I just pushed a patch into MFN-1 where the AI will _never_ change your depth chart (I hope). It will activate/deactivate players but won't shuffle your depth chart, ever, as long as it is a human controlled team - even if your depth chart is completely empty.
If anyone wants to roll the dice and see if it works as expected, feel free to - in general, though, be sure to let me know if the depth chart does anything odd for anyone!