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Q: There are several owners (including myself) who want to reconfigure our league for next year to introduce keepers. I realize there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to a keeper system but there are two items that have been discussed by the team owners and which will be entrenched in the next system.
1st-round picks
(and maybe 2nd and 3rd) cannot be kept.
There has to be some form of compensation for keeping players by giving up draft
picks.
Could you provide some suggestions on how we should proceed to build an ideal
and realistic keeper system? Tickets
Warren LaRocque
Renfrew, Ontario, Canada
A: Actually, Warren, it looks like your league is off to a good start. As I wrote in response to another Daily Mail, I think it becomes monotonous when the NFL's elite players remain on the same team season after season. Exempting top players from being held as keepers allows every owner to have a reasonable chance at the big-name superstars. My keeper league takes this idea to the extreme; anyone drafted in the first four rounds is ineligible to be kept the following season. Thus, the top 48 players from 2003 will be available in the 2004 draft.
There are a couple ways to approach the matter of draft picks when it comes to keepers. The easy approach is to consider each keeper as equivalent to a draft pick. For leagues that allow three keepers, those players count as an owner's first three draft picks. That way, an owner who doesn't have a great group of players can choose to keep fewer players and receive early draft picks instead. For example, if everyone keeps three players except one owner who keeps no one, that owner would get picks in the first three rounds while everyone else wouldn't start drafting until the "fourth" round. This method is best for leagues where any player can be kept.
If you want your keeper league to reward owners for building a franchise and planning ahead, I suggest using a system similar to the one my league uses. Any drafted player can be kept as long as he is never dropped to the waiver wire. The catch is that the player is kept four rounds earlier than the one in which he was drafted the previous season. For example, one lucky owner took a chance on Joe Horn in the 20th round before his huge 2000 season. That foresight allowed the owner to keep Horn in the 16th round in 2001, the 12th round in 2002 and the eighth round in 2003. The Horn example tends to be an exception. For the most part, keepers in that league tend to be breakout receivers (Steve Smith and Santana Moss) or young quarterbacks. One owner used a late pick on Willis McGahee in the hope that he will pay off down the line. Because of the "minus four" rule, it's impossible to keep a player drafted in the first four rounds, which prevents the stars from stagnating on o ne team. For owners like Warren, this rule might be exactly what they're looking for to begin a keeper league.