Continuing Football League Rules

Each year you will keep 13 players from your team. The remaining rounds of the draft will go in REVERSE order of the final standings in EVERY round (except that regardless of won-loss record, the league's playoff winner will pick last, and the other division winners will pick 2nd and third to last.) Also, you have to use all your protected spots; you can not just protect 11 players and get the first 2 picks in the draft. (However, you CAN trade protected spots - more on that below.)

Among tied teams, we use the team number as a tie-breaker, flip-flopping each year between higher and lower numbers winning the tie-breaker. In 2009, the tie-breaker is that among tied teams, the higher (larger) numbered team gets to pick first in the first round of the second stage, and then it flip-flops each round thereafter. For example, if team 6 and team 12 are tied with the worst record in the league, then in round 14 (the first round of 'real drafting' after the 13 protected rounds), team 12 gets to pick first, and team 6 picks second, and then in round 15 team 6 picks first, and team 12 picks second, etc.

You can trade draft picks, and you can also trade protected spots. But draft picks and protected spots can be at most one year in the future when you trade them. For example, once your league has drafted round 18 in 2009, you can trade for a 2010 round 18 pick. But in 2009 you can not trade for year 2011 picks, and can not trade for 2010 picks until that round of the draft has been held in 2009. Also, if you trade away one of your protected spots it simply means you get to only protect 12 players, and the team you traded the protected spot to gets to protect 14 players. Note - you can NOT make trades for players to be named later (they are too tough to review for fairness.) And finally, you can not 'rent' players. Deals such as: "I'll give you Manning for the rest of the season, and then you give him back, plus a draft pick" are definitely NOT allowed!

Picks 1 thru 13 are protected spots - the first round of 'real drafting' is the first round of the second stage, which is round 14. If you trade for the first pick of the second stage it will show up on the rosters as a round 14, not as a round 1! (Another example: the third round of 'real drafting' is the third round of the second stage, which is round 16.)

For your 13 keepers you can choose whatever mix of positions you want - there are no limits on the number of players you can keep at each position. Also, there is NO round roster balancing in round 14 (the first round of real drafting after the 13 keeper rounds), so even if you keep 4 running backs you can still draft another RB in round 14. But roster balancing IS in effect after round 14, so in round 15 and beyond you will not be able to draft 'extra' backups until you have a starter everywhere.