Whenever I sit down to write this weekly wrap-up, I typically first consider what was noteworthy about the Thursday night game three days before. This time, when reflecting on that Jets-Broncos game, I thought, That was only three days ago? Feels like three weeks.
Hopefully we won’t look back on the past few days as the turning point when the wheels fell off the NFL season. I’ve been playing fantasy football for some 25 years, and this was one of the most bizarre stretches of days I can remember:
- Thursday morning, I woke up to the news that the NFL postponed the Tennessee-Pittsburgh game due to a COVID-19 outbreak among the Titans.
- Saturday morning, I arose to text messages that Cam Newton was put on the reserve list due to a positive COVID-19 test result, putting the Patriots-Chiefs game in jeopardy.
- Saturday night, I went to bed wondering whether the Saints-Lions game would be played after New Orleans fullback Michael Burton tested positive for the virus. I woke up Sunday morning to the relieving news that it was a false positive.
- Oh yeah, and Friday morning, my wife thought she was breaking the news to me that the president had contracted the coronavirus, but I’d already seen that the night before.
All of that brought to mind this tweet:
Imagine this being your first year playing fantasy football
— Jeff Greenwood (@TheFantasyEng) October 3, 2020
The days leading up to Sunday were so chaotic that the high-stakes FFPC decided to add a Sunday-morning waiver run just to allow fantasy owners the chance to cover their bases should any of the jeopardized games not take place. In more than a decade of playing high-stakes fantasy, there’s never before been a reason to add a last-minute Sunday waiver run. I’m unsure whether it will be the last such addition this season.
In other leagues I run, when it was unclear whether the Patriots-Chiefs game would be played this week, there were discussions whether to make special considerations for anyone starting players in that matchup, such as designating “emergency backups” who would become starters if the game were postponed. We didn’t institute any rule changes, but I did learn there from Twitter that there are some fairly passionate folks on both sides of that debate.
Other notes from Week 4:
