I have played fantasy football off-and-on for the past 10 years or so with moderate success, finishing as high as third place and as low as eighth place while playing in a 10-team league. This was the first year that I dared to own two teams. While I figured it to be a more daunting and time consuming task, I’m entering the playoffs in first place in one league and fifth place in the other. Who knew? At any rate, while there are others I’m sure who have experienced worse, each of the past four weeks I have had no fewer than two (one week I had a whopping SIX) players get injured thus forcing me to play against my opponent short-handed. Surprisingly, I was able to win two of those weeks (in the league which I’m in first place, I’ve had no players to suffer injury, go figure).
Despite of winning two of those games, it sure would have been nice to have had the option of putting players in to replace the injured ones. As such, I propose that fantasy football needs to change so that players can be replaced, just as they are in actual games. My proposal is this: If Quarterback A (or any position for that matter) goes down with an injury and there is a quarterback sitting on your bench then he should be able to be substituted and salvage your game.
If you don’t have a corresponding player at the same position then oh well. Of course one tries to be forward thinking and have as many suitable backups as possible but it’s literally impossible. However, if your forward thinking works out to your advantage, not only do you not have to scour the waiver wire for whoever’s left and/or no one else (including you) wants, but you are also able to benefit from his play and production. Being penalized for injury hurts the actual player and team initially but ultimately trickles down to us fantasy players.
This change obviously involves the programmers who design and create the games. With their intellect and know-how (flattery should get you pretty far), wouldn’t it be a relatively easy change to make happen? Fantasy players would be forever grateful. Our fates and success or lack thereof rest in the balance.