Better. 3-2 Yahoo.com Championships

General
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I know a lot of people deride Yahoo public leagues. Some don’t consider them competitive because it’s free to play. @JoePisapia17 says that they’re filled will 13 year old boys who haven’t set their roster since the first week of school. He’s not impressed by 10 team leagues either.

That’s cool. I get it. Money is a strong motivator. Easy access does mean some non committed players get in. 10 team leagues have better/more free agent/waiver wire choices.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t competitive and FUN. Isn’t that why we play? For the competition and entertainment? Anyone that plays Rec league basketball or softball can attest to how competitive they can be or even your local pool/darts bar leagues or tournaments. Money isn’t the only motivator.

I made championship game in 5 out of 7 Yahoo public leagues. I won 3 and loss 2. Here are the two I lost.

Opponent had a great day., I may not have been able to beat them regardless T. Higgins, R. Jones and D.Swift all came up short. I started them over D. Williams, H. Renfrow and B. Scott.

Adams Hill 98.86 -148

Another opponent with a great day. It would have taken an even better overall performance to beat them. A.J. Brown, D. Cook and D. Swift were the culprits. Problem is that no one on my bench performed much better. Just not our day.

Wilson Warriors 103.74 - 132.46

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3 championships out of 7 leagues is not bad at all. Congratulations!

I ended up playing only 3 redraft leagues this year, and 2 of them pretty much died along the season, with many a BYE or IR player remaining in active lineups.

I made the decision to focus entirely on dynasty leagues next year. Played 2 this year, won 1 of them. Maybe I’ll add another one this offseason. Other than that, I plan to focus on DFS, even though that was a very mixed bag this year - started strong into the season, but lost almost all of my earlier winnings in recent weeks.

Anyway, it was a fun season, if a bit random at times. But that’s part of the fun, right?

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I won my winners league and finished with a 911 rating, my highest ever. I made the playoffs in 6 of 7 with third my lowest finish.

I failed to make the playoffs for the second year in a row in my rival’s board 14 team league which will haunt me all off season. I’ve won that league before, I will be back.

But yeah, overall a good year on Yahoo.

I’ve dabbled a bit in DFS throwing a buck or two at it just to see. Frankly I have trouble calculating player value into monetary value. I get the theory, but application is off. I need to learn more about it, dynasty and keepers leagues too Although I really don’t have money to spend, which is why I play in free leagues.

I’d like to play in more 12/14 team leagues, but still unconvinced on FAAB or salary cap leagues, It comes back to that player/money value conversion that I struggle with. Seems to make it more like playing the stock market, which doesn’t really interest me.

I thought it was a great season, very challenging but had a blast. No real set it and forget it lineups. New problems each week, sometimes daily. I had 25 teams overall, ESPN championships completing this week. I honestly couldn’t have done it without FantasyPros Playbook and Resources. No,that’s not a paid endorsement, just the truth. I think I could successfully manage a 100 teams with these tools.

Looking forward to the NFL draft already and what i expect to be lively discussions.

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If I may share my experience:

DFS: I was there last year. Tried it out, spent a few bucks, won a few, but at the end, lost them all. This year, I tried it a little bit more systematically. That did work very well at first, but just when I thought I had found the success formula, it stopped working. :sweat_smile:

DFS is very random. It is a pure lottery, but one that allows you to tweak the chances in your favor. Essentially, it comes down to mixing a few underdog players that offer a good $/FFP ratio with a few studs.

Don’t dream of winning the million dollar jackpot every week. The rosters that do are usually highly random. Ideally, you will just barely hit the money in most of your competitions, which means you’re essentially playing for free. Or, in other words, get a free lottery ticket every week.

I need to refine my data approach, will do that during the offseason and try again next year. But I will keep working with a fixed seasonal budget. If it doesn’t work out, then so be it.

Aside from DFS, I actually prefer free leagues. I usually played 3 small-stakes leagues every year, but 2 of those were cancelled this year, and I’m not sure if I’ll look for replacements next season.

12 team dynasty is my preferred format by now. I play 2 leagues at the moment, may add a 3rd one for next season, but I think that will be enough for me.

My main league: 12 teams, half PPR, SFLEX, deep rosters (10 starters, 15 bench, 5 IR, 5 TAXI). 27 keepers. 4 round draft, rookies only. FAAB waivers.
Just finished the 4th season with my first title.

My second league: 12 teams, full PPR, 1QB, medium sized rosters (9 starters, 11 bench, 3 IR, 2 TAXI). 20 keepers. Unlimited draft, rookies + free agents. You can draft as many players as roster maximums allow. We increase rosters by 5 bench spots prior to the draft, and cut it back to the original size for week 1. Priority waivers.
I joined that league before the 2020 season, taking over a team the previous owner had run into the ground.

Based on my experience, I prefer following settings for dynasty leagues:

Scoring: half PPR > full PPR >>> standard scoring
I feel that half PPR offers the best balance between RBs and WRs.

Lineup: SFLEX >>> 1QB
SFLEX puts a lot more emphasis on the QB position, making it more valuable than even RB. Whereas in 1QB leagues, you can stream the position if you don’t have a top 10 QB.

Roster size: Shallow rosters <> deep rosters
No real preference here. Both setups offer their challenges. Wouldn’t recommend any shallower than my 2nd league, and any deeper than my 1st.

Draft: Rookies only <> Rookies + free agents
Again, no strong preference. Both is fun.

Waivers: Priority <> FAAB
Priority is definitely better for turnaround teams. Top teams will struggle to ever get a top free agent. Struggling teams will usually have a high waiver priority and can basically freely chose which free agent to add every week.
FAAB gives every owner more options to act, which makes it a litle more fun. It does make turnarounds more difficult, though.

As for online resources for dynasty leagues: FantasyPros has some great tools. The Playbook is fantastic, indeed. But (there had to be a “but”) I’m not a fan of their ECR approach anymore. There are too many sub-par analysts factoring in, resulting in ECR results being mediocre. Yes, you can configure “your” experts, and that is indeed a helpful thing, but can get a bit tedious, and also needs to be checked weekly, as some analysts seem to stop updating their rankings at some point of the season. This is especially true for dynasty rankings.

And since most FantasyPros tools are based on ECR, I would always take their results with a grain of salt. They are a great place to start planning your weekly moves, but I would not recommend using any “auto” features here.

In terms of roster planning, FantasyPros offers some great resources, Their dynasty trade value chart is an extremely helpful tool, as are their dynasty podcasts. But during the season, they have a very strong redraft focus here. All roster recommendations (buy/sell/hold/cut/add) are 100% tailored to redraft leagues.

Also, even their dynasty tools (even the trade value chart) are again based on ECR, and many experts contributing to the dynasty rankings seem to update their lists only once per season. That leads to oddities like KJ Osborn still not being ranked in dynasty tools. How can you not rank a sophomore who will probably finish the season as a WR3 and is likely to retain that role next year? Simply: because your dynasty ranking is based on analysts who didn’t update their lists since September.

I recently joined DLF ( https://dynastyleaguefootball.com/ ). They have a pure dynasty focus, meaning their weekly recommendations usually include a dynasty perspective. I’m not around long enough to make a verdict, but the first impression is great. They also have a very active forum in which discussions are going beyond “should I start X or Y”.

For the 2022 season, I plan to compare my own rankings against both FantasyPros and DLF and see what works better. 2021 was the first season where I did some serious player ranking. Will spend the offseason on a serious post-mortem analysis, but I think I did pretty well. Doing my own rankings also gave me a much better understanding how team scoring, target distribution and fantasy scoring are interconnected.

After next weekend, I will start adding the season stats to my ever growing djungle of Excel tables. This offseason’s project: moving from season stats for each player to weekly stats for each player. Not sure if I can pull that off, though. That’s a lot of data. :sweat_smile:

And once I have the 2021 season data filed, I’ll move on to planning the 2022 draft. That’s what I love about dynasty. There is no offseaon.

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You certainly don’t need my permission but it’s greatly appreciated.

That seems like a good approach. I’ll do some reading, listening, research and modeling to see if I can get a little more comfortable with a process. It must have been 30+ years ago when I created spreadsheets to project games against the spread. May be time to fire up google sheets to give it a go. Lot more available data these days, less manual input.

I agree with your critique of the ECR. I’d like to be able to drill down a bit beyond just the average which moves slowly and can be misleading. I’d like High, Low, Most Frequent, Mode, Recency Filter and Movement Indicator. A mouseover graphic with all that would be outstanding.

Perhaps expert rankings should be dropped from the calculations if not updated after X days? I mean things happen in life that may prevent someone from updating their rankings. Out of date rankings shouldn’t be included in ECR.

That’s exactly what I do. I use the start/sit assistant to set initial lineups then throughout the week I modify based on newest information and research. There are usually one or two players on each team where I go against recommendations.

I have one ESPN team in the championship round that has been full auto all season. I missed the draft, of course it was 1.01 (my only one) and decided to go ahead and use the full auto. I just had to maintain the bench and make sure I had good depth at every position. It worked out ok, but I prefer setting my own lineups.

I do use the substitute for inactive players feature, but not optimization on the rest of my teams. Early games come on at 9 a.m. here in AK and I’m not always up early enough to check and respond to all the early inactives so it’s a good failsafe to make sure I have each slot at least filled with an active player

.I have 9 teams (out of 12) in ESPN League Championships sweating who to start with Covid, Injuries and last week of the season when the stars don’t always play. Then I can truly start focusing on next season. Even for redraft leagues, there is always research, education and preparation to be done.

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That is a good point. Early games start at 7 p.m. here in Germany. So I got all day to optimize the lineup. And I usually tune in to NFL Network 2-3 hours before kickoff and follow the latest team and player developments.

I’ll usually watch until the end of the late window, which comes around 1:30 a.m. SNF actives / inactives are mostly safe by then, so I can go to bed and watch SNF the next morning. Unless the Packers are playing. Then I might even watch SNF (or TNF/MNF) live. Sleep is overrated.

Time shift means you can also still adjust your waiver bids on Wednesday morning. Waivers lock at 11 a.m. and are processed by 12 noon. Lots of time to waste more FAAB $$$ on a player nobody else will be bidding on anyway. :sweat_smile:

Overall, the schedule works quite well for me. But if I had one wish to the NFL, it would be: hold the damn Super Bowl on a Saturday night! Seriously, is there one good reason to not do it, other than “it’s always been that way”? I would imagine it would be more convenient for the US audience as well.

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I absolutely concur!

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