Safety Dance

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.

Weekly Matchup Chart Home Page Module

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.

Making Trades

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.

Halloween!

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!

Strange Plays for Week 7

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.

Free Mid-Season Leagues

Can you believe we’re already approaching the midway point of the fantasy football season? Hopefully your team is still at or above .500 and doing well. But if not, we have a “second chance” opportunity for you. We’ve announced our FREE mid-season fantasy football league service. Click on the link for more details and to create your own league.

You can use the mid-season league to gather a bunch of your friends or co-workers and start a new league just like your old one. Or you can try a new league format if you want to experiment with other ideas for the 2nd half of the season. We offer various types of leagues:

Draft or Auction Leagues – You can conduct a draft, either live on-line or via email over the course of several days, or conduct an Ebay style auction, and then run the league as desired for the 2nd half of the season…

Head to Head – You can create your own weekly schedule, including double or triple headers if you want to squeeze more games into the shortened season.

Total Points – If the season is too short for your tastes to create a schedule, yo can just use the Total Points format to tally up the weekly points.

All Play – Another popular format is to have every team play against every other team each week. So if there are 10 teams in your league, the team with the highest weekly score will be 9-0 for that week, and the team with the 2nd highest score will be 8-1, and so on down to the worst scoring team which will be 0-9 for that week.

Best Lineup – Generally, fantasy football leagues require each owner to submit a starting lineup each week. For example, if the roster size is 16 players, they have to choose 8 of those 16 players to start. But we also have an option to automatically choose the best lineup each week. It’s a good option if you want to focus on the draft and then just let the season play out without having to worry about roster decisions and lineup changes each week.

No Draft or Rosters – You can also choose a “Tournament Style” format, where there is no draft and teams don’t have a roster. Instead, each owner selects a starting lineup from the entire pool of players each week. It’s a great option for a “no hassle” league if you don’t have time to organize a draft, and you just want to give every owner a chance to pick an awesome lineup each week. If you don’t want a totally “free-for-all” format, then there are options to make it harder and avoid duplicate lineups, such as the “Start ‘Em Once” format where each owner can select any lineup, but they can only use each player once per season. So if they start Brett Favre in Week 8, then they can’t use him at all for the remaining weeks.

The bottom line is that we have tons of options to allow you to run an exciting league for the 2nd half of the season, and it’s totally free. And of course, if you’re using a system other than MyFantasyLeague.com for your regular league, this is also a great opportunity to see what we have to offer compared to what you are currently using, with no obligation or commitment!

Projected Scores

Another fun report you can use for trash talking and pondering your fantasy football fate even before the games start each week is found on the “Reports > Franchise > Projected Scores” screen.  This report will show the projected scores for each player for the upcoming week after a lineup is submitted by an owner.   So you can check it out after you submit your lineup to see how your starting lineup decisions compare to the Fantasy Sharks Lineup Coach, which is what is used to generate these projected scores.

Basically, what the system does is take your league’s scoring system and applies it to the weekly stat projections that Fantasy Sharks provides.  That allows it to calculate a projected score for each player on your roster, and then a projected score for your fantasy team based on your lineup.  It’s a great way to get a feel for how well your team should perform this week, and also a great way to compare your team to your opponent.

Bonus:  This week we’ve updated the report to include bench players as well as starters, so now you can quickly see if FantasySharks.com is predicting better scores for your bench players!  If yes, then you may want to dig deeper into your lineup decisions to see if you agree with their predictions.  Of course, it is all based on projections, so there aren’t any guarantees.  It’s intended for fun and enjoyment, but the guys at Fantasy Sharks do a great job with their weekly projected stats, so you’ll probably get a kick of out this report if you haven’t seen it yet.  Enjoy!

Weekly Matchup Chart

We’ve added another new chart for your viewing pleasure.  This one charts your scoring over the course of the weekend, with an updated comparison after each set of games.  So on a typical week, you’ll see a chart showing how your score compared to your fantasy opponent after the early games on Sunday, and then after the late afternoon game, and then after the Sunday night game, and finally after the Monday night game.  It’s a great way to see how your fantasy team fared throughout the day on Sunday and if/when there were any lead changes in your fantasy matchup.  You can view this new chart on the “Reports > Franchise > Fantasy Recaps” screen.  See an example below:

Matchup Chart Example

This example shows how the team named “Last Place” in blue was behind his opponent named “Snakebit” in yellow all day on Sunday, and then it shows how they pulled out the win on Monday night.  Talk about the agony of defeat!  When you view this chart in combination with your Fantasy Recap report along with the corresponding table of individual player scores that shows up on that report, it gives you a great summary of exactly how your fantasy team performed this week.  Hopefully it will generate some good trash talking and bragging rights for your owners!  As with other charts that we’ve introduced, you can move the mouse over the individual data points to view a pop-up hint with more details.  In this case, you can mouse over a data point to see the actual score for each team at each point during the day.

Trade Deadline

While trades in the NFL are not nearly as prominent as they are in the MLB or NBA, the NFL Trade Deadline can still produce a little bit of drama. The NFL trade deadline was yesterday. There were rumors aplenty surrounding players such as TE Tony Gonzalez. But in the end, the only significant trade was WR Roy Williams being sent to the Cowboys in exchange for a 1st, 2nd, and 6th round pick in 2009…

In fantasy football, there isn’t a predetermined trade deadline. Some fantasy football leagues don’t even allow trades at all. On MyFantasyLeague.com, we give you the option of how to handle trades. You can use weekly trade windows, or allow trading all the time. And you can also specify a trade deadline as needed. All of this can be done from the “For Commissioners > Setup > League Calendar Setup” screen.

You can also use the “For Commissioners > Setup > Trades Setup” screen to specify various other trade options. There are 3 main ways to handle trades. Most leagues just allow trades to be approved and processed immediately after one owner proposes a trade and the other owner agrees to it. Another option is to require commissioner approval of all trades. With this option, after the 2nd owner accepts a trade, it is up to the commissioner to approve it before it is processed. The final option is to have all of the league owners vote on the trade before it is approved.

Trades are a fun part of fantasy football leagues. Even though they can lead to “collusion” and/or hard feelings among owners when lopsided trades are made, it is still just part of the game for most leagues. Be sure to explore the above options to find the best fit for your league as far as allowing and encouraging trades between owners throughout the season!

Two Point Conversion Stats

There was one successful two-point conversion this weekend, when Derek Anderson threw a pass to Braylon Edwards after their last touchdown in the fourth quarter. For the record, this “event” is recorded as a successful passing 2-point conversion, and nothing else as far as the stats concerned. The Quarterback does not get credited with an extra completion or any passing yardage, and the receiver does not receive credit for a reception or for the 2 yards of receiving on the play. The same holds true for a successful rushing 2-point conversion. The player that runs it in does not receive 2 extra rushing yards in their stats for the game.

The bottom line is that a conversion is either successful or it fails. Even if the defense intercepts a 2-point passing attempt, they cannot advance it and return it the other way for their own points. The play is declared dead as soon as the rush or pass attempt is stopped.

To accommodate this from a fantasy perspective, we have rules for your Team Defense or Special Teams position, including “Successful 2-Point Conversions” and “Failed 2-Point Conversions“.  For individual player positions, such QB’s and RB’s and WR’s, we have rules for each type of conversion play, including “Passing 2 Pointers” and “Rushing 2 Pointers” and “Receiving 2 Pointers” in case you want to assign different point values to each type.

You can review the complete set of rules available for your league to use on this page.