Practice Squads Proposal

Not a game…but practice.

6/18/18 Edit: I planned to propose this earlier this offseason but I kinda ran out of time/figured it wouldn’t hurt to wait another year since it’s kind of complicated. However, a bunch of you commented this draft weekend that you would be interested in more roster spots, especially after I gave a quick summary of the practice squad idea to make things more interesting than just larger rosters. So, I’ve decided to throw this idea out there for a post-draft vote. I definitely understand that this would have impacted draft strategy, so a vote is doubly important if you guys still want to do this. Please read carefully!

If you couldn’t already tell, I’m always trying to come up with ways to make this league unique and different than any other fantasy football experience you’ve had before. Now that everyone has their feet under themselves after two years of dynasty, it’s time to keep you on your toes!

I definitely didn’t come up with this idea on my own as NFL teams obviously have practice squads and multiple dynasty sites talk about “taxi squads”, but I’ve taken a combination of things I’ve read about and would like to propose a new wrinkle to our league. We talkin’ bout PRACTICE!

What’s a Practice Squad?

In the simplest of terms, each team will have three roster spots separate from their active roster that they can use to stash players. How is this different than just adding three roster spots to everyone’s team? The practice squad follows a specific set of rules:

Assigning Practice Squad Players

1. Only rookies can be assigned to your practice squad, and only during the offseason. (With ONE exception, explained under stealing.)
2. Teams may only add rookies that they owned their initial rights to: either via draft pick, draft day trade, or an undrafted rookie signing following the rookie draft. (With ONE exception, explained under stealing.)

Holding and Promoting Practice Squad Players

1. While only rookies can be assigned, a player can stay on a practice squad for up to 2 years, through their sophomore season.
2. A player on a team’s practice squad is not on their active 20-man roster, and cannot be started during the season.
3. A team is allowed to promote their practice squad players at any time, but doing so requires adding them to their active roster (and potentially dropping an existing player).
4. There are no demotions back to a practice squad. Once a player is promoted and added to an active roster, they are ineligible to be returned back to any practice squads.

Stealing Practice Squad Players

1. A team may attempt to steal another team’s practice squad player, with compensation of a draft pick in the upcoming draft, one round higher than the round the player was originally drafted in.
2. 1st Round practice squad players are compensated with one 1st Round Pick and one 2nd Round Pick.
3. If a team has multiple picks within the required round, the stealing team chooses which pick to offer.
4. The player’s current owner has two options. They can keep the player by promoting him to their active roster, or they can accept the draft pick compensation and allow the player to be stolen.
5. When a player is successfully stolen, the new team is allowed to either transfer them into their own practice squad or straight on to their active roster. Roster/practice squad size is still enforced during this process. This is the only time a player can be added to a practice squad outside of the normal process.
6. Once a player has been stolen once, they can no longer be stolen again-even if they were assigned to the new team’s practice squad.

Summary and Example Scenario

Hopefully that wasn’t too confusing. Essentially, the practice squad is a way to safely stash your draft picks while you wait for them to become productive fantasy players instead of feeling like they are clogging up your active roster.

However, it’s not perfectly safe, since other teams can potentially swoop on the players you’ve stashed. That’s the key wrinkle to make this more interesting and differentiate the practice squad from just additional roster spots.

Here’s an example of the timeline a team might go through with their practice squad.

June 2017
Lando drafts:
Dalvin Cook (1st Round)
Evan Engram (2nd Round)
Dede Westbrook (3rd Round)
Darren Sproles (4th Round)

August 2017
Lando has all of his practice squad spots open. Darren Sproles is not eligible since he’s not a rookie, so Lando puts Cook, Engram, and Westbrook on his practice squad.

September 2017
Cook is balling out and Lando promotes him to his active roster so that he can be played on Sundays.

Josh likes himself some Evan Engram and attempts to steal him from Lando. Since Engram was a 2nd Round Pick, Josh must offer a 2018 1st as compensation for his thievery. Lando accepts the compensation because he’s okay with getting a 1st for a player he drafted in the 2nd (and this is theoretically before Engram started playing well).

Lando is now left with only Westbrook on his practice squad, who he keeps there for the remainder of the season.

June 2018
Lando has zero draft picks, but he signs two rookie FAs right after the draft to bolster his practice squad. We’ll call them Joe Schmo and Chuck Schmuck. He also keeps Dede Westbrook on there, as he’s fine with waiting on another year of development.

May 2019
30 days pre-draft (when league officially starts for the season), Dede Westbrook is moved off Lando’s practice squad and onto his roster since he’s entering his third year in the league.

This is too complicated! What’s the point!

I understand this is pretty weird, which is why we’ll vote on this like we would a normal amendment.

Here’s why I like it though (other than being a crazy person who thinks about dynasty too much):

It encourages every team to develop young players at all times. As much as I’m down to snag players like Chris Godwin off the waiver wire, it feels weird being able to grab a guy mid-season who was drafted in our 2nd Round five months prior. Yes, it is the previous team’s choice to give up on a player so early, but I’d rather expand everyone's options rather than pigeonhole a win-now team into feeling like they can’t stash a few players along the way.

On that note, it gives your 3rd and 4th Round Picks a home. They obviously have a low chance of hitting so I don’t think this necessarily increases the trade value of the those late round picks, but you would at least have more incentive to keep them and use them knowing you can wait to see what they become. Right now it’s too easy to drop your 4th Round Pick because you need a bye week filler. I guarantee we’ll be surprised in a couple years looking at some names taken in our 3rd and 4th Round last year..

Plus, not to be that guy telling you how to play a silly fantasy sport…but if some of you don’t start stashing young dudes, your teams are going to hit the crapper quick. Year 3/4 of a dynasty league is where we’ll really start separating from a normal redraft league and team building is going to be more important than ever.

I know I sound like a broken record, but the beauty of dynasty football is the long-term ability to draft, trade, and develop a team. This creates more opportunity to do that, but in a much more interesting way than “here, have more roster spots”.

Questions, comments, concerns? Let’s discuss!