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This week had plenty of crazy plays, especially with some last minute heroics by a few teams.   Nothing particularly new happened this week that hasn’t already happened at some point earlier in the year, but it’s worth reinforcing a few situations one more time.  The Vikings scored a Safety but you should definitely have that covered in your rules now since it has happened several times in earlier weeks.

There were several Blocked Field Goals this week, and one resulted in a Blocked FG TD when Ray McDonald of the 49ers blocked it and then Donald Strickland of the 49ers recovered it and returned it for the TD.  Note that, as happened last week, one player can get credit for the block and a different player can get credit for the Blocked FG TD.  You can also penalize the kicker with the “Field Goals Had Blocked” rule if you want to award negative points for having a kick blocked in a situation like this.  Be aware that a blocked field goal is also considered to be a missed field goal, so you may already be penalizing the kicker enough if you give negative points for misses anyway.

Then there were not one but two Blocked Punt TDs this week.  One was in Overtime and resulted in the game winning touchdown when Sean Morey of the Cardinals blocked the punt and Monty Biesel picked it up and fell into the end zone.

So I think we’ve covered most every type of “Strange Play” here in the first 6 weeks of the NFL season, and we’ll continue to list them all in the “Help > Strange Plays” menu item in your league each week.  Starting next week, we’ll focus on other scoring rules and situations that you should be aware of, as well as unique scoring situations and new rules that we’ve recently made available.

If you haven’t discovered the “Reports > Franchise > Fantasy Recap” report for your league yet, then be sure to check it out for some entertaining recaps of your weekly fantasy football games.  We’ve put a trash-talking, fantasy spin on your fantasy match-up each week.  It’s easiest to explain with an example from our sample league here:

(MyFantasyLeague.com Fantasy Times Sources - Oct 6, 2008) In a week 5 MyFantasyLeague.com Fantasy Football intra-divisional matchup, Marooned beat a strong Deep Divot team by a score of 81 to 70, extending the winning streak for Marooned to 3 games.

Marooned were led to their 11 point victory by a 21 point effort from Clinton Portis, who beat the Philadelphia Eagles defense for 145 rushing yards and 1 rushing td in addition to 13 receiving yards. With this performance, Portis was the number 3 ranked running back for week 5. They also got help from a 19 point effort from Roddy White, who beat the Green Bay Packers defense for 132 receiving yards and 1 receiving td.

“We’re going to savor this victory,” Marooned coach Susan said.

Deep Divot were helped out in a losing cause by a 18 point effort from Ronnie Brown, who beat the San Diego Chargers defense for 125 rushing yards and 1 rushing td in addition to 8 receiving yards. With this performance, Brown was the number 5 ranked running back for week 5. They also got help from a 18 point effort from Peyton Manning, who got by the Houston Texans defense for 247 passing yards and 2 passing tds in addition to 8 rushing yards.

“They ate our lunch,” Deep Divot coach Joe said.

Compounding the issue, Deep Divot could have scored 91 points and gotten the win with their best lineup, but Joe left key players like Domenik Hixon and his corresponding 17 points on the bench.

This brings the record for Marooned to 3-2, and drops Deep Divot to a record of 2-3.

Coming up in week 6, Deep Divot are at the 2-3 Hindenberg, where Hindenberg are an early 1.2-point favorite, while Marooned are at the 1-4 Last Place, where Last Place are an early 25.0-point underdog.

We’ve thrown in some random quotes along with the computer generated analysis of your game.  And even better, all of the owners in the league can click on their random quote to type their own quote into the recap instead.  So each team can personalize their Fantasy Recap if desired.  Hopefully it will generate some buzz and trash talking each week!

There is also a Fantasy Recap Home Page Module, so you can add the Fantasy Recap Game of the Week to your league home page for quick and easy reference.  By default, the game of the week is the one with the closest score.  But the commissioner can select a different game of the week if desired while viewing the full report with all of the recaps.

This week was pretty calm from an unusual play perspective, at least until the Monday night game provided some chaos and highlights! As always, you can check the “Help > Strange Plays” menu item in your league for the complete run down each week.

On Monday night, Reggie Bush dazzled us with not one but two Punt Return TDs. That doesn’t happen very often, but it should have been scored properly for any league that had the rule set up, either for “Number of Punt Return TDs or for “Length of Punt Return TD”.

The really odd play of the night came when Martin Gramatica of the Saints had a 46 yard Field Attempt Blocked by the Vikings. But it didn’t end there. After Kevin Williams blocked it, the ball fell right into the hands of Antoine Winfield, and he proceeded to return it all the way to the end zone for a 59 yard Blocked Field Goal TD. This is the first time all season that a blocked field goal was returned for a TD, so make sure you have that rule set up for your league as needed. Note that there were a couple of Blocked Punt TDs in week #2, but there is a separate rule for Blocked Field Goal TDs.

Note that if you set up your Team Defense scoring to include the Number of Defensive TDs rule, it only includes Interception and Fumble Return TDs by default. So you’ll want to add the Blocked Field Goal TD rule (and Blocked Punt TD rule as well) if you want this TD to be included in your team defense scoring You can also add the Number of Defensive and Special Teams TD rule instead, which includes all of these types: Interception and Fumble Returns TDs, Blocked Punt and Field Goal TDs, and Punt and Kickoff Return TDs.

We recently announced a new look to the MyFantasyLeague.com Home Page, and now we’ve created a new default league skin to match this new appearance.  You can see an example of it here in our Sample League. As always, we’ll continue to add new skins and appearance options throughout the season.

If you want to select this new look for your league, you can use the “For Commissioners > Setup > Appearance Setup > Select a Skin” screen.  From there, you can select any of the 40+ skin appearance options that we have available.  Or if you prefer more of a pre-defined look for your league, you can use the “Select a Template” screen instead to choose one of the 4 template options that we have available.  We’ll talk more about the skins and templates and customizing the appearance of your league page in future posts.

We’re excited to announce a new charting option on the Player Pages, such as this example for Jay Cutler in our sample league. Any time you click on a link to a player name on any of the screens or reports in your league, you’ll be taken to the Player Page for that player. From there, by default, you’ll see a table with their weekly scores and stats. Now, as of today, you can click on the link above that table to select “Chart” instead of “Stats”:

After you click on the “Chart” option, you’ll see a comparison of that player’s weekly scores versus the highest weekly score from the player with the best score at that position each week. If you use the mouse to hover over a data point, it will give you details on who the highest scoring player was for that week, along with the exact score. This is a great way to see how your selected player compares at-a-glance to the best player in the league each week.

In addition, you can compare the selected player to any other player at that position by selecting another player in the pull down list at the bottom. The above chart example shows a comparison of Jay Cutler versus Drew Brees, and they are both compared to the best weekly QB score.

A popular “side game” for many fantasy football leagues is the integrated Survivor Pool that you can add to your league home page on MyFantasyLeague.com. For those that have never experienced one, it’s a simple weekly contest where you try to pick a single NFL team that will win each week. The catch is that you can’t use the same NFL team more than once throughout the season. And as soon as you pick incorrectly, and the NFL team you selected doesn’t win, then you are out of the pool. The last person remaining to select a winning NFL team is the overall winner of the pool. In other words, every week is like “sudden death”. Pick a winning team or else you’re done. And there is some strategy involved, because you have to plan ahead and potentially save some of the better teams for later in the season instead of selecting some obvious favorites early in the season.

Of course, anytime there is a major upset in the NFL, it causes a lot of Survivor Pool participants to drop out because they chose incorrectly. This year, the top picks went as expected for the first three weeks:

• In Week 1, just over 25% of participants selected New England to win.
• In Week 2, a whopping 42% of participants selected the Giants.
• In Week 3, 30% chose the Bills.
• For Week 4, about 40% chose the Broncos. And they lost…

So this past week proved to be the end of the Survivor Pool for a lot of leagues that use it. But rather than abandon it for the rest of the season, you can start over and let all of the team owners back in for another stab at picking the weekly NFL Survivor. To do this, you can restart your Survivor Pool by using the “For Commissioners > Setup > Pool Setup” screen to change the Starting Week of the Survivor Pool. If you change it from Week 1 to Week 5, the everybody gets a fresh start again.

On a related note, there is a new “Top Site-Wide Survivor Picks” home page module that you can add to your league for an insight into which NFL team all of the other team owners throughout MyFantasyLeague.com are selecting each week.