No.. I do (mostly) understand.. and in some ways, I agree.
I agree that keepers need to be decided well before the draft and the rosters will be cleared (other than keepers) well before the draft.. I *think* that it will also be allowed to drop a keeper to pick that draft pick up again anytime before the draft.
I don't think you would lose your first round pick no matter what you do if we went by the system I put out in my last post (losing the draft pick of the keeper). It isn't perfect, but I think it's better than straight out losing your first 3 or 4 picks..
In your case, if you kept Larry Johnson you would lose your first pick. The question is, with whoever is out there in the draft pool, Would you pick anyone else with your first pick? Answer: maybe.
But at that point, you could see what other teams had as their keepers and get a fair idea of who will be available and decide not to keep Larry Johnson and regain your first round pick and still keep your other keepers.
Or maybe even a different take.. if we have 3 keepers and you keep one player, lose your 3rd round pick.. choose to keep 2 keepers, lose your 2nd and 3rd round picks.. just a different take that you lose picks in reverse order. In this sense, you would keep your 1st round pick.
Of course, we could just vote as a league that no draft picks will be lost (which will certainly be easier for me as I don't have to manually edit the draft orders). Nothing i set in stone yet
Thus the reason for having this debate now.
As for the new teams.. I'm tempted to just have them not have keepers set at all and just draft a new team with what is available (maybe give them the first 2 picks of the draft - sorry Mike! but at least it's only 2 picks..)
I've written a lot of different ideas here, but to sum up my opinion (note: this is only my opinion!) -
If we expand:
* 3 keepers
* no one loses draft picks
* new teams draft 1 and 2 - followed by the reverse order of finish from last year
* (hey, expansion teams are supposed to struggle!)
If we do not expand
* 4 keepers
* lose the draft pick round that your keepers were chosen