Some people hate bye weeks, and I understand that. It's another obstacle for fantasy owners to navigate during the season. But there's something I like about them, too: The ability to weed out losers.
Believe it or not, some folks have already given up on 2014. I guess they expected to be 3-0 with no injuries and all their starters showing up each week. And when that didn't happen, they bailed on a struggling team.
They didn't bail on fantasy football altogether, of course. Somewhere in cyberspace, they actually do have a 3-0 team. Join enough leagues and a few of those drafts will spin gold for the first few weeks. So that's where their attention is going, and their slow-starters get abandoned. And one of them might be in your league.
These are the worst types of owners, by the way. You know the rules-lawyer in your league? Much better owner. At least they're trying. The owner who never makes the playoffs, makes silly trades and only drafts players form their favorite team? Hey, it's a bad strategy but at least they're invested in those guys. They want them to do well.
But the owner who can't even finish out a season is the worst. They create a piece of driftwood, doling out easy wins and upsetting the competitive balance of a league. They don't announce it, either. They just stop responding to e-mails and stop changing their lineups. And unfortunately, you won't even notice it's happening.
Until the bye weeks.
Now we'll have proof that an owner is not tending to their lineup. If Marshawn Lynch is starting this weekend, there's a problem. If Emmanuel Sanders is still in a lineup, that's a red flag. And if your league has a problem to face, better to do it after week 3 than after week 8.
If you see teams starting bye week players, say something to the commissioner. Don't leave it to one person to investigate the issue. Even if you think it's nice to have a cupcake on the schedule, they could eventually keep you out of the playoffs. They could take a must-win situation in week 13 and hand an easy victory to your rival. And it's just bad for the league to have unmanaged franchises. Address it now.
Hopefully the commissioner can contact the owner and find out what's happening. It's possible that someone had to go out of town and couldn't log in or an emergency came up on Sunday. Things happen, even to good owners. If that's the case, you don't have to throw the book at them. But you need to know if they're still in the league.
More often than not, you'll find the team was abandoned by a disinterested owner. If that's the case, there are a bunch of not-great options: You could find a last-minute replacement to take over a team they didn't even select. You could freeze the roster and simply put in starters each week and hope they're competitive. Or you could fold the team and have their opponents play the league average each week.
The first and last choices seems the most fair to me, but none of them are ideal. The ideal move would have been to choose better ownership in the first place, and not be in this position in September. But if you're here now, any option is better than letting their rotting hulk of a roster float along week to week, ruining your league.
As annoying as they can be, at least the bye weeks let you identify these buffoons. It takes seconds to make sure your players aren't playing this weekend. If someone can't do that, they might have already left your league behind. Use the upcoming bye weeks to identify them, and keep checking for unnecessary goose eggs each week. Maybe 0-3 isn't enough to abandon a team for some folks, but at 0-4 or 0-5 it's adios amigos. Whenever it happens, be prepared to move quickly and mitigate any damage they might cause on their way out. Good luck this week.
How does your league identify and handle abandoned teams? Share your thoughts below.