MyFantasyLeague.com

The NFL had a few unusual games this week.  First and foremost, the first NFL tie game in 6 years occurred when neither the Eagles nor Bengals could muster field position that was good enough to score a field goal, much less a TD, during their 15 minute overtime period.  Now we know why there is that third column in the NFL standings that always seemed to contain zeros.  It’s there to indicate tie games, even if they only happen about once a decade!  From a fantasy perspective, there isn’t a whole lot of impact, except that if you award points to your head coach or your Team Defense for winning their NFL game, then neither team will get those points, because neither team won.

There are also implications for NFL Survivor Pool or NFL Confidence Pool picks in your league this week.   Again, since neither team won the game, you will not advance in your Survivor Pool if you selected the Eagles or Bengals, and since neither team won the game, you will not get your points in a Confidence Pool for selecting the Eagles or Bengals to win.

The other game with extra interest from both the fantasy and NFL perspective involved the Chargers and Steelers.  From the NFL side of things, there has never been an NFL game that ended with a score of 11-10.  And there have been nearly 13,000 NFL games played!  From a fantasy perspective, it was really bizarre because the last play of the game resulted in a defensive TD for the Steelers, but it was overruled because of an “illegal forward pass” penalty that admittedly was not a forward pass.  According to NFL.com, “After the game, referee Scott Green said the officials realized afterward the touchdown should have counted, though it wouldn’t have affected the result.”  So if you have the Steelers Team Defense, and you needed that defensive TD for your fantasy team, you might be less than pleased today…  But the score will stand, so don’t expect any stat changes later in the week to award the defensive TD and change the NFL score.

One of the features that we’re hoping to add to the site sometime this off-season is to allow owners to declare their keepers on their own, without intervention by their commissioner. To that end, we need a better understanding of exactly how our customers handle their keepers. So, if your league has keepers, and would benefit from having us let owners declare their keepers on their own on your league pages, please submit a support ticket to us (via the “Help > Help Center” page available from all league pages), and let us know the following.

1. How many keepers does each owner have? Do all owners have the same number, or can it vary by owner?
2. When is the deadline for declaring your keepers?
3. What do owners have to give up for their keepers? Just their first x rounds of draft picks in the following year? Or is there some formula applied to know what they should give up?
4. Any/all other rules related to keepers that you think are relevant here.

And with any luck, we’ll be able to add some additional functionality to the site here shortly to allow owners to declare keepers on their own, allowing you to automate your league that much more!

This is the first week of 6 in a row that will feature a Thursday night game in the NFL.  From a fantasy football perspective, you need to be aware of your league’s lineup and waiver rules to make sure you submit a valid starting lineup before your league’s weekly deadline.  So if you are the commissioner, be sure to remind your team owners to get their lineups in before kickoff if needed!

For more information on the commissioner settings that may affect your league with Thursday games, be sure to check the “Help > What’s New” screen in your league under the Commissioner News section.

One specific setting you may want to double check is on the “For Commissioners > Setup > Transactions Setup > Weekly Lineup Setup” screen.  The option called “Are Partial Lineups Allowed?” should be set to “No” if you want to make sure that owners always submit a full lineup before kickoff on Thursday, just in case they forget to come back before Sunday to make adjustments.

Just in case you missed it while drowning your sorrows in a tough fantasy football league loss this week…  Today is election day!  If you’re old enough to vote, be sure to exercise your right no matter who you plan to vote for.

We’ve added a new home page module called the “Monday Report” that gives you a quick overview of the fantasy games in your league that are still to be decided.  It will list each matchup on the left, with a list of players that still have to play in the Monday night game for each fantasy team.  In addition, it will show the projected points for each of the players in the Monday night game.  So if your team is losing after the Sunday night game, you can use this report to get a quick feel for your chances!  If you are ahead going into the Monday night game, you can use it to figure out how much you have to sweat it out.  And since some leagues award negative points for things like fumbles and interceptions, you may have to worry about negative scoring events even if you are in the lead and your opponent doesn’t have any players remaining.

To add this home page module to your league, you can use the “For Commissioners > Setup > Appearance Setup > Home Page Modules and Tabs Setup” screen.  Note that this module won’t show anything from Tuesday through Sunday since it is only useful on Mondays.  Many thanks to “habman” and the rest of our active community of commissioners that have helped develop and inspire ideas like this one over the years in our community support forum.

Week #8 was pretty calm for Strange Plays. As always, you can use the “Help > Strange Plays” menu item to view all of them for the year. Last year, there was an average of just under one Safety per week. This week there were four Safeties, and they all happened under different circumstances…

We can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind
‘Cause your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance
Well they’re no friends of mine

I’m not sure if I ever understood the lyrics to the wildly popular 1980’s “Safety Dance” song by Men Without Hats, but anyway…

The Ravens scored a rather normal safety when Jamarcus Russell was tackled in the end zone by Jameel McClain.

The Dolphins scored an almost normal safety, but a fumble was thrown into the mix. Trent Edwards lost a fumble, and then Duke Preston recovered it, which was a good thing. But he was promptly tackled in the end zone by Charlie Anderson, which was a bad thing.

The Chargers scored a safety when Drew Brees lost a fumble, but only after losing over 20 yards on the play to wind up in the end zone. The ball ultimately was fumbled out of the back of the end zone.

Finally, the Giants scored a safety without really doing anything because the long snapper on a punt attempt did a poor job and snapped it way over the punters head and out the back of the end zone.

Last week we introduced the new Weekly Matchup Chart on the Fantasy Recap report. Now we’ve also included an option for you to include that chart as a Home Page Module.

By default, it will show the matchup for your fantasy team, but you can switch to a different game on the pull down menu at the top of the home page module. As a reminder on how this chart works, it has an updated score after each set of games. A typical week will show the fantasy scores on Sunday after the early games, then again after the late afternoon games, and after the Sunday night game, and finally one more update after the Monday night game.

And now for the fun part. Before the games start, the chart will show a dashed line of the projected scores, so you can get a preview of how well your team is expected to do against your opponent throughout the week’s games! Then on Sunday night, the dashed line will turn into a solid line with the actual scores for all of Sunday, and a dashed line to predict the Monday night game projected scores.  Finally, on Monday night, after the stats are final, you’ll see a solid line representing your scoring history throughout the weekend.

Trading players in fantasy football can be one of the most exciting activities for team owners. It can pump new life into your team to have some different players to work with in your lineup after exchanging some of your roster strength for some of your roster needs. To that end, we’ve updated the “For Owners > Trades” screen to include more information about each player at a glance.

After you use that screen select a team to trade with, you’ll see both of your rosters side by side. Now you’ll also see the year to date points of each player on the roster. Hopefully that will help you quickly analyze the players a little better as you ponder trade proposals! Watch for more details and improvements in the future as well.

In the meantime, don’t forget that you can also put the mouse over any player name to see the details of their next NFL game, along with any salary and contract information if your have a salary cap type of league. And you can click on any player’s name for the full player page with more details as well.

One aspect that we feel really sets us apart from other fantasy football league management systems is the ability to customize the appearance of your league.  We basically have a completely open system that allows you to “skin” your league by applying your own custom HTML and CSS code to your league pages.  We’ll talk about various examples of this customization in the future, but for now we’ll focus on the wide variety of pre-made designs available for you to use.  We have two options to choose from:  Templates and Skins.  You can use the “For Commissioners > Setup > Appearance Setup” screen to access these options.

Templates allow you to apply both a default appearance and a default layout to your league.  They’re basically an all encompassing “look” to your league.  Just set it and forget it, and you’ll have a very clean looking site with all of the most common reports and screens just a click away on the vertical or horizontal menu items.  There are 4 different Templates you can choose from. We’ll talk about Templates more in the future.

Halloween Skin

Skins allow you to apply a default appearance to your league.  We have about 50 different skins that you can choose from, or you can create your own skin if you are familiar with CSS.  Note that Skins and Templates are not able to be used together, so you’ll need to select “None” for the Template in order to use one of the available Skins.

Fright Skin

We have various different holiday themed skins available for you to select, so be sure to take a look at our “Halloween” skin and our “Fright” skin, both of which are very appropriate for this time of year!

Just when you think it can’t get any more unusual, the NFL comes up with a fun-filled game like the Bears 48 to 41 point victory over the Vikings on Sunday.  This one game alone had more strange plays than some entire weeks!  So we’ll take you through the 3 most unusual touchdowns of this game…

In the first quarter, the Bears scored after a Blocked Punt. This type of TD has happened several times already this year, so you should have this rule set up properly for your league now. If not, make sure you have the “Blocked Punt TD” rule created in your league. Note that this type of TD is also included as part of the “Number of Defensive and Special Teams TDs” rule, so you don’t need to add a separate rule for Blocked Punt TDs if you already have the all encompassing rule.

In the second quarter, the Bears scored after they punted the ball away and a player on the Vikings accidentally made contact with the ball near the goal line while trying to block another player.  The is generally referred to as a “muffed punt”.  In any case, the ball was “live” after the Vikings inadvertently touched it.  Then Zackary Bowman of the Bears recovered the ball in the end zone for a touchdown.  This type of TD is scored as a “Defensive Fumble Recovery TD“. Be aware that there isn’t a separate rule available for a “Special Teams Fumble Recovery TD” since the NFL doesn’t differentiate fumble recovery TDs that way. Therefore, if your league really wants this TD to be scored differently than any other Defensive Fumble Recovery TD, your best option would be to use the “Setup > Adjust Scores And Standings > Player Score Adjuster” screen to add the fantasy points to the Bears Special Teams position as needed.  We’ll talk more in a future post about the various reasons that separating Team Defense and Special Teams is generally not recommended, and this is one of those reasons… The NFL doesn’t track TD stats separately, so the notion of a “Special Teams” position is really a fantasy football concept rather than an NFL concept.

In the third quarter, the Bears scored after TE Desmond Clark caught a pass from Kyle Orton. He ran it all the way down the field for a score, but came up just short and fumbled it at the 1 yard line. Then WR Rashied Davis of the Bears alertly fell on the ball in the end zone for a 0 yard “Offensive Fumble Recovery TD“. This is the first time a touchdown this type has occurred thus far in 2008, so if you want Davis to receive points for this TD, you’ll need to make sure the rule for “Number of Offensive Fumble Recovery TDs” or the rule called “Length of Offensive Fumble Recovery TD” is added to your league’s rules as needed for each position.  Since there was never a change of possession, this type of TD is not considered to be a TD by the defense.  Instead, it is an offensive touchdown, but not a standard passing or rushing TD.