Restricted Free Agency

*THIS RULE HAS PASSED*

My fellow owners:

Currently I am in the process of trying to get my literal house in order so that we might list it and buy a bigger house, thanks to the arrival of daughter number 3, Henrietta Ann Hammond.

To that end, I had to pack away my “office” area so that we could stage our house as the intended “eat-in” kitchen. Therefore, some of the updates to the website might be slow in coming. I am typing this from work, and I can do some things (but not everything) from my laptop and phone.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about fantasy football. Because I have! At least since the NFL Draft snuck up on me, anyway.

I got to thinking about last year and how restricted free agency went. There were a couple of SNAFUs because the rules were interpreted differently by different people.

My rule proposal for restricted free agency goes as follows:

• Each RFA gets his own day in the sun. He will be the only player being bid on that day, starting on June 1st.
• The bidding window will be 12 hours long. I propose that bidding starts at 10:00 AM Central, and closes at 10:00 PM Central. Therefore, our west coasters would have the 8-8 window, the midwesterners would have the 10-10 window, and the east coasters would have the 11-11 window. I believe that in this age of technology, most of us can access the website at least once in a 12 hour window.
• After the bid closes and the player is awarded, the owner of the RFA would have until the next morning to decide whether to keep the player or take the compensation. They would have to decide before 10:00 AM Central, since the next player has his day in the sun at that time. I believe that we can all put our big boy pants on and accomplish this. Most of us should have a plan going into restricted free agency and a price that we are willing to pay to keep our guys. 12 hours should be plenty of time to make that decision.
• The order of the RFA auctions will mimic the order that the players were selected in during the draft. So, this year Andrew Luck would be the first player we bid on, and Brock Osweiler would be the last.
• There are 26 RFA-eligible players at the moment, so if every player was tagged we would have the RFA period over before the end of June. There will most likely be a bunch of players that don’t get the tag.
• Obviously, teams would have to decide whether or not to tag their RFAs by June 1st.

I think we can handle the hardcore 12-hour bidding windows. I know that I check my phone religiously during unrestricted free agency. And this way owners could plan their next move if they don’t land their guy, because we would know everything before the next player went on the board. By keeping the RFA order the same as the draft order, we could plan our approach to a certain position accordingly.

So, what do you think?
Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

© 2015, Josh Hammond. All rights reserved.