In the spirit of encouraging long term ownership of players in the League, this proposes the addition of a new construct: affinity tags. Quite often, even with practice squads, owners must release players with long term potential before they have matured and ramped up fantasy production. Even though the current roster size is large compared to most redraft leagues, the week-to-week positional constraints plus some forward outlook do not allow for many of these "deep dynasty league stashes" to actually be stashed. Our dynasty league becomes less dynasty and more keeper year-over-year. Opening practice squad to undrafted rookies, adding more practice squad spots, or expanding the practice squad timeout may help, but has a negative outcome that these players are kept from the league even when they could be producing points on another team's starting roster. A proposed solution: affinity tags:
Each owner is able to apply an affinity tag on up to 10 players (exact number to be determined; mechanism for applying affinity tag to be discussed below). When a player is tagged to have affinity for your team, they are still a free agent and can be acquired through all the normal channels except that when they are being signed to another team's active roster, you have an opportunity to match the offer and the player will sign with your team instead. The other owner has an opportunity to increase their offer to one that you are unwilling to match at which point they will sign with the other team.
Affinity tags may be applied to any untagged free agent at any time during the year including the offseason. A player acquired through rookie draft or live auction will have their affinity tag cleared or ignored. Management of tags, visibility to them, handling competing bids, etc. would need to be worked out so it is easy to see who is tagged and by which owner. There are other open questions around timing of ESPN waiver results and needing to get them into your starting lineup that would need to be worked out as well. There are probably other open questions as well, but wanted to put this out there and get some discussion going.
Proposing for discussion:
In the spirit of encouraging long term ownership of players in the League, this proposes the addition of a new construct: affinity tags. Quite often, even with practice squads, owners must release players with long term potential before they have matured and ramped up fantasy production. Even though the current roster size is large compared to most redraft leagues, the week-to-week positional constraints plus some forward outlook do not allow for many of these "deep dynasty league stashes" to actually be stashed. Our dynasty league becomes less dynasty and more keeper year-over-year. Opening practice squad to undrafted rookies, adding more practice squad spots, or expanding the practice squad timeout may help, but has a negative outcome that these players are kept from the league even when they could be producing points on another team's starting roster. A proposed solution: affinity tags:
Each owner is able to apply an affinity tag on up to 10 players (exact number to be determined; mechanism for applying affinity tag to be discussed below). When a player is tagged to have affinity for your team, they are still a free agent and can be acquired through all the normal channels except that when they are being signed to another team's active roster, you have an opportunity to match the offer and the player will sign with your team instead. The other owner has an opportunity to increase their offer to one that you are unwilling to match at which point they will sign with the other team.
Affinity tags may be applied to any untagged free agent at any time during the year including the offseason. A player acquired through rookie draft or live auction will have their affinity tag cleared or ignored. Management of tags, visibility to them, handling competing bids, etc. would need to be worked out so it is easy to see who is tagged and by which owner. There are other open questions around timing of ESPN waiver results and needing to get them into your starting lineup that would need to be worked out as well. There are probably other open questions as well, but wanted to put this out there and get some discussion going.