount of cash 11 games into the season.

My league adopted this rule to help spare confusion about who’s owed money if there’s a cancelation. If the NFL season ends in Weeks 1-5, everyone in my league gets their money back. It’s too early to determine a winner, so we scrap the league. If the NFL season ends in Weeks 6-9, everyone gets half of their initial buy-in while the winner/runner-up gets the rest. Finally, if the NFL season comes to a halt in Week 10 or later — including the playoffs — we end the season and the best team is given their money. As to how we determine the winner…

Set Factor for Determining Winner

…It depends on your league. In a rotisserie, point-based league, it should be easy to crown a champion. In a head-to-head league, however, there may be many ties in the standings, especially early in the season. Come to an agreement with your league about how the winner would be determined in that scenario. Would it be based on record? Total points? The last thing you need is two teams arguing over who should be the champion.

Fantasy Football: General COVID-19 season guidelines

Stay Hands-On

Simply put, the best teams will be the ones with the most active owners. There’s no telling how much impact COVID-19 will have on your fantasy team, so staying on top of your roster is extremely important. A player in your starting lineup could be ruled out with COVID-like symptoms just before kickoff. There’s too much uncertainty to not check on your fantasy team, especially if you’re forking over a ton of cash to make it happen.

Stay Active with Transactions

2020 may be the defining year of the waiver wire. There’s no telling how important it’ll become. Players could drop like flies, suddenly leaving many holes in your roster. You have to be fully aware of your team and the potential solutions for any COVID-related issues that can come up.

Trades can be a huge fix, too. What if you lose all your tight ends the day before a game, and someone else has three healthy ones? It would be important to quickly pull the trigger on a deal, and it’s probably in the league’s best interest to make sure that trade goes through right away. Communication is key so the commissioner can push the deal through in time, but only if there is a multi-day wait time for trades to process.