Super 16 Overhauls Keeper Requirements

SUPER 16 – In a major rules change, the Super 16 has overhauled their keeper requirements beginning with the 2017 season.  The Super 16 is a concept league in the Association in which each of 16 teams represent an NFL team.  Each year, before the draft, the teams of the S16 designate a number of ‘keeper players’ from their designated NFL team and those players are locked into their rosters going into the annual draft.  The league utilizes large rosters of both offensive and defensive players and is designed to mimic the level of competition the NFL would have if the existing talent were spread across only 16 teams instead of 32.

Up until now, with little variation, the number of designated hometeam players in the league has been around 10 from the league’s founding in 2012, with prior rule changes dealing with required minimum numbers of hometeam players a team must keep throughout the season and with rules concerning the hometeam defense/special teams.  Now, with rules changes put into effect for the 2017 season, there will be no minimum or maximum number of designated hometeam keeper players required.  What this means is that Team A can designate 10 players from their NFL team, while Team B would be free to designate only 6 and Team C could name 15 – each according to their own strategies and to the perceived depth of talent on their representative NFL franchise.  The resulting uneven roster will be evened out through the draft, where teams with fewer designated hometeam keepers will receive additional picks at the end of the draft to fill out their roster.

Though it seems unfair, at first glance, to allow teams to keep different numbers of players, each team will still only have 1 pick in each round of the draft until their roster is full, and because the compensatory picks are at the end of the draft, it does not give any team an advantage of having early round draft picks.  It actually will create greater parity – already a strong point in this league.  Coaches in the S16 will now be able to take fuller advantage of the talent they perceive their NFL counterpart to have by designating more of those players as  keepers, while other coaches can choose to designate fewer keepers without being forced to name a player they don’t find value in, instead, filling that spot through the draft.

The rule change should not only improve league parity, but it will also likely make for some exciting later rounds in the draft as teams begin to fill up early and tap out and the field of teams drafting begins to shrink from round to round.  The Super 16 draft is held annually on the 3rd Sunday of preseason – which falls on August 27 this year – at 11:00am EDT.  The full rule can be viewed below, or at the S-16 League Rules Page.

Full text of the S-16 Keeper rules, red text indicates where the rule was changed.

***VII     Keepers

1. Prior to the draft, teams will designate keeper players from the rosters of their NFL Hometeams to be their keepers for the upcoming system
   1. Players may be of any position (including Team Defense)(position maximums are in effect)
   2. Players need not have been on the S16 team’s roster the previous season
   3. Teams must designate who from their NFL counterpart they wish to use as their designated keeper players by message board post no later than the Keeper Lock Date (see BELOW) 

2. Beginning with the 2017 season, there is no longer either a minimum or a maximum number of designated hometeam keeper players a team may select
   1. Teams are free to select ANY number of players from their designated hometeam from 0-25 (25 being the maximum roster size) with no requirements or stipulations on player positions other than the position maximums which are in effect (and that the designated players must be on the team’s NFL counterpart)
   2. League keeper settings on the host site will be altered accordingly by the LM to allow for the manual placement of keepers based on the needs of all teams on a season by season basis (in other words, once all teams have designated their desired hometeam keepers, LM will adjust settings to the number of keepers designated by the team(s) keeping the most hometeam players)
   3. Teams keeping fewer hometeam keepers than other teams, will fill out the remainder of their roster through the draft.  ‘Extra’ picks are piled onto the end of the draft and continue in draft order
      1. The draft board will be adjusted so that teams with more draft picks than other teams (because of fewer keepers) will have the extra picks on the back end of their draft; no team will get extra, early picks because of keeping fewer keepers
      2. Regardless of how many hometeam keepers any/all teams designate, all teams will each receive 1 pick, in draft order, each round, from the start of the draft until their roster is full.  At that point, that team’s draft is complete, while teams that designated fewer keepers continue drafting, in turn, until their own roster is full
3. A Keeper Lock Date will now be placed into use and will be Midnight of the Friday immediately preceding the draft in order for the LM to have time to insure the draft board is set, locked, and ready for the draft
   1. Should any team not have designated their desired designated hometeam keepers by the time of the Keeper Lock Date, they will automatically be assigned 10 hometeam keepers, determined by the top 10 hometeam players for their franchise as ranked by NFL.com on that date
4. Post-Draft, teams are not required to keep any of their designated keepers on their roster, nor are they required to keep a set/minimum number of their Hometeam players on their roster. Teams are no longer required to designate as a keeper or to keep their hometeam’s TEAM DEF/SP TEAMS on their roster