So without further ado, here are the rules:

2. Team Ownership

Each person taking part in the BAFFLE is a team "owner". The owner is responsible for managing his team, doing everything from drafting players, figuring out who to start each week, making strategic free agent pickups and trades, and deciding who to keep from one season to the next.

Ownership fees are $60 per team per season -- $58 is the BAFFLE entrance fee for the season, and $2 is used for engraving of the prestigious Marv Albert Trophy. Any remaining balance will be kept as credit in team accounts to be used for trades and pickups during the season (more information on these later).

Owners are encouraged to send in more than the minimum if they plan on making a lot of trades and pickups during the season. This will help to keep the Commish's job of tracking the financial transactions easier. Any money that is not used for trades will be refunded at the end of the season or kept in team accounts for the following season.

3. The Draft

The draft will be the weekend before the start of the NFL regular season. On the day of the draft, the owners get together, some by conference call, to choose players from the actual rosters of the 32 NFL teams.

In the keeper league, the order of the draft is determined by the previous season's team records, just like the NFL. The first 10 picks go to the teams that did not make the playoffs the previous year, in reverse order of the teams' regular season team records, so the worst team drafts first. Picks 11-12 go to teams that lost in the first round of the playoffs; picks 13-14 go to teams that lost in the second round; pick 15 goes to the BAFFLE runner-up, and the last pick goes to the defending BAFFLE champion. Just like the NFL, the same order is used in every round of the draft, and teams can trade positions prior to the draft (more on this below).

Tie-breaker procedures are used to determine the draft order of teams with identical W-L records.

In the spirit of maintaining good competition, teams are not allowed to intentionally lose games towards the end of the season to ensure they get a high draft pick the following year. Any owner found to be intentionally losing games will be kicked out of the league!

Teams may trade players and/or draft postions and/or salary cap dollars prior to the draft, but once the draft starts, all positions are locked in. This is in order to keep the draft moving quickly. There is a charge for trading draft positions or players ($2 per trade). For more information on trades and the salary cap, see the section on Transactions.

Only players currently in the NFL can be drafted or picked up during the season. This includes players on active NFL team rosters, injured reserve (IR) rosters, and free agents who have been cut from an NFL roster and may end up with another team. Choosing players still in college or in a non-NFL league (Arena, CFL, NFL Europe, etc.) in anticipation that they will become future NFL stars is not allowed. Essentially, any player that is listed as available on the ESPN BAFFLE page can be picked up (and players not listed there cannot be picked up).

A few days prior to the draft, owners must announce which of their players from the previous season they are intending to keep. Each team can keep a maximum of 5 players (any position, including defense, and including multiple players at the same position) from the previous season.

If a player is listed as IR for the entire upcoming season, e.g. if they get hurt during preseason, they can be moved to the IR spot and do not count against the 5 keepers. Note that this does not apply to players who are on the short-term IR or PUP list and will resume playing in a few weeks.

For example, a team may choose to keep:

• 1 QB, 2 RB, 1 WR, 1 DS (5 total)
• 1 QB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 PK (5 total)
• 1 RB, 2 WR, 1 PK (4 total)
• etc.

• 4 players protected: 1 supplemental pick at the end of Round 3
• 3 players protected: 1 supplemental pick at the end of Rounds 3-4
• 2 players protected: 1 supplemental pick at the end of Rounds 3-5
• 1 player protected: 1 supplemental pick at the end of Rounds 3-6
• 0 players protected: 1 supplemental pick at the end of Rounds 3-7

The order of supplemental picks will be the same as the order of regular picks.

Important: If an owner does not notify the League Office of which players he is intending to protect one week prior to the draft, it is assumed that he is not protecting any players from the previous season, so he has to redraft his entire team.

The list of protected (keeper) players will be published a few days prior to the draft. Once the list is published, an owner cannot change his mind and decide he wants recall some of his players. The unprotected players are no longer part of that team and are available for drafting by any team.

An owner can decide to unprotect more players once the list has been published (for example, one of his protected players gets injured or cut by an NFL team, or the owner simply decides he wants more draft picks) but there is a catch. After the list has been published, for each player dropped, there will be a $100 penalty against that season's salary cap. The intent of this rule is to encourage owners to carefully think about who they want to keep so that there are not too many changes to the list once it has been published.

Each draft selection is limited to 15 seconds. If a team is not able to make a selection within the 15-second limit, they will need to take a one-minute timeout. Each team gets 3 timeouts for the draft. If the draft pick is not announced at the end of the time limit, the pick moves to the end of the last round and will be made at the end of the draft.

Owners are expected to attend for the duration of the draft. If an owner cannot attend the draft, he should find someone (other than one of the other existing owners or Commish) to draft for him. This is to eliminate any potential conflict of interest due to owners having to draft for teams besides their own. If an owner needs to leave the draft early, their remaining roster slots will remain empty and they can fill them through the normal free agent pickup process in the weeks following the draft (each pickup will cost $2). In other words, there will no longer be the "pick someone for me" process.

4. Team Rosters

Each BAFFLE team roster contains 15 total positions made up as follows:

• 2-3 Quarterbacks (QB)
• 1-2 Place-Kickers (PK)
• 1-2 Defense / Special Teams (DS)
• 8-11 Offensive Player (OP) positions made up of any combination of Running Backs (RB), Wide Receivers (WR), or Tight Ends (TE)

It is highly recommended that owners do not wait until the last minute to submit their team in case there is a problem with their network connection, or a problem with the ESPN web page, or they simply forget to do it on Sunday morning (can you say hangover?). The recommendation is for owners to enter a lineup of probable starters 1-2 days before kickoff of the first game just to be safe. This still allows changes to be made up to gametime, but helps to ensure that a reasonable team is fielded each week. Any owner that has eligible healthy players but starts injured or bye week players due to forgetting to update their starters gets a strike (see "Three Strikes" section below).

Each BAFFLE starting team has 8 spots:

• 1 QB
• 5 OP spots to be filled by any combination of RBs, WRs, TEs
• 1 PK
• 1 DS

Examples of possible RB/WR/TE combinations are:

• 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE (standard offense)
• 2 RB, 1 WR, 2 TE (double tight end)
• 1 RB, 4 WR (run-and-shoot)
• 3 RB, 2 TE (heavy jumbo)
• 0 RB, 5 WR (empty backfield)

If a team cannot meet these requirements because too many players were drafted at one position, or because all the players at a particular position are injured or on a bye week, the owner will have to either make a trade or play without a player at that position. For example, if team doesn't have any eligible QBs in a week, they cannot substitute a RB at that position and claim he is playing as a QB. Players are listed according to their official roster positions on their NFL team's web sites.

Note: The ESPN web page allows starting a QB in the OP position, so it possible that a team can start 2 QBs. This is not allowed under BAFFLE rules. If an owner starts 2 QBs, they only get credit for the score of the QB that scored the least points of the two. If a player is listed as a QB on their official team roster, then can only be started in the QB slot on the ESPN page. For example, a QB cannot be started in an OP slot just because he sometimes lines up as a WR or RB on some plays.

Each time the owner starts an incorrect combination, they get a strike (in addition to the points penalty). After the 3rd strike, the owner forfeits any game in which they start an incorrect combination (0 points total). This is to prevent owners from trying to hedge their bets and continuously starting 2 QBs, figuring it will give them more points than any other player combination, even with the penalty.

When drafting, owners must pay attention to the bye weeks in the NFL schedule. For example, if an owner picks two QBs that have the same bye week, he will either have to drop or trade one of them, or drop a RB/WR/TE to pick up a third QB, or play without a QB that week. Note that the order of bye weeks changes every year, so this becomes more important for the keeper league.

Injured Players

In BAFFLE, each team can have 3 additional roster positions for players that are designated as Injured Reserve (IR) or Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) by their NFL team. These positions can only be used for players that are moved to either the short-term or year-long IR list by their NFL team, not to stockpile healthy players or store someone who is injured/suspended for a couple of weeks.

Moving a player to short-term IR allows the team to pick up another player for the short term. The catch is that when the injured player comes off the short-term IR list, a roster spot has to be freed up to move him back by dropping another player. If the team does not take any action within a week of the player coming off IR, the former IR player will automatically be dropped.

If an owner needs to activate an player coming off IR early in the week, they need to do it as part of the weekly 5pm Wednesday transactions so that player will not be eligible for pickup by another team in the same week.

If player comes off IR late in the week (after 5pm Wednesday):

1. If the owner does not plan to start the player that weekend, he can remain in the IR spot until the following week's transaction deadline.
2. If the owner would like to start the player that weekend:
   • If there is room on the roster, the owner can simply activate and start the player
   • If there is another IR-eligible player on the roster, the owner can swap and activate/start the player
   • If there is no room on the roster, the owner can drop a player from the active roster, and activate/start the player coming off IR. The dropped player will be eligible for pickup the following Wednesday, since one weekend of games has already taken place.

In terms of transaction costs, it does not cost anything to move a player to IR or to drop a player. The only cost is for picking up (or trading) players.

The IR positions do not count against the maximum number of players allowed to be on the roster at each position. For example, if an owner puts a QB on IR, he can still have up to 3 active QBs on his roster.

If a team is unlucky enough to have more than 3 players go on IR at the same time, that's just too bad. The owner will either have to drop one of the IR players or use up a roster spot to carry them over to next year. The intention is to use the IR spot for players that are likely to be protected the following season. Hopefully a team will not have more than 3 key players go down at the same time.

If a player gets injured and put on IR by his NFL team during the offseason or training camp (prior to the BAFFLE roster cuts), the owner can put the player on IR for the upcoming season and not have him count against the number of players he is protecting.

5. Scoring

BAFFLE scores are based on the actual performances of each team's starters versus those of their opponent's in each weekend's NFL action. Each weekend, half the BAFFLE owners will savor the sweet taste of victory, while the other half will smell the rank odor of defeat.

The ESPN Fantasy Football site is used to keep track of scoring. The big benefit of using this system is the ability to get real-time scoring updates, but scores are not official until they are sent out by the Commish and posted to the BAFFLE web page. This is to allow for score adjustments as described above for teams that field incorrect teams that are not caught by ESPN.

If an owner feels his score has been calculated incorrectly by the Commish, he has until noon Pacific on Wednesday to make an appeal. After that, all scores are final. The only exception to changing the scores at a later date is if the NFL makes a statement that a scoring error had occurred and the official NFL stats are changed. In that case, the BAFFLE stats will be changed accordingly. This is assuming the NFL scoring change occurs in the same week as the game. If, for some strange reason, the error is detected after the next game has been played, then the BAFFLE standings will not be updated. We don't live in a perfect world and those are the breaks!

6. Transactions / Roster Moves

Just like the NFL, teams may trade players with other teams, cut players from the squad, and pick up free agents. The fee is $2 per team per transaction (roster move). There are two types of transactions: pickups and trades. The details of each type of transaction are described below. In both cases each team may only keep the allotted number of players at each position (see Team Rosters), and cannot have more than 14 total roster spots at any time.

The transaction deadline is 24 hours before the kickoff of the first NFL game each week. Most weeks, this means the transaction deadline is 5:00PM PST Wednesday. After all transactions are final, the League Office will send out the list of all transactions and updated rosters for the week. Any player that has been dropped from a team is not eligible to play in that weekend's action and may not be claimed until the following week. A player that has been acquired by a trade or pickup is eligible to play immediately.

Each week after the transaction deadline, the Commish will send out the list of transactions for the week and update all the team rosters on the ESPN web page. Owners should not make changes to their roster until the Commish sends out the "green light" that it is OK to do so.

Pickups

A "pickup" refers to picking up a free agent. A free agent is a player who does not belong to any of the other teams in the league. To claim a free agent, a team must drop a player from their current roster. For example, Team A can choose to drop a WR and pick up another WR or a RB. Any move that satisfies the roster rules is allowed. The fee for this transaction is $2 (the pickup costs $2, the drop is free).

Each team has a salary cap of $1000 that it can use during the season, including the playoffs, to bid for players on the free agent market. Each week during the season, teams can put in a bid for any available player and the free agent goes to the highest bidder. All bids must be in whole dollar amounts. The minimum bid is $0, in order to allow teams to still try to pick up players even if they have used up their salary cap.

The salary cap does not carry over from one season to the next, even with the keeper league. The reason is two-fold: (1) to encourage teams to be active and make transactions during every season, and (2) to prevent teams from stock-piling money, giving them an unfair advantage in later years and making the league less competitive (this is the whole motivation behind having a cap, as in the NFL).

The only scenario in which a team can exceed the salary cap is if BAFFLE dollars are included as part of a player trade. Details are explained in the section on trades (see below).

Each team can only bid once for any player and all bids are hidden from other owners. In case of a tie for the highest bid, the team with the worse record gets the player. The Commish places his own bids in a sealed envelope and gives it to one of the Assistant Commishs one day before all other bids are due, so that the Commish does not have an unfair advantage.

Unlike trades (see below), free agent pickups do not require any approval from other owners at any time.

Trades

Trades can involve players, future draft picks, and BAFFLE dollars. To make a trade with another owner, contact him directly, work out the details, and report the trade to the League Office by the transaction deadline.

Each team involved in the trade pays $2 per trade. For example, if Team A trades a player to Team B for another player, each team pays $2. It is also possible to do a 3-way trade, where Team A trades a player to Team B, Team B trades another player to Team C, and Team C trades a player to Team A. In this case, each team pays $2.

Teams may trade players up to, and including, Week 10 of the regular season. After this point, no trading is allowed between teams and only free agent pickups are allowed.

Prior to the trade deadline, the Commish has the right to veto all trades if he feels collusion is taking place. If other owners feel collusion is taking place at any time, they should inform the Commish and a painful investigation will take place!

It is possible to include BAFFLE dollars in a trade. For example, Team A can trade a player to Team B for another player plus $500. This money can immediately be used to make a bid for a free agent. If the trade is not approved by owners, then any free agents that were picked up with the cash involved in the trade go back into the pool and are available for pickup by any owner.

When BAFFLE dollars are included in a trade, the team receiving the money can go over the salary cap, but none of the team's total money can be carried over to the next season. For example, if the team has $1500 in the bank after the trade, that $1500 must still be used by the end of the current season. The team that is giving up the money cannot give up more than they currently have remaining in their account. For example, a team that only has $200 remaining in their account cannot use more than that amount as part of a trade. A team cannot borrow against future salary caps in order to make trades.

Pre-draft trades: Prior to the pre-draft roster cutdown to the maximum number of keeper players, it is possible to trade players for additional draft picks, but for each team, the trade must be such that at the end of the draft, they each have 15 roster spots filled up (no more, no less). The total number of players being kept plus the total number of picks in the draft must equal 15. This means that the team trading away the player for (presumably) high draft picks must throw in an equal number of low round picks to even out the number of roster spots. The team receiving the player will temporarily go over the roster limit, but must cut down to the maximum number of keepers going in to the draft (essentially this is equivalent to the second team giving a disposable player to the first team).

For example, if Team A trades a player to Team B for a 3rd round draft pick and Team A wants to keep 5 players, then Team A will have 5 keepers plus 11 draft picks (too many!). If Team B also wants to keep 5 players, then he will have 5 keepers plus 9 draft picks (too few!). The magic number is 15. Team A will have do something like give his last round pick to Team B so that both have the correct number of positions at the end of the day. Remember, teams can also include salary cap dollars (up to their current year's budget) as part of the negotiation.

Transaction fees go into effect for any trades involving draft picks. Example 1: Team A trades the 3rd pick in the draft to Team B for 6th pick plus $600 salary cap dollars. Each team pays $2 for the trade. Example 2: Team A trades a player and a low round draft pick to Team B for a high round draft pick (Team B can either give a disposable player to Team A or temporarily go over the roster limit). Each team pays $4 in transaction fees.

Other Transaction Rules

All transactions must be sent in writing (email) to the Commish before the deadline each week. Verbal (phone) or text transactions will no longer be accepted.

It is possible for a team to make a trade and pickup/drop involving the same player at the same time. For example, a team can acquire a player in a trade and immediately drop him and pick up another a free agent. Thus, the traded player was never technically on the team's roster and does not count towards the allotted number of players at each position. However, if the team is unable to pick up a free agent in place of the traded player that they were trying to drop and this causes the allotted number of players at each position to be violated, then the trade will be voided and all teams involved in the trade will get back their original players.

Similarly, in pre-draft trades it is possible for teams to temporarily go over/under the number of allotted players at each roster position since each team will be dropping some players prior to the draft. Once the draft is over, the number of players at each roster position must be correct.

All teams may continue to make transactions throughout the BAFFLE season. Even teams that have been eliminated from the playoffs may continue to pick up free agents and make trades in order to improve their teams for the following season. In the past, eliminated teams could no longer make transactions, but starting with the keeper league, this rule will change. As always, collusion rules do apply. If the Commish feels that an eliminated team is trying to pick up a player just to prevent a playoff team from getting him, he has the right to void the transaction. The transaction deadline for all teams extends one week beyond the BAFFLE Bowl in order to allow owners to pick up players that they may want to keep going into the following season.

"Three Strikes" Rule

In order to maintain a competetive league, a "three strikes" rule is in place. This is in response to owners not maintaining their teams and having to field incomplete teams due to injuries, bye weeks, or other negligence which results in their opponents getting a "free win". This is unfair to the other teams in the league.

Each week the Commish will keep track of which owners do not send in a team. Any owner not sending in a team gets a strike against them. If an owners gets 3 strikes against them during the season, the BAFFLE owners will take a vote as to whether to keep that owner in the league or replace him with the next person on the waiting list at the start of the next season.

Owners who send in teams with players that are not active due to injury, bye week, drug suspension, etc. will get a warning. Two warnings counts as one strike. If an owner has no choice but to start an inactive player, e.g. the owner made a legitimate attempt to pick up players but was outbid, or was unable to find another owner willing to make a trade, or it was announced at the last minute that one of their players would not play, this will not count as a warning.

If owners make prior arrangements with the Commish to manage their team temporarily, e.g., if they need to travel out of the country or have a family emergency, that will not count against the three strikes.

7. Divisions

Following the NFL format, BAFFLE teams are grouped into 4 divisions with 4 teams in each. In the original alignment at the start of the keeper league in 2002, teams were distributed based on their winning percentages in the non-keeper league in order to have an even balance of strength between divisions.

Teams will be realigned every 6 years, based on their BAFFLE Power Rankings during that period. The reason for the 6-year cycle is that it will consist of two complete cycles of inter-division play (see the regular-season schedule). In case of a tie in the rankings, the following tiebreakers will be used:

1. Number of wins
2. Scoring average
3. Coin flip

The divisions and teams (in alphabetical order) for the 2020-2025 seasons are:

If a team leaves the league, the replacement team will inherit all the players from the departing team, as well as the departing team's draft position. As a condition for entry to the league, the owner of the new team must pass a football knowledge quiz given by the League Office in order to ensure a continued competitive balance and high quality of play. At the following draft, the new team can decide to keep all, some, or none of the old team's players. The new team will also have to honor any future draft picks that had been given up by the previous team.

If the league expands, the incoming team(s) will have to start fresh. Under this scenario, each of the existing teams will have a cap of 8 players that they can protect, similar to the NFL. Any unprotected players can be drafted by expansion or other existing teams. The expansion teams will pick first in the draft during their first year in the league. If there is more than one expansion team, the draft order among them will be determined by lottery.

8. Regular Season

The BAFFLE regular season corresponds to the first 14 weeks of the NFL season. The regular season for each BAFFLE team consists of:

• 6 games within its own division (home-and-away vs. every other team in the division).
• 4 games against all teams in 2 other divisions on a rotating basis (8 games total).

Teams are assigned positions 1-4 in their division based on the standings at the end of the previous regular season, and the schedule is filled out based on the above formula.

9. Playoffs

Following the updated NFL format with an additional playoff team in each conference starting in 2020, the 4 division winners plus the 3 next best records (wild cards) make it into the playoffs. The division winners are seeded 1-4 and the wild cards are seeded 5-7. Even though a wild card team may have a better record than the winner of another division, the division winner is seeded higher.

In case of identical W-L records between two or more teams, Tie-breaker procedures are used to determine playoff participants

The 7th playoff spot will be used to guarantee the regular season scoring champ will be in the playoffs. If the scoring champ is amongst the 7 playoff teams (4 division winners and 3 wild cards, subject to usual tie-breakers), no special action is needed. If the scoring champ is not one of the 7 playoff teams, the scoring champ gets the #7 spots, and the lowest Wild Card team gets dropped from the playoffs. In the unlikely case where two teams tie with the highest point total for the year, only one will be designated as the scoring champion. The Scoring Champion will be determined by using the appropriate playoff Tie -breaker procedure.

The playoff schedule is as follows:

• First round (NFL Week 15):
  • #1 seed gets a bye
  • #7 seed at #2 seed
  • #6 seed at #3 seed
  • #5 seed at #4 seed
  
  
• Second round (NFL Week 16):
  • Lowest remaining seed at top seed
  • 2nd-lowest remaining seed at 2nd-highest remaining seed
  
  
• Championship game (NFL Week 17, replay in Week 18 if needed):
  • BAFFLE Bowl

Contingency Plan

1. If the NFL stops the season with 6 games or less played (less than half of the BAFFLE regular season), we simply stop playing. We don't have a champion crowned for the season, but the game stats count towards the official all-time stats. Marv stays with the Commish.
2. After Week 6:
   • If the NFL gives advance notice that the season will only last for 3 more weeks, then we start our playoffs immediately. We have 7 teams in the playoffs (see above).
   • If we get a 2-week advance notice, we only have the 4 division leaders in the playoffs (usual tiebreakers, no wild cards).
   • If we get a 1-week advance notice, we go straight to the championship game between the top 2 division leaders (usual tiebreakers, no wild cards).
   • If we get no advance notice, the team with the best overall record (usual tiebreakers) is the champ.

More importantly, the BAFFLE Bowl winners get their names engraved on the fabulous Marv Albert Trophy. The BAFFLE champion will hold on to the trophy and can display it proudly for a full year until the end of the following season.

12. Weekly Schedule

Summary of the weekly BAFFLE schedule is as follows (all times are noon Pacific):

At any time, if an owner feels that the Commish has acted unfairly or is misusing his authority, he may initiate a vote to appoint a new Commish. If 2/3 of the owners vote to appoint a new Commish, then the change can go into effect immediately.

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